Categories: design, learning, process

Last night I went to BayCHI’s monthly program meeting to see Peter Merholz from Adaptive Path speak about their latest book, Creating Great Products and Services in an Uncertain World.

He first started his presentation that media is a mess. Blogs are taking away readers from print media, the web is taking away advertising money away from television. Major artists are leaving their traditional major labels to the web (e.g. JZ leaves Def Jam for LiveNation). His point was that our society is constantly changing and we need to seek design approaches to embrace this complexity and intellectually think how to manage it.

One thing that caught my attention is the notion of the “long wow” to create experiences that unfold over time. By creating experiences repeatedly it creates more meaning to the consumer. Each increment of meaning adds more value and leads to true brand loyalty.

The Long Wow

Peter later explains the planning and staging of a “wow experience”. The means of organizing a pipeline of wow moments that can be introduced through a variety of touchpoints over time. I understood it as a product roadmap or an experience map, but instead of focusing on product features, it addresses key experiences.

After a small pause, he posed a question to the crowd, “What elements create a good experience?” Instantly I started reflecting about the book, Technology as an Experience by John McCarthy & Peter Wright, and how the four threads of experience framework ties to each wow moment in the pipeline.

Four thread of experience:

1. The Sensual Thread: Is concerned with our sensory engagement with a situation, which orients us to the concrete, palpable, and visceral character of the experience.
2. The Emotional Thread: Is concerned with an understanding or sense-making process (the sense or meaning ascribed to an object or person because of the values, goals, and desires we have).
3. The Compositional Thread: Is concerned with relationships between the parts and the whole of an experience.
4. The Spatio-Temporal Thread: Encompasses the spatio-temporal component of experience, particularly, how it is connected to our past and is related to our future, and, whether we experience life as emergent or as determined

For example, the picture below breaks down the whole experience into four wow moments. Each moment is closely linked and dependent to the previous one and encompasses the four threads. Peter gave an excellent example on how Nike divided their wow moments for the Nike + iPod experience around a platform for unmet running needs.

Plan and stage the wow experience

1st wow moment:
Synced tracking - detailed running performance data and visualizations on routes your ran.

2nd wow moment:
Powersong - as your running performance declines your “motivational song” (eg. “Eye of the Tiger”, “Chariots of Fire”) automatically plays on your iPod to increase inspiration and performance.

3rd wow moment:
Collaborative running - sharing each others running information promotes engagement. (e.g. “Whoever has the lowest run time on this route, buys lunch”)

4th wow moment:
Networked running events (e.g. Nike Web Nationals)

Peter simplified the four threads of experience as four simple elements of a good experience:
The Sensual Thread -> Behavior
The Emotional Thread -> Emotion
The Compositional Thread -> Motivational
The Spatio-Temporal Thread -> Context

After the presentation, a few of my colleagues and I approached him and thanked him for presenting. I was envious with one of my colleagues. Peter gave him a free copy of their book. Overall, I found the presentation very enlightening with excellent examples of consumer products using experience design.