A couple weeks ago, I mentioned to someone that I do user-experience design at work. He said, "Ya know, I hear that term more and more these days, but what does it mean? Isn't that just the label-du-jour for UI design?" I was annoyed that didn't really have a great answer. (Not that he's totally wrong about the trendy-term for UI design part.) It's been nagging me ever since, the thought that I should be able to articulate it better, even if it's only to myself.

Then a thought occurred to me on the way home tonight. A way of thinking about it that I kind of like:

User experience (UX) design is participatory storytelling. As the UX designer, you are setting up a stage in a way that gives someone the ability to craft a meaningful personal narrative with your application / product / company / etc.

The important part is that it's impossible to dictate the details of the story (at least not in the same way as say, an author or a screenplay writer can). The best you can do is loosely guide people along, while they craft a story from their own experiences. When looked at this way, it also makes it easier to think about the user in a more empathetic way, considering how exactly what you're building is going to make their lives better. Imagine user stories like the following (totally made up, but still illustrates the point):

My bus ride to work used to suck. But now that I have an iPhone, it's the best part of my day. It used to be 45 solid minutes of not trying to make eye contact with people. Now, I catch up with friends on Facebook, look at dumb pictures of cats with the icanhazcheesburger app, and listen to my favorite music. By the time I get to work, I'm actually in a good mood!

That kind of stuff is a lot more exciting than usability or aesthetics, I think.