Design Excursions

Design excursions are a creative UX method used to break through mental blocks by looking for inspiration outside of your specific industry or problem space. During an excursion, a design team identifies the core essence of their challenge and then investigates how completely different fields handle that same concept.

For instance, if you are designing a complex check-in process for a mobile app, you might study how a busy hospital triage unit or a high-end hotel concierge manages arrivals. By stepping away from the screen and observing these unrelated environments, you can uncover fresh metaphors and novel interaction patterns that you would never have found by looking at your competitors.

This approach encourages lateral thinking and helps teams move past obvious solutions to find truly innovative ways to improve the user experience.