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June 25, 2007
More on "experience"
Last week, I posted a story on moving from a technology strategy to an experience strategy. Now comes this story in Business Week -- Experience Is the Product:
At some point, product categories require a quantum evolution—beyond technology and features—to the satisfaction of a customer experience. The VCR begat the DVR, and TiVo, the leading DVR brand, is successful because they began with an experience mindset, and developed the product to suit that.
In some ways, it's unfair to compare TiVo with earlier VCRs, because the underlying technology is fundamentally different. But, like George Eastman did with his roll film, TiVo took a new technology (hard drive-based digital video recording) and didn't simply copy prior models, but applied an experience mindset that lead to a fundamental rethinking of people's relationship to television.
. . .
At best, most product organizations have a list of requirements to meet, and, more typically, they simply have a set of features to develop. Designing and developing to requirements and feature lists leads to unsatisfactory experiences, because you're no longer oriented to the perspective of the user. As you make decisions along the way, your concerns for features, data, and technology trumps serving the customer. This is in large part because you have those requirements and feature lists in front of you, but nothing to represent the experiential point of view.
This is where experience strategy comes into play. As my colleague Jesse James Garrett has commented, experience strategy serves as "a star to sail your ship by." An experience strategy is a clearly articulated touchstone that influences all the decisions made about technology, features, and interfaces. Whether in the initial design process, or as the product is being developed, such a strategy guides the team and ensures that the customer's perspective is maintained throughout.
An experience strategy can take many forms. At heart it is a vision, an expression of the experience you hope customers will have. The ur-experience strategy is George Eastman's slogan for Kodak, "You press the button, we do the rest." As a description of the desired experience, it's not particularly soulful or nuanced—nothing poetic about capturing memories. But it oriented Eastman's delivery for an entire photographic system that supported this simple experiential goal.
Very good advice for succeeding in the I-Cubed Economy.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at June 25, 2007 9:23 AM
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