A guide to Holistic design
Bridging the gap between design and experience
To me, holistic design bridges the gap between UX and traditional industrial design by rendering intent across the entirety of a digital or physical product experience. Holistic design is responsible for those little moments of magic, moments that give a brand a certain attitude or feeling that its users can’t help but fall in love with.
When thinking of Holistic design, we often think of a simple, beautiful, and easy to use feature-set of a product, that makes the user’s life easier. But as a matter of fact, these features are merely a small, fragile part of the product in a larger ecosystem.
“Make every interaction count, even the small ones. They are all relevant” — Shep Hyken
Trying to define what exactly holistic design means is difficult, as mentioned in my opening sentence I believe that holistic design bridges the gap between UX and traditional industrial design, it encourages us to focus on each and every possible touchpoint of a product that a user will encounter — from shelf to the very end.
As a side note: UX design comes under the umbrella of holistic design and is an abbreviation for user experience, it refers to all the aspects of the end-user’s interaction with a system, product, service or company.
What does holistic design mean?
However, trying to define holistic design would be naive of me. It is such a broad approach of design that many have their own way to define it — What’s important to remember is that each of these definitions all lead us back to this singular vision of considering the whole experience.
In the Adobe blog series “Ask an UXpert” the subject of what holistic design means to the UX expert was touched on and some really interesting phrases were communicated. I won’t go on as I recommend you go read it yourself but here is a short extract from Karthik Vijayakumar.
To design is to think. Design is the ability to be able to broaden our perception of the world around, to see the unseen, and make it appear as a new purposeful addition to the real world.
Holistic design is to see and think of the world in two broad dimensions — as interconnectedand evolving systems. Holistic design is formed by and leads to interconnected systems. Evolving nature of holistic design is when the design leads to the evolution of the interconnected systems.
To break this down I would say that in a holistic design approach each and every touchpoint the user may interact with or be influenced by will make up an interconnected system with the existing products they own.
This can be thought of in a more tangible sense by considering that not only should the user have the great experience with your product in use but they should be able to enjoy the whole experience from inspiration, planning and purchasing to a continued brand relationship. i.e — the first moment the user hears or sees your product, the moment they unbox the product, the moment the product achieves its main task and the moment the product is put down. These are quick thoughts rather than the points to hit though.
How to incorporate a holistic approach to your work
A holistic design approach isn’t as confusing as may seem. As design continues to evolve we are becoming ever familiar with design thinking, sprints and UX design so really we’re already halfway there.
I pulled these 7 key principles that will help you incorporate a holistic approach to your work from the Interaction Design Foundation, each may seem familiar to most of the aspects from the approaches we already use but with a wider scope of opportunity.
- Begin with questions rather than answers
- Deliver more, not less
- Create your own theories
- Use 360-degree design
- Consider alternative business models
- Do better
- Find what you want that everyone else wants
Conclusion
“Holistic design may appear avant-garde and ambitious, but what it demands of a designer’s imagination is the same creativity that can pay dividends far into the future” — IDF
and I agree. Holistic design sounds like it’s for the idealists, a vision of the ‘perfect’ product, I don’t see much wrong with that though. Our generation will be the first where data will become one of the most powerful things available and if used in the right way, it could empower the quest for our perfect holistic design visions and pay divisends far into our futures.
Thanks for reading — I’m currently a user experience intern at Bosch Power Tools and an Industrial Design student at Loughborough University. Feel free to get in touch or check out my website.
