Peter this is great. Love the emphasis on “human qualities” as well as culture. Also it’s interesting to note that it isn’t just one or a few of these qualities at play but all of them interconnected together, working off each other, that create the overall experience.

It seems pretty dead on to me, except maybe for motivations. Doesn’t “what they hope to get out of it” kind of fit into expectations?

Also, how would the concept of “what they think they need and what they really need” fit into it? Because that tends to greatly affect matters.

Expectations is meant to explicitly address a person’s mental model of a system (in the Don Norman sense). People have expectations of how things work, how they operate, andf the thing works as they expected, or works contrary to how they expected, that has an impact on their experience.

Let’s take an ATM. When I use an ATM, say, I have an expectation of the order of the screens, and if that order is changed, it could be disruptive. My motivation for using the ATM is very different—I’m motivated to use it because I need money to buy something. The motivation might be specific (I’m going to a restaurant and I need cash) or general, (I’ve just bought something, and am down to 5 dollars in my pockets, so it would be good to get money).

The primary thing I neglected to mention in my original post is the element of time. An experience evolves over time—it’s not fixed to a single split moment.

Hmm, this is going to sound weird, especially since you mentioned time, but would you go so far to say that “space” is NOT involved in the experience. By space I mean physical proximity to the experience. For example, I may be watching a store manager be rude to a customer. Thus I’m not involved but I’m still experiencing something. And what about word of mouth via the Web? I mean you hear horror stories of people trying to cancel their AOL account. I’m not even near the event yet I’m still experiencing it in my own way via the word of mouth.

Would you agree that this relates to the experience or would you define it as something completely different?

Peter, you might be interested in a museum learning researcher named John Falk. His Institute for Learning Innovation has been studying things like motivation in museum settings for years. His recent work involves what he calls “identity-related motivation.” They’ve found that people (who visit museums, zoo, aquariums) tend to fall into groups related to their motivations for visiting, and those motivations relate to how they define their identity.

I like your set of qualities.

http://experienceology.blogspot.com

I think you’ve done a pretty good job of distilling what I like to call the domains of experience.

While I agree with you that experience exists only in the mind, you should be prepared to answer questions about your Perceptions domain, which is clearly dependent on sensorimotor interactions that happen in the material world, rather than in the mind.

I also think labeling Culture as “the big one” is going a bit far. An offering’s alignment with a person’s Culture is no more a determining factor for one’s experience than any other domain (I think). I do agree, though, that as designers we do a really bad job of considering culture as an input to inform the design process. Is that why you’ve called it out?

Helpful!

Perceptions & Culture: Suggest how something makes you feel (productive, frustrated, elated, pleased, intrigued, part of something etc) and how you are seen by others by using that something plays a part.

Hi Peter,

I think it summarizes things quite nicely.

I was only wondering, where would you fit “emotions” in your list of human qualities?

Emotional experience is essential to understand for example motivation. Experienced

emotions are influenced by our personal backgrounds (including culture), standards, beliefs, etc.

It might be related to your example of the ATM. When your expectations aren’t met, you will be less motivated. This is a change in motivation that the person can still be very well aware of (the screens are different from what I am used to!), whereas when a lower motivation is influenced by emotions we feel based on personal background, the person might not be so aware of the reason. Therefore, for someone who is involved in designing the UI for the ATM, it can be very helpful to understand these backgrounds and the processes behind the emotional experience of the user. Experience may very well exist only in the minds of your customers, but they are not always aware of why they feel a certain way.

Perhaps this one is even bigger than just “culture” alone?

Hi Peter,

Your ‘experience’ summation is excellent, helpful and very insightful. Ara Pehlivanian makes an interesting point though about motivation. I would use the word need, which you alluded to in your response to Ara, to differentiate the user’s motivation from their expectation. I see need being a greater issue which is resolved through repeated, satisfied interactions with the tool/system. The expectation is fostered and met by the service/tool/system.

The other thing that I would to suggest is learning/education, both as experience and outcome. Learning is something that I feel is all too often neglected when considering usability and experience. We/users are continually learning through our interaction with technology and the world around us. Our understanding of technology in the world around is constantly growing and evolving, hence the continual redesigning of the systems we use to enable us to work more efficiently and employ our new learning in better and more productive experiences.

If we didn’t learn, we would have to be told how to use windows version 1 every time we turned the computer on and we would never get to vista. Learning also fundamentally impacts on experience as a user feels accomplished and confident when they get the handle of a new technology. If they feel they have it down pat, under their belt, they are far more likely to use it again. That is a clear vindication of the learning experience. These users are also more likely and willing to continue learning, so long as the changes to learn aren’t to extreme. That for me is a critical success factor in any design.

[...] A definition of customer experience They also took a swing at defining experience: “Customer experience is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company. Direct contact generally occurs in the course of purchase, use, and service and is usually initiated by the customer. Indirect contact most often involves unplanned encounters with representations of a company’s products, services, or brands…” [...]

[...] - here is the latest, its been brewing for a few months since I read PeterMe’s post “Noodling on experience” and recent discussions about “context” at the 2008 IA Summit caused me to dig it out [...]