Embedding Values into Digital Artifacts

Overview: The shift toward digital offerings poses challenges for companies that are adapting their development process from creating physical products to new digital artifacts. The ways in which companies design physical products and their interaction with customers is not effective in the digital domain. This article outlines how Sorgenia, a fast-growing utility company in Italy, conceptualized and designed the mobile app its consumers use to access its services. The classical dimensions of the user experience (aesthetic, emotional, and symbolic) need to be layered and coordinated throughout the customer’s interaction with the app to make the underlying values emerge progressively. In doing so, customers can be guided to comprehend a digital artifact fully, overcoming the interpretive barriers caused by the lack of physicality.