The Experience-Centric Organization

6. Starting with the Experience

6

Starting with the Experience

In this chapter you will learn about how customers experience products and services, and how you can use this knowledge to design for better experiences. It shows how we act like scenario machines, always being prepared for different scenarios to play out, and how experiences have deep evolutionary roots related to our survival. In this way experiences are impossible to separate from expectations. We have thousands of experiences every day, most of which we do not even notice, but this chapter will show you how to design for experiences that your customers will remember, and share with others.

The customer experience is a co-productive, value-creating act. Without customer action, there is no experience, only an offering. A service creates value only when that offering is experienced by the customer through use. Because of its importance, it’s time to learn more about the customer experience, and how we can innovate to account for it.

Moving from Function to Experience

When I first moved to Scandinavia I did some work for a world-leading toothbrush manufacturer, Jordan. At the time, their claim to fame was the ergonomics of their toothbrushes and the effectiveness of the bristle head. Their ads were all about function, not emotion. Today they have a design approach focusing on experience. One particularly successful product stands out because the whole design is based upon how Jordan wants you to feel (see Figure ...