A theatrical approach to experience design

Everyone is talking about the experience economy, customer experience management, and experience design these days. The big idea is, in a world where all products are pretty good and all services are fairly decent, any one of them could do the job well enough. So offerings become interchangeable – or commoditised – and can only compete on price.

To avoid this trap, people are thinking less and less about the product or the service, and more about the complete customer experience – the way our customer perceives his contact with us, and the emotions that the experience invokes. Good experience design can really make your offering stand out from the pack, and command a better price. And with great experience design, you can even turn customers into fans who will keep coming back – and tell their friends.

The importance of good experience design is clear – but how do we ‘do’ it? Luckily for us, there is an industry that is already expert in using perceptions to create emotion (and to make fans). We need only look to the world of show business. From prehistoric storytellers up to Hollywood blockbuster directors, showbiz folk have been engaging our senses to move our hearts for thousands of years. And over the centuries they’ve discovered many tools that can be applied on stage, on screen – or easily adapted to shoe-shops, dental surgeries, websites, hotels…. In short, wherever an experience is designed.

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(via Usability News)