Recently, I was tasked with giving a presentation on our web development process. What started as a presentation on the methodology of properly project managing a website, quickly morphed into a much more philosophical discussion about design, user centered design and experience design. I’ll talk a bit more about the rest of the presentation in another post, but for now, I wanted to talk about beer.

When I give presentations to clients, I always try to give an analogy or a story from personal experience that makes understanding complex or technical issues easily digestible. One of the challenges with this specific presentation was how do I explain the differences in design, user centered design and experience design to an audience that doesn’t know, or think about the differences in the three.

While working on the presentation, I was having a beer in my music studio and was struck by a moment of inspiration.

The beer bottle.

It’s a pretty simple design that solves an important problem. What do you do if you need to carry beer? The solution: glass, encased around the liquid with a bottle cap to seal in the liquid. Bottle caps were originally designed to be pressed over and around the top of a glass bottle to grab a small flange on the bottleneck. The Crown Cork was patented by William Painter on 2 February 1892 (U.S. Patent 468,258). It originally had 24 teeth and a cork seal with a paper backing to prevent contact between the contents and the metal cap. The current version has 21 teeth. To open these bottles, a bottle opener is generally advised.

The twist.

So, the bottle cap is great, unless you want to go to a football game and tailgate, and whoops – you’ve forgotten your bottle opener. I guess you could break the top off the bottle, that is if you like slicing up your lips and swallowing fragments of glass. Or maybe you could use a sword. An even easier solution would be to use a twist off cap. That way the user of the bottle has all the tools they need to open the bottle.

The pour.

We all know that Guinness in a pub is great. They use a special keg that infuses nitrogen into the stout to give it that perfect head and that unique taste. Guinness took the design of the beer bottle a step further, and figured out how they could emulate the experience of ‘the pour’ you get in a pub in the comfort of your own home. The Guinness draught can is a sleek design can with a small nitrogen capsule inside that releases when you open it.

What does this all mean?

Design solves a problem. User Centered Design solves a problem with the needs of the user given priority. Experience design solves a problem with the user in mind, but adds another element, it highlights experience of interacting with the brand.

So, if you ever need to quickly explain design to a client, just remember beer!