TOTAL EXPERIENCE explores designing for experience: its theory, its practice, and how designing for experiences affects us socially and in our personal lives.
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.
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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."
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My original title for this was "Changing the Rules", but then I saw the broader beauty of what's being done here.
Start with a good recipe:
Find an experience people complain about...a lot.
[Get your ideas from the 'joke butts' of the late night talk show hosts.]
Find a way to make it better.
You'll not only get their attention...
(which is the 'best' you'll achieve with a multi-million dollar 30 second spot at the SuperBowl)
...you'll have immersed them in an experience that they'll appreciate, and remember.
Who better than a leader in recipes to figure this out: Kraft Foods
Here's their recipe:
Don't just advertise your product,
immerse people in it,
while they're captive'
and you really have their attention.
Provide free food on airline flights,
where they'll think anything tastes better.
And 'free' is a great sauce...