Embodied Experience Strategies
by petermeEarlier this year, I put out a call for experience strategies, clearly articulated touchstones that guide product design and development from an experiential point of view. The examples I gave were of Flickr’s About Page, Google Calendar’s vision, and Kodak’s slogan, “You Press The Button, We Do The Rest.”
I recently realized a couple of embodied experience strategies — prototypes or artifacts that serve to depict the experiential vision. One was posted here earlier by my colleague Brandon — the Target ClearRX pill bottle.
The pill bottle was designed before the system could enable it. And as Brandon’s post shows, it took quite a lot to get the pharmacy to be able to deliver. But with such a clear representation of the desired experience, Target always knew how to direct its efforts.
The other embodied experience strategy looks something like this:
Well, imagine that it’s half as long, and maybe half as deep. And if you do, you’re imagining a block of wood about the same size as the original Palm Pilot. Jeff Hawkins, as he was formulating ideas for the Palm Pilot, walked around with a block of wood in his pocket, pulling it out and “using” it when the situation warranted. As his colleagues suggested features and functionality, Jeff would pull out his block of wood and ask them, “Where would it go?” The block of wood enforced an appreciation of simplicity and directness, which were hallmarks of the original device. The block of wood proved to be a novel experience strategy — immediately understood by everyone, and important in focusing the teams efforts.
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on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Experience Strategy, Product Design.
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