Experiential design landscapes: Design research in the wild

Abstract

Thanks to the emergence of new sensing and behaviour tracking technologies, design research can take place anywhere and anytime in the real world. When doing design research, a trade-off has to be made between experimental control and ecological validity. In this paper, we compare Experiential Design Landscapes (EDLs) with three more traditional research approaches that are frequently used in design research, i.e., Lab Research, Living Lab and design research ‘in the field’, and reflect on this trade-off. By means of an example, we discuss how EDLs deals with issues of ‘generalisability’ to the real world and the potential loss of experimental control.