Jodi Forlizzi - of Carnegie Mellon - writes an interesting essay: Towards a Framework of Interaction and Experience As It Relates to Product Design

"Our goal is to make experience accessible to designers -- to make our theory of interaction design live in practice, by allowing designers to conceive of designing experiences rather than designing products."

I think it is great that there are people looking into how we can effectively design interactions and experiences. The great debate over whether our field should be called Experience Design because we can or cannot design experiences for a person will be further defined as we create and agree upon a common language, methodology and understanding of just what it means to design for these multiple dimensions that make an experience.