Peter Merholz: Experience IS the Product… and the only thing users care about
In an article just published on Core77, Peter Merholz (blog) of Adaptive Path tours us through some of the most successful companies and how they focus on the interaction with the user, arguing that good designers create experiences, not products.
The article has much in common with the recent Jesse James Garrett (Adaptive Path president) talk at MX San Francisco. Here’s a taste:
When you start with the idea of making a thing, you’re artificially limiting what you can deliver. The reason that many of these exemplar’s forward-thinking product design succeed is explicitly because they don’t design products. Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs. What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.
