Making Meaning: The Business of Experience Design

Chapters from a new book ...

"Throughout the past decade, the term experience has spread into the business world with increasing quantity and intensity. No doubt, you’ve heard terms like experience marketing, experience branding, experience design, 360° experience, 360° branding, experience economy, etc. This is because the business world has quickly understood that their customers have both broader and deeper interactions with products and services than those characteristics normally found on a feature list. In addition, these relationships are becoming the most valued component of business.

Separately and together, we (Steve, Nathan, and Darrel) have counseled hundreds companies on both strategies and implementations that help create better experiences for their customers and audiences. We’ve worked with many of the dimensions of successful experiences, such as:

• Time
• Space
• Senese (visuals, sounds, etc.)
• Context
• Interactivity
• Emotions
• Value

Most of these are either already understood or have become much clearer over the past 10 years (such as interactivity). But, there was something “missing.” In interviewing consumers all over the world, we’ve found their intonations and adjectives used when describing commercial experiences similar to when they described their most personal experiences, such as a wedding or the birth of a child. The “something” underlying these experiences that made them so immensely valuable was MEANING."   continued ...   (Via Making Meaning)

Experience design need meaning.