Usability vs Experience

Usually people look upon me as a usability-enthusiast, an evangelist even. To be honest, I was. In fact I still am, but only so far. When I started as an Interaction Designer my focus was on making it easy for users to use products, make it understandable, make things transparent. Important was to use the right labels, the way the information should be constructed, aso. The reason that I started my study Interaction Design was that I always had the feeling that "things weren't right", "it should be possible to make to make things better". Then I stumbled upon Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. And suddenly I understood: "Wow, things can be done! You just have to design them in a better way". So I took up Interaction Design, concentrating on cognitive ergonomics, usability.

But I always had the feeling there was something more. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but the feeling was that I seemed to miss something. Again it was Don Norman, he then published Emotional Design. And again things fell in place. After that I discovered Train of Thoughts, by John Lenker.
So I finally grew up and understood why people used SMS, despite of its horrible interface (instead of typing 10 numbers and speaking what they had to say, people punched 10 numbers and kept punching to get the message across). Like I understood before about games, games have to be exciting, it does not matter if they look good (ouch!), it's just the box that it is sold in has to look good. And the same goes for websites, people don't visits a site because it looks good, but because they find the needed information there, preferably fast. And I could go on this way.

Since I live in the Netherlands, and we are a cycling country, just one more example I used in my classes. When you cycle from home to school (or your office or whatever) each morning and you have a choice between two routes, one along the highway straight on for several miles, the other on the other side of the same highway but it meanders along a stream, leads you through a few trees, but also is a mile longer. When you're in a hurry, you will take the fastest route. But when people have the time, a majority will choose the longer route, just because it is more appealing, more pleasant to use.
Indeed, just so much for functionality, for usability. That's only a part of our lives.