How much time does it take for Experience Design to unfold?

This paper specifically focuses on one aspect of the experience design process, sometimes even stressed as one if its shortcomings: the time it takes to properly gain insights about possible real-life experiences of proximal or distal end-users. In the process of making sense of sometimes conflicting viewpoints found in the literature about timing and its possible impact on design processes and outcomes, this paper compares four distinct settings and addresses the following research questions:
• How “time-framing” the design process possibly filters (positively or negatively) the awareness designers have about end-users;
• How the experimental protocols, their inherent limitations and artificialities, do shape the designers’ involvement in the process of designing for an end-user’s experience.
Results put techniques for «disciplined creativity», such as brainstorming or analogies, front-to-front with more reflective approaches that unfold over more time, and discuss respective but complementary added values of both.