While a number of studies have focused on the relationship between aesthetics and design, a specific aesthetic analysis of Experience Design is still missing, despite the growing importance of the latter. This gap is not coincidental. “Experience Design” can be a broad category potentially including any type of design, and thus, difficult to pin down. Without claiming to be exhaustive, this essay aims to provide a useful approach and some coordinates for a more critical reflection on such a transversally operative phenomenon that is both widespread and urgent to understand. Not least, it aims to show how Experience Design’s highly aesthetic potential can shed new light on design’s canonical conceptual couple “form–function”.
Gioia Laura Iannilli works in Aesthetics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and at the University of Bologna. Her areas of expertise are Everyday Aesthetics, Design Aesthetics, Fashion Aesthetics and Deweyan Aesthetics. She authored a book, L’estetico e il quotidiano: Design, Everyday Aesthetics, esperienza (2019), and essays and book chapters on these topics. She is currently book review editor of Studi di Estetica – Italian Journal of Aesthetics, and member of the editorial board of the “International Lexicon of Aesthetics”.
