"For successful restaurants, aesthetics is no longer an afterthought. Customers are paying for memories, not just fuel. What's true for restaurants is true across the economy. New economic value increasingly comes from experiences."
So writes Virginia Postrel in a telling article, "The New Trend in Spending," appearing in today's New York Times' "Economic Scene."
Vance Packard wrote about the selling of experience in The Hidden Persuaders, a bestselling screed on advertising's manipulation of emotions published in the 1950s and republished several times since. More recently, Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore's The Experience Economy and Bern Schmitt's Experiential Marketing make a more seasoned case for the same phenomena.
What's significant about the historical moment in which we live is that efforts to sell consumers on "the intangibles" finally seems to be gaining traction. It will dominate design practice and marketing in years to come, as physical commodities become more dear and the cost of creating experiences declines.
According to Postrel, design of experience is squarely in the economic driver's seat, at least so far as consumer spending is concerned. Providing experiences is good business. Here's the rest of Postrel's thesis:
"Americans have not stopped buying stuff, of course. (Indeed, there's a whole industry devoted to organizing our pantry-like closets.) But the marginal value of tangibles versus intangibles has shifted. That many manufactured goods are also getting cheaper only intensifies the trend.
"Products as well as services increasingly distinguish themselves through aesthetics, adding emotional value to practical use. This trend confounds those who equate "quality" with function.
"Hence a recent Dilbert comic strip satirizes a product designer who declares: "Quality is yesterday's news. Today we focus on the emotional impact of the product."
"In fact, the trend toward emotional value is exactly what psychological research would predict. Particularly as incomes rise, people find that additional experiences give them more pleasure than additional possessions."
Image: Caesar's Palace
Hotel Shopping Mall Interior
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
1. Paula Thornton on September 9, 2004 1:30 PM writes...
Vegas is a particularly good place for uncovering fundamental principles for what makes experience design work.
I have a whole 'unwritten' article in my head about the discoveries I uncovered on my last trip there.
One of the pearls I uncovered was what I call the 'sun in my face' theory. The king of experience design in Vegas (although he's wont to recognize himself as such) is Steve Wynne. His properties brought this concept to bear in very strong ways. In walking the strip, does the property have enough of a setback (with corresponding green/water experience) for the sun to strike your face on the strip?
One property that does not is Harrah's. The problem with the Harrah's property is that it is so close to the street that even standing across the street it is so close to you that most of it's visual impact is lost because you can't take it in and it's too visually 'noisy' -- it's too 'old Vegas'. But on the flip side Harrah's has been successful because they know how to work data.
Having a career history in both, I can tell you that both are equally significant for strategic posturing. If Wynne could only learn more about the data perspective from Harrah's, he'd be a lot better off.
Permalink to Comment2. Adam on October 13, 2004 5:12 PM writes...
You get the feeling she *wishes* it were so, and therefore she's gonna assert that it is in fact so.
Hell, I too wish design of experience were squarely in the driver seat. Tell that to United Airlines, American Express, or T-Mobile, though, each of whom by my back-of-bill calculations kept me in voice-mail hell for somewhere between four and ten (!) hours during 2003-2004.
Postrel paints a pretty picture. I wish I could live in it.
Permalink to Comment3. Bob Jacobson on October 18, 2004 5:26 AM writes...
Design of experience is coming on strong, but it isn't responsible for all of the weak experiences we encounter in our day to day lives. The number of practitoners is still relatively small compared to the number of operatives in business whose job (and sometimes agenda) it is to serve the status quo.
Postrel's point is that people are willing to pay for experiences as much or more than they are willing to pay for material objects. Your own comment, Adam, is testimony to the fact that in dealing with three nearly virtual corporate entities (okay, United owns airplanes), you expect a good experience for your time and money.
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