15 Jun 2007 1056H

Thinking about experience design

Was piqued a series of posts on David Armano’s blog, Logic + Emotion, yesterday.

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that it was, in fact, possible to override the political and economical to design every aspect of human experience, end-to-end, for a given business, either a service or product. From the business side, this would encompass all the ways something is advertised or comes into contact with it, how it is perceived, how it is communicated, all the ways people are kept interested in it, the ways that people commit to purchasing it; the ways people interact with it and are introduced to other similar services and products; are supported while interacting with it; how to recover if things go wrong, even horribly, injuriously wrongly; then after purchasing, how the customer is supported, even if the service is long rendered or product becomes obsolete, and then, either through repeat business or fandom, how their loyalty should be cultivated and rewarded. The whole business lifecycle. And that’s just the B2C side, we haven’t even touched upon B2B or even internal customers and consumers.

Perhaps this is naive, but, isn’t experience design just a new-fangled term for the corporate brand architecture? Wouldn’t this necessitate some sort of C-level executive position, say Chief Creative Officer, where someone has the backing of the organization, and is tasked with the guardianship and extension of the brand through services and products, under which is a hierarchy of brand architects, distributed through an organization, who see to it that a brand’s consistency, quality, interaction, voice are maintained through the execution of all the touchpoints with their current and future publics? Even if a consulting firm were to come in to create this program, it would be shortlived, once turned loose, unless — as the folks at Forrester tell us — there is a culture already inside the organization that can maintain and interpret the guidelines so that they can extend them in novel or ambiguous circumstances. And often there are multiple territories. Powers and principalities, you might say, within an organization, each with their own idea about how something should be done.

So, I’m skeptical that there is an overarching, “master narrative” approach as opposed to a plurality of designs that may be loosely bound by what might be called philosophy: brand, business objectives, user objectives, and communications strategy.

It must be thought upon.

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