Phoebe Sengers the Engineering of Experience

A deep shift in Western culture has occurred in the last 200 years. We have moved from lifestyles in which work, play, and other forms of experience are inextricably intertwined, to one in which most people separate their work life from a private (and often less societally valued) life of fun and play. Engineering has played a central role in this bifurcation, fulfilling a cultural desire to engineer human experience for optimal functionality. The result has been a great increase in our material comforts, coupled with a harried, frenzied lifestyle for many. In this chapter, I will argue that designing systems to support rich, meaningful, and pleasurable human experiences requires moving away from the model of engineering experience and towards an interdisciplinary approach to computing, in which technology design is intertwined with philosophical and cultural analysis.