Adaptive Path Blog

Experience Strategies

We had a hunch that there was a community out there that hadn’t gotten together to talk about the experience of managing user experience. And here you are.

George Eastman: “You press the button, we do the rest.” Photography could be a mass consumer activity. He turned this idea into a product: the kodak. The very first consumer technology product. You press the button, the Eastman Kodak company does the rest. History of photography: before kodak and after. We all would like to be part of a product that transforms an industry.

What’s the highest compliment we can give a product? “Highly profitable”? “Never breaks”? No: “Can’t live without it.” What does it take to make products we can’t live without?

Can’t rely on technology to sell products. This can work as a strategy (for a while). (see: Wordstar, early VCRs.)

Move beyond technology to features. This too can work for a while. But there’s still the VCR’s blinking clock.

How to get beyond the features mindset: “the beautiful, elegant solution that works.” –Steve Jobs (in 1984) You need a different mindset: delivering value through experience.

A big part of the iPod’s success has to do with the psychology of technology. We relate to products as if they were people. People have affection for their devices. When you interact with a product, you ascribe personality traits to it. Products should have a personality.

This is different from how most products are made: a core of data with a shell wrapped around it. This model doesn’t exist in the minds of people who use it. Their model: the interface and the rest of it is magic.

More and more, the integrity of experience is becoming paramount. “Designing from the Outside, In” –Tim O’Reilly. We call it experience strategy: an approach that provides a clearly-articulated touchstone (the personality/idenity) of the product that affects all the choices made about the product. A star to sail a ship by. A clear objective to design toward.

The identity of a product is not the brand. Brand is the message you want to send the consumer. Experience strategy is the opposite. It starts with the consumer.

Strategic design requirements: the qualities the system needs to have to deliver particular experiences. Add that to business goals, and you get a set of experience strategies. When you get into the design process, you can make decisions based on this set of experience strategies. These can even outlive the individual product: the next iteration can still use those strategies.

But individual products aren’t the whole experience. There are many touchpoints. The iPod, for instance, isn’t a stand-alone product. Needs iTunes and iTunes Music Store. The system provides the total experience to manage, play, and acquire media. We need a systems view.

[Flickr example: hub of photo sharing system]

The experience is the product we should deliver. And the only part of the product the audience cares about.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under Adaptive Path, Conference commentary, Design leaders, ROI/Business Value. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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