The idea of consumers buying an experience, rather than a product, was first introduced to me through reference to Pine & Gillmore’s book, The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Products in the market today, no matter how mundane, are packaged around some sort artificial or natural experiential context.
There are good and bad sides to this experience economy. A lot of bad stories get made up: McDonald’s as a lifestyle brand for the youthful and active, cigarette smoking as narcissistic and nihilistic cool.
It is time we begin to craft real experiences through products we design. What do I mean by that? First, a well-meaning and thought out experience is one that serves to please the consumer (or user, or audience) through total engagement: tapping into emotions of anticipation and satisfaction, create responsible narratives, and form bonds in a trusting relationship. Furthermore, a real user experience informs the consumer directly and responsibly about their product’s consumption and the context of use. This implies a built-in understanding of the user’s experience outside the web (or whatever platform we design our product).
We must be aware of how the experience we craft interacts with and compares to the audience’s lived experience. We must provide experiences that consumers are comfortable with, are informed about, feel are genuine and authentic, and allows them room for freedom and empowerment, much like the kind of life choices that humans actively and happily engage in.
Addendum: Wow there’s so much to be said about Jesse James Garrett’s closing statement at the IA summit this year. For now, this quote stood out in my mind. I’m literally losing sleep over this, writing 3 hours after I intended to go to sleep.
They take people, they hook them up to mRIs, you know “brain wave scanners” and then they show em tv commercials and they look at what parts of their brains light up when they watch these tv commercials… and they can figure out how to craft a tv commercial that will illicit a feeling of safety, or trust, or desire. So yeah, my first reaction when I heard about this stuff: wow I gotta get my hands on some of that…my second reaction was wait a minute, what are we talking here? A process designed to illicit specific patterns of neural activity in users; back in the 50s they called that mind control.
Now in a lot of ways we’re already in the mind control business: IA and interaction design both seek to reward and reinforce certain patterns of thought and behavior… So there’s always been an ethical dimension of this work. But who’s talking about this stuff, who’s taking this seriously? I don’t hear anybody talking about these things.