TOTAL EXPERIENCE explores designing for experience: its theory, its practice, and how designing for experiences affects us socially and in our personal lives.
YOUR T.E. CO-AUTHORS:
- Bob Jacobson
- Paula Thornton
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(NOTE: While we read all comments, we do not publish anonymous comments.)
About Your Authors
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.
( Archive | Contact Bob )
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior and designing interactions for human expectations are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a Œnice 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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EXPERIENCE DESIGN:
THE METAVERSE....
CALENDAR OF EXPERIENCE DESIGN EVENTS
(Courtesy of Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia SpA, Torino)
Experience Design Websites
Core 77 Website & Forum
Business Week|Innovate
InfoD: Understsanding by Design
The Wayfinding Place
Wayfinding Focus
Design Addict
L-ARCH (Landscape Architecture Mailing List)
DUX 2007 Conference
NetDiver.Net
DesignBoom
Digital Thread
Archinect
Enmeshed, Digital Arts & New Media
Ludology (Game Playing Theory)
Captology, Persuasive Computing
Space and Culture
Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces
timet (acoustical design)
Steve Portigal, Ethnographer
Jane McGonigal's Avant Game
Ted Wells' living : simple
PingMag (Japan)
Experience Design Blogs
Adam Greenfield's Speedbird
Experience Designer Network (Brian Alger)
SmartSpace: Annotated Environments (Scott Smith)
Don Norman
Doors of Perception (John Thackara)
Karl Long's Experience Curve
Work•Play•Experience (Adam Lawrence)
The David Report (David Carlson)
Design & Emotion (Marco van Hout)
Museum 2.0 (Nina Simon)
B J Fogg
Lorenzo Brusci (acoustics)
Cool Town Studios
FutureLab
Steve Portigal
Debbie Millman
MIT Culture Convergence Consortium
Luke Wroblewski, Functioning Form|Interface Design
Adam Richardson
Putting People First (Paul Vanderbeeken/Experientia
Laws of Simplicity (John Maeda)
Challis Hodge's UX Blog
Anne Galloways's Purse Lips Square Jaw
Bruno Giussani's Lunch over IP
Jane McGonigal's Avant-Game
The Future of Work
Experience Design Podcasts
Ted Wells' living : simple Podcast
Design Matters Podcast, Debbie Millman
Icon-o-Cast Podcast, Lunar Design
Experience Design Firms and ED-Oriented Manufacturers
Barry Howard Limited
Hilary Cottam
LRA Worldwide, Inc.
BRC Imagination Arts
Stone Mantel
Experientia s.r.l
Nokia
Herman Miller
Steelcase
IDEO
Cooper Interactive Design
Gensler
Doblin Group
Fitch
Fit Associates
Jump
Strategic Horizons LLC (Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore)
Cheskin Fresh Perspectives
Education and Advocacy
Centre for Design Research, Northumbria University (UK)
Center for Design Research, Stanford University
International Institute of Information Design (IIID)
Design Management Institute
AIGA DUX
Interaction Institute IVREA
Design Research Institute (UK)
UC Berkeley Center for Environmental Design Research
History of Consciousness, UCSC
Design News Magazine
Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD)
Design Museum London
Center for Sustainable Design
Horizon Zero, Digital Arts+Culture in Canada
Design Council UK
First Monday
Total Experience on Technorati
Technorati Profile
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Category Archives
January 21, 2008
Posted by Bob Jacobson
As it does each year at this time, the World Economic Forum is happening in Switzerland, holds its annual intellectual funfest for the high and the mighty. The WEF, a nonprofit institute officially dedicated to “improving the state of the world” -- and funded accordingly -- stages this annual meeting, more commonly known as the “Davos Conference,” for the city where this event takes place. Attending Davos costs tens of thousands of dollars -- and you have to be invited. In evidence are CEOs and investors (first and foremost), political leaders (including Presidents and Prime Ministers), and cultural leaders (ranging from the Pope to Bono). In short, Davos is a temporary global country club, with skiing takes the place of golf or sailing mega-yachts. In WEF's defense, it does host a whole lot of interesting sessions at Davos, with titles that wet one's whistle -- but for the 99.9999999% of us without invitations, they hardly matter. Just a lot of fizz and fizzle.
Davos' theme this year is “The Power of Global Collaboration” (described in a “We Are the World”-like video), in this case as applied to solving the world's problems and not just building better mousetraps or Internet social networks. Bruce Nussbaum, Business Week's Design Editor, sagely reports this week that Davos 2008 is really about three things: officially, innovation as a source of solutions (to what seem to me puny problems, when seen against a backdrop of environmental catastrophe); unofficially, heading off the coming “world economic recession” (which, should it be truly on that scale, will probably rate being called a “depression”), a feat that Davos' PR terms “ensuring growth in 2008”; and most importantly, reaffirming the attendees' co-membership in Davos' exclusive global country club. Side issues that will be discussed, but predictably not solved, will include terrorism, climate change, and water scarcity. How statesmanlike. How safe. How status quo.
What's fascinating to me, and what prompted me to blog about Davos -- which otherwise merits the attention paid to the Cannes Film Festival, which it resembles -- is the juxtaposition of collaborative innovation, a process of management, with world economic recession and a massively messed-up global ecosystem -- graphic testimonials to how badly things have been managed so far and continue to be, Davos notwithstanding. Is collaborative innovation (which I teach) up to solving the world economic crisis? Only if the right conditions for innovation to take place are met.
The first of those conditions is to eliminate all mental constraints at the get-go and allow creativity free reign, at least during the run up to developing concrete solutions. It's important (a) not to set one's future event horizon too short, lest you merely reify the present; and (b) consider every possibility, lest an unexpected solution escape notice. The second of these conditions is to include all stakeholders in the innovation process, and not merely CEOs, political leaders, and Popes.
So how real is the Davos commitment to innovation?
First, what options and alternative are permitted to be discussed at Davos? Is creating and funding a global economic safety net, as the UN has proposed, on the table? What about a more equitable distribution of global wealth? How about rich nations taxing themselves for their disproportionately enormous economic and environmental demands on already terrifically strained physical and social environments, then putting the revenues in a global fund to deal with real global problem-solving? Is unbridled immigration from poor nations to rich an open option? A world government? A universal social democracy? Corporations devoting 25% of their income (not just five percent of their profits) to fighting climate change? Not surprisingly, these options are non-starters at Davos.
Second, who gets to participate? Is the Davos collaborative innovation space full of people including representatives of the global population that this collaborative innovation is out to effect? Are you kidding?
Collaborative innovation, as its described in Davos own PR and as represented by the speakers invited to discuss innovation, looks a lot like innovation talked about in corporate boardrooms, political smoke-filled rooms, and media situation rooms: how to get out a better product, a more compelling service, make people work harder but happier, etc., etc.
Not that global crises are going unnoticed. In addition to many, many niche meetups on the pressing sidebar topics mentioned above (terrorism, water, how we understand our bodies, dealing with global poverty, etc.) which the avant-garde can attend, if you're at Davos you can buy offsets and drive hybrids, thus salving your conscience after traveling first class by air (a huge CO2, ozone-killing activity) and while being waited upon like a modern mogul, eating as perhaps 1% of the world population does regularly, and if you're an expert guest, sit at the feet of economic and political satraps like intellectual court jesters.
(Image: Global Warming, Climate Change, Greenhouse Warning)
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November 19, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine II, Harvard Business School Press, 2007
Authenticity is an ambitious volume by Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine, authors of the 1999 marketing classic, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage. Authenticity is an important, simultaneously prescriptive and cautionary addition to the rapidly growing corpus of literature on experiential marketing. Much of this literature is trivial. This book is first-rate. But also challenging. Despite its business-book style, it's not an easy read: you have to pay attention.
Authenticity, as other reviewers have noted, features an impressive encyclopedic review of corporate attempts to create good experiences for their customers. Gilmore and Pine also proffer copious advice on how to assess a company's current authenticity; the art of “placemaking,” creating unique sites for the expression of authenticity; and most scientifically, how to become measurably authentic. But Authenticity's importance isn't as a how-to book: the more concrete its recommendations, the more speculative they feel. That's because pedagogically, Authenticity is a collection of truly interesting hypotheses, the proofs for which are anecdotal, not scientifically tested theories. (Gilmore and Pine may possess testable data and actual scientific proofs; but if so, they're only accessible to paying clients, a universal problem for consultants touting theoretical insights.)
In their largely observational The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore describe the evolution of product-marketing embodiments in this way:
Commodities -> Goods -> Services -> Experiences -> Transformations
In today's sophisticated business environment, commodities, goods, and services are virtually indistinguishable as competitive offerings. Marketers must now generate experiences by in order to reach customers jaded by too many marketing claims and information overload.
Their message in Authenticity is more directive. Transformations, which bond companies and customers irrevocably, occur only when authenticity -- customer self-identity and the brand experience -- are total. They're beyond intentional design. But at the highest level of manipulable reality, the generation of experiences, the higher the degree of authenticity, as perceived by customers, is the critical differentiating factor in the quality of experiences that companies offer to their customers.
Authenticity, however, is a fluid quality, difficult to acquire and even more difficult to retain. Every situation is unique and requires special treatment. To establish overarching principles and rules, the authors' arguments range far afield, involving quantum physics, existentialism, psychology, heuristics, and architecture and design. Highly complex, these arguments rely on pages of footnotes set in small type (which most business readers will ignore -- but which I found evocative and insightful). It will be tough for most lay persons to apply Authenticity's methods. Which is why this book will probably be more popular among the consultants who are hired to turn its dictates into practice.
It's Authenticity's subtext that's makes it a must-read for everyone else. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, even as clever as Jim and Joe are, they hit a logical wall when they try to make marketing and authenticity compatible -- a project comparable to mixing oil and water. This constant contradiction troubled me from the book's first page to its last. If the authors were writing science fiction, a story requiring the heroes to exceed the speed of light would be fine. But Gilmore and Pine's prescriptions in Authenticity are meant for marketing managers who can barely manage brands, let alone contradictory logical types and confusing syllogisms. (In The Experience Economy, the authors took a simpler line, making their principal argument in considerably fewer pages. I wish they'd done the same in Authenticity.)
For most readers, this book will serve as a significant historical marker in an age of commerce when, as the authors observe, the “real” and the “fake” have become completely transferable, substitutable, and indistinguishable. It's an energetic, intellectual, neo-Aristotelian romp through the land of make-believe concocted by marketers, designers, creative directors, retailers, real estate developers, and by a public only too willing to believe the unbelievable. The authors' argue among themselves as often as they do with the charlatans and mediocre impresarios of experience. Their sincere attempt to come to grips with the authenticity conundrum is moving. Authenticity is a manifesto for our time that can't be ignored.
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September 11, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 
On Monday, I spent 15 hours in the air, the last seven aboard a Boeing 757 “Flying Cattle Car" (perhaps the worst aircraft ever foisted on the traveling public) with a malfunctioning entertainment system. What could compel me to such an act of aerial self-flagellation? The answer: to visit “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen,” capital not only of Denmark but of the larger “Øresund Region”: the Innovation Nation.
Back in the United States and everywhere in the Blogosphere, designers of various ilk are thrashing around with the concepts of innovation, ideation, strategy, and co-creation. The heated conversation has been led most recently by the Interaction Designers, who are having a run of popularity not seen since the onslaught of the Information Architects, whom the Interaction Designers have displaced in the minds of the design critics. (Can the Service Designers be far behind?) Basically, the issue is whether, as Michael Beirut put it in Design Observer, “Innovation is the new Black,” or whether it is a truly historic evolution of conventional design,, the purest evocation of “design thinking” as described by Peter Morville in a classic Semantic Studios blog entry reprinted on NextD, with contextual remaks by G.K. VanPatter ("Unidentical Twins")
 In the Øresund region comprising Greater Copenhagen and Skåne (Malmö, Lund, and other formerly Danish parts of southern Sweden), where two geographies and national cultures have been joined by a beautiful new bridge after 500 years of separation, innovation consulting isn't an issue. It's for real. Not only is innovation consulting considered an accepted design modality, it's gaining the blessing and support of the Danish and Scanian governments and their larger societies. The Danes in particular have invested literally tens of millions of government dollars each year to resurrect their once glorious national brand -- Danish Design -- and they now seem bent on doing the same for the innovation consulting business, where they stand a good chance of actually getting ahead of the curve and leading the global innovation industry.
To be sure, innovation consulting is still a relatively small industry, with total revenues hovering around $1 billion. It's also labor intensive, since its main assets are inspired human minds; operating margins are okay but not great. But because the innovation industry's potential to derail conventional management consulting -- getting in there right at the beginning of every management decision process, and thereby controlling it -- has not gone unnoticed. Recently the Monitor Group, a fast-growing, mid-range management consultancy, bought the Doblin Group, a brand management firm in Chicago that made a big deal of its powers of innovation. It then aligned the Doblin Group with its own internal, organically grown innovation consulting practice. One has the sense that many of the small firms growing up on edges of the management consulting industry have the same goal, since nearly every one now styles itself, in one sense or another, as an innovation-consulting provider.
 To get back to the Øresund. Although the Danish government has spent generously to restore Danish Design's preeminence, in fact the emergence of the innovation consultancies in DK and SE has been organic, not dependent on government spending (except for government's business, when its appropriate). This has caught DK's intensely thorough economic planners by surprise. A hot-off-the-press Danish governmental study and report, Concept Design, published by the Danish Enterprise and Housing Agency, directed by agency planner Jorgen Røsted (and employing many internal and external consultants), describes innovation consulting as "concept design," a tenuous semantic bridge. In this ethnography about ethnography (a primary ingredient of concept design, as the authors define it), Concept Design's authors take the word of their industry informants too literally, without sufficient critical distance. Three case-studies among several presented by their informants as unquestioned successes I know personally to be problematic. Overall, however, most of the report's observations appear accurate. Concept Design meticulously describes what's happening structurally within the budding industry. What it doesn't do is explain how innovators and their clients actually solve problems. Instead, reciting the five steps of concept design -- a process pioneered at SRI Consulting and the Institute for the Future in the 1980s and 1990s -- it describes the crucial step of ideation as "this is where the magic happens." This phrase is somewhat lacking in precision. It mystifies the process rather than revealing it. (A follow-up report, InnovationMonitor 2007, due out at month's end (September 2007), will discuss the "biggest challenges facing innovation in Denmark." Should be exciting.)
So that's why I'm here in Denmark, the per capita national leader (so Concept Design reports) in innovation consulting. For two weeks I'm going to study governmental and private initiatives on both sides of the Øresund. In the process, I hope to be able to accurately characterize what's going on industrially but also in terms of process; what innovation consulting means for the region's economy, culture, and society; and its significance in the world of ideas, including the creation of experience and design thinking.
My first appointment takes place today at the new Copenhagen Institute for Interactive Design (CIID). Then I'll meet with the Danish Venture Capital Association. On Thursday and Friday, I meet with leading consultancies and government design-policymakers on the Danish side of the Øresund. Next week, I'll travel to Skåne, to do the same. My insights and information that can be made public, I'll share with you here.
 For a personal experience of the field's dynamism, II encourage you to attend ECCI X, the Tenth European Conference on Creativity and Innovation, to be held in Copenhagen, October 14-17, 2007, where these issues will be the subject of intense examination and debate. Over 400 leaders in the innovation business, from Scandinavia, the rest of Europe, and around the world are expected to attend. Wish I could join them. Hey, maybe I will...! From Denmark, this is Bob Jacobson saying, "Med venlig hilsen, ciao!"
(Images: Light bulb, Newton.Typepad.com; Øresund Bridge, Malmö)
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May 23, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 If you can't get enough juice about jet planes, then Design News special edition on Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner is right for you! Its a masterful collection of articles, interviews, photo albums, and videos -- enough to keep even the most rabid aerophile enthralled late into the night.
When I was a kid, my Mom, then an executive secretary to Air Force generals, used to bring home photos and illustrations, paeans to flight -- F86s, F101s (the Scorpion!), the F-15, Redstone rockets, Nike missiles, the first satellites, and artist conceptions of Missions to Mars -- with which I papered my bedroom. I've been hooked on aviation ever since. The appearances of the Dreamliner and, eventually one hopes, Airbus' mega-liner, the A380, bring chills to my spine.
But I have an abiding question made more acute by revelations that we've reached Peak Oil: that petroleum production is now all downhill from here. And that question is, where are we going to get fuel for all these big planes? Even assuming that their engines become super-efficient (which they aren't yet), these new benzine-guzzlers are only creating additional demand for which there is no supply.
 Anyone who's visited the airplane boneyard at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, in Arizona, knows what I'm talking about: acre upon acre of old, rusting aircraft, acquired at the cost of many hundreds of billions of dollars, going nowhere and serving no purpose. Is this the future of aviation as we know it? I fear so. So even though I'm thrilled by the announcement of new and better-designed airplanes, there always lingers in the back of my mind a worry that we're all living in a fairy-tale world of cheap and plentiful oil, a world that ended decades ago. Now we're just mopping up what's left of our earth's petroleum heritage with these bigger and better metal birds.
Maybe we'll learn to take solar-powered trains and get around in other sustainable vehicles, but how are our kids going to feel when they're grounded, literally, never to fly as we once did? Like the characters in Ursula LeGuin's novel, Always Coming Home, set 50,000 years in the future, I wonder if only a generation from now our generations will be known as “the people with their heads on backwards,” always living falsely in the past....
(Images: Design News and Archaeography Photo Collective)
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May 21, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Cooper-Hewitt, the National Museum of Design at the Smithsonian Institution, has announced the National Design Awards for 2007.
Without taking away anything from the wonderful designs and their designers, whom Cooper-Hewitt has justly honored, it's still rather amazing that all of the awards are for discrete physical, environmental, or media artifacts. There is no category for design that incorporates all of these elements to create an holistic designed experience. This year's awards reify our conventional notions of design and ignore the emergence and importance of integrated design in the service of experience.
The Design Mind Award for Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi comes closest. Brown and Venturi, practitioners and theoreticians of full-fledged experience design (in the guise of architecture) have labored long and hard to promote an holistic approach to design from the standpoint of “experiencers.” Cooper-Hewitt's appreciation of their advocacy is overdue but welcome at last.
The National Design Awards, by the way, are sponsored by the retailer Target, one of the arch-proponents of customer experience design. Target's take on the importance of holistic design is worth reading.
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May 4, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 I received the following email today from Jane McGonigal, the reigning Queen of In-the-World Game-Based Experiences, now Game Designer at the Institute for the Future. It describes “World Without Oil,” a new alternative-reality game that responds to a very real crisis in our world: Peak Oil, the eventual running out of petroleum in our lifetimes. Get ready for the crisis: follow Jane's instructions. You're in for an entertaining and educational, but excruciatingly real experience -- and one that unfortunately, in the future, will not be a game to play but the reality in which we live...
I have some exciting news: Earlier this week, World Without Oil launched. It’s the first alternate reality game to address a real-world problem: U.S. oil dependency. The official motto: “Play it – before you live it.” And you can play right now!
It takes literally less than 30 seconds to sign up as a game hero. I hope you’ll go sign up right now! Here’s the link.
(Signing up just gives you a unique identity in the alternate reality. It means the game will know who you are if you come back and play. Unlike other ARGs, the game won’t start emailing you or burying things in your backyard.)
Once you’re signed up, there’s lots of fun stuff to check out. The game launched on Monday, and already there are hundreds of player created documents to browse—-not to mention the official “backstory” created by the game’s puppet masters. The latest game updates include video footage of an underground car vandalism effort, instructions for how to throw fuel-free parties, and an eyebrow-raising transcript of the new Secretary of State’s address to the nation.
But most importantly – please take 1 minute today to sign up to play and help make this experimental game project a success!
More information about the project below; email me if you want to hear more.
Best,
Jane McGonigal
Resident Game Designer, Institute for the Future
www.avantgame.com
This press release explains the game:
First Alternate Reality Game To Confront A Major Social Issue: A Worldwide Oil Shock
All Web Users Invited to Witness the Oil Shock, Document Their Experiences, Apply Collective Imagination to Solve a Real World Problem
“Play it – before you live it!”
(San Francisco, CA)—Everyone knows that “someday” the world may face an oil shortage. What if that day was sooner than you thought? How would your life change? On Monday, April 30, ITVS Interactive and Independent Lens will launch WORLD WITHOUT OIL, a live interactive month-long alternate reality event to explore this very real possibility.
Produced by the design team at Writerguy, WORLD WITHOUT OIL is the first alternate reality game to enlist the Internet’s vast collective intelligence and imagination to confront and attempt to solve a real-world problem: what happens when a great economy built entirely on cheap oil begins to run short? This grassroots experience looks at the impact on people's lives—work, social, family and personal—and explores what happens when our thirst for oil begins to exceed supply.
“Alternate reality gaming is emerging as the way for the world to imagine and engineer a best-case-scenario future,” says WORLD WITHOUT OIL’s participation architect, noted futurist Jane McGonigal. “It’s been summed up this way: ‘If you want to change the future, play with it first.’”
Beginning April 30, the nerve center for the realistic oil crisis is at WorldWithoutOil.org, with links to citizen stories in blogs, videos, photos, audio and phone messages posted all over the Internet. At the grassroots website, people will learn the broad brushstrokes of the crisis, such as the current price of a gallon of gas or how widespread shortages are. Players will fill in the details, by creating Web documents that express their own perspectives from within the crisis.
“The ‘alternate reality’ of WORLD WITHOUT OIL is not fantasy, it’s a very real possibility,” says Writerguy Creative Director Ken Eklund. “And the game challenge is one of imagination. No one person or small group can hope to figure out the complex rippling effects of an oil shock, but the collective imagination can. And understanding it is a serious, positive step toward preventing it.”
People of any age or Web ability can participate in the game. Player communities are already forming to prepare for game launch, and pre-game play has started. Use these links:
WORLD WITHOUT OIL is produced by the Writerguy team, presented by ITVS Interactive (Independent Television Service), and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. An Independent Lens Web-exclusive presentation (PBS), WORLD WITHOUT OIL is an ELECTRIC SHADOWS project (ITVS).
About the Game Creators
The Writerguy team includes some of alternate reality gaming's most experienced “puppetmasters” in addition to a Web producer, designer and outreach manager. Ken Eklund, Writerguy and creative director, has been working as a game writer and designer for 20 years. He is credited on over two dozen games as well as many Internet-based educational projects. Jane McGonigal, participation architect, is currently the resident game designer at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA. Previously she was a lead designer at 42 Entertainment, most notably for I Love Bees, an award-winning alternate reality game. In Fall 2006 MIT Technology Review named McGonigal one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology.
Electric Shadows and Independent Lens Web-Exclusives
Independent Lens presents interactive features throughout the series website and is proud to be a portal to Electric Shadows projects which feature the unflinching visions of independent media makers via the Web. These award-winning Web-originals invite visitors to interact through non-linear storytelling and social issue games created by independent media makers. Presented by Independent Lens and ITVS Interactive and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Electric Shadows sites explore the arts, culture and society through innovative forms including nonlinear storytelling and interactive gameplay and meet the ITVS mission of giving voice to underserved communities. Since its inception in 2002, the initiative has funded six online projects. Electric Shadows projects have garnered a People’s Choice Webby Award, two SXSW Web Awards, highlighted as one of Time.com’s “50 Coolest Websites”, Yahoo! Picks, Cool Site of the Day and numerous other accolades. Explore the projects and learn more about Electric Shadows.
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April 22, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 An April 20 press release announcing the transformation of former web portal CRMGuru.com to CustomerThink.com is one more signal that customer centricity (i.e., design for experience) is fast becoming the defining factor in state-of-the-art marketing.
According to portal founder and CEO Bob Thompson,
The time was ripe for change. Although the term “CRM” has been a popular buzzword for more than a decade, and theoretically means a business strategy, it has taken on a technology slant in the market that appears unlikely to ever change. We wanted people to know that we address the complete realm of customer management thinking, not just IT. While technology is an important enabling tool, and essential for managing customer information, it's only a portion of our mission.
In Thompson's viewpoint (quoting from the release), CRM includes customer strategy; goals and metrics; people and organization; process and experience design; and technology. Yet, much of the market doesn't agree with that view in practice. He cites technology-laden CRM definitions on the Internet, and his own research which found many people consider Customer Experience Management to be different from CRM.
 Adds Colin Shaw, a member of CT.com's “Guru” advisory panel, and founder and CEO of customer experience consultancy Beyond Philosophy,
What do you mean by CRM?' It's a question I often hear. The reality is the world is moving on, and I am pleased to see that Bob and the team are leading the way. The whole spectrum of customer management is much wider than the commonly held view that CRM equals technology. CustomerThink encapsulates what customers do!
The difficulty is valorizing CEM. It's easy to devise an ROI for investments in technology, even if the calculation is flawed or only partially explanatory. The proliferation of CRM vendors and the remarkable success of Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce testify to the persuasive power of numbers. But as metrics for measuring customer-centricity's power become available, it rather than the accessibility of surface-level customer data will become a dominant paradigm, supporting new approaches like customer co-creation of products and communications.
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March 29, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
The last three weeks have been hectic, a perfect storm of convergent deadlines. Four projects that have been germinating more than six months (one of them, for two years), plus a couple consulting opportunities, finally erupted, ripping me away from Total Experience. Now I'm back, with lots of catching up to do....
  By far the largest of the projects, in sheer scope and size, is planning for the US Pavilion at the forthcoming Shanghai 2010 World Expo, possibly the most important and certainly the grandest World Expo since the New York World's Fair, in 1964. Nearly 200 nations and NGOs are expected to participate -- in other words, the whole world. The Chinese and Shanghai governments are pouring nearly $4 billion into developing the Expo, and that doesn't include new maglev train lines, a new airport, new docks, new traffic metering systems, a regional 4G wireless system, untold amounts of commercial and residential construction, and the wholesale relocation of entire neighborhoods from what will soon become a highly congested area to new communities elsewhere in Shanghai. It does include $100 million in subsidies for developing nations. Over 70 million visitors are expected to visit the Expo between May and October 2010, just two years after the Beijing Olympics. There's a not-so-subtle competition between the two cities: one is China's political capital, the other its economic capital. This Expo means a lot to China, but even more to Shanghai and the rest of the industrial South. The Expo's theme is “Better City, Better Life,” which translates into progressive urbanism and lively communities, a healthy and stable environment, “green tech” and a sustainable economy, and a higher quality of life for everyone. This is the first Expo to take on such a global theme, and one so timely. The US Pavilion will have a lot of important storytelling to do.
 Toward that end, the BH&L Group, an impromptu consortium of Expo veterans -- world-class designers, architects, and builders -- has gathered, led by legendary Expo designers Barry Howard and Leonard Levitan, and I'm a member (but only an Expo apprentice). The BH&L Group's noble purpose is to create a great US Pavilion for Shanghai, one that speaks eloquently of the American people's desire, in common with the other peoples of the world, for better urban environments, globally, and better lives in them. We submitted our Proposal to the US State Department in February, as required by a November 2006 RFP from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). One of the Proposal's most creative innovations is the prospective creation of an "Expo corporation" in which any American can invest, an entity with longevity that can acquire assets to fund not just this Expo -- to the tune of $100 million -- but also, Expo's to come. We hope we get the nod; we're still waiting to hear. In the meantime, I'm continuing to build BH&L's Advisory Board. The Board already boasts an impressive collection of experts to help us grapple with the Expo's theme, the Pavilion's design, and China's cultural and international trade issues. But I keep searching for potential new members. We're going to rely a lot on our Advisors once things really get rolling!
 In the process, I meet interesting people. An interesting person I met today is Nina Simon, author of the excellent Museum 2.0 blog, subtitled, “From visitors to users. From artifacts to social networks. What's good, what's bad, what's possible?” Nina is one of the principal designers for "Operation Spy," a new attraction -- and quite an experience -- soon to open in this, the "Year of the Spy," at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Founded in 2001, the Spy Museum offers a fascinating exposition -- or should I say, exposé? -- of the international spy business. It's “Spy vs. Spy" all over again, only this time for real. The Spy Museum investigates how intelligence communities are formed, the trade's startling technical evolution, and the confounding social issues associated with covert activities. The Spy Museum's website is a virtual embodiment of the Museum, clever, mysterious, and highly interactive. Nina describes "Operation Spy" in an email:
 I'm the project lead for Operation Spy, a 3,800 sq ft new immersion experience that is set to open at the Spy Museum in June of this year. I'm the “experience development specialist,” which means I was the creative director, and now have slid into managing the construction and build-out. It's a really unique museum experience --a narrative, guided immersive mission in a highly-themed environment. Guests will enter in small groups and spend an hour trying to find a missing nuclear device in a (fictitious) foreign country. There are motion simulators, safes to crack, and agents to polygraph. There are branching endings that reflect the guests' actions and decisions throughout. It's been a blast to design and I'm enjoying watching it come together ... hopefully these last few months will send it out into the world with a bang!
So when a shady eye peers at you through the Museum peephole, and a raspy voice inquires, “Psst...who sent you?” you'll know what to reply: “Nina sent me.” Then the eye will draw back, the door will creak open, and the raspy voice will whisper, "Enter...Operation Spy." (I think I'm channeling Edgar Allen Poe.)
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March 16, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Earlier, I posted an invitation to readers, to make me aware of exemplary experience design projects for possible inclusion in my book-in-progress.
I forgot to add an important category:
• Pageants, Festivals, Rituals, and Spiritual Places and Experiences
Please keep this one in mind, as these phenomena are often the most intense expressions of intentional design for experience. Thank you, and special thanks to those of you who've already submitted very interesting prospective cases. I'll review them and get back to you over the weekend.
(Illustration: Festivals in India)
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March 15, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 On my end of year list of recommended gift books about experience design, I included the fabulous Atlas of Experience, by Dutch cartographer-philosophers, Jean Klare and Louise van Swaaij. I thought it incomparable. But now it has friendly competition: Strange Maps, a remarkable blog
The Atlas of Experience is a beautifully illustrated collection of maps and text depicting, as places and features on an fantasy globe, states of mind -- Elation, Panic, Loneliness, the Swamps of Sloth, and The Long Road Home. It shares my reference shelf with a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a traditional atlas of the world.
 “Strange Maps,” on the other hand, features fantastic maps of our real globe -- truly strange maps. The blog first appeared in late 2006. Its author, not identified on the blog, has assembled an outstanding collection of strange maps from different times and geographies (including our own), and keeps discovering more. The editorial notes that accompany each map are informative and warmly written.
It's difficult to convey in words the magic of these strange maps and how addled, propagandistic, mistaken, or clever each one is. Reading Strange Maps, one comes to appreciate the ingenuity, craziness, or both of simple people trying to portray the complex worlds in which they live and often revealing more about themselves, their cultures, and their times than their actual environs.
Sometimes, however, it's not the cartographer who's off-axis, it's the geospatial “reality” that a strange map portrays: bizarre realpoliticks, theological mythology, empires that endure only days, territories claimed by multiple nations, and especially the virtues of regions as proclaimed by their inhabitants -- and the evils of surrounding people and places.
How strange the maps of our time will seem to future geographers. Given the obvious ecological interdependence of all systems on our planet, the arbitrary divisions known as cities, nations, regions, and other human constructs may seem extremely odd. Ursula Le Guin put it well in her portrait of a future, re-ruralized California, Always Coming Home: they are places in an historical epoch when the “people-with-their-heads-on-backwards” lived.
The atlases of our interior selves and of our geography co-exist and intermingle, each equally real and fantastic.
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March 12, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 As I wrote earlier, I'm working up a book about experience design -- also called, “designing for experience.” I met with my publisher and it looks like a go. As cases that can be featured in the book, I welcome your suggestions of exemplary experience design, applied to the following:
- Architecture and urban designs (intended to produce identifiable experiential outcomes)
- Cross-media environments (e.g., so-called “real-world games” employing various media )
- Customer experiences (processes as well as physical artifacts)
- Exhibitions, museums, and learning centers
- Experiences for education
- Experiences for entertainment
- Games and simulations (in the “real world,” not just on-screen)
- Haptic environments (acoustic, tactile, scent, motion, etc.)
- Immersive environments (virtual and physical)
- Integrated marketing (synergistic scored experiences)
- Landscape architecture and interpretive environments
- Longiitudinal experiences (single or multiple related experiences that occur over time)
- Themed attractions, theme parks, and themed destinations
- Workplaces and “third places” (places that are social, apart from the workplace and home)
These categories overlap. It doesn't matter at this time precisely into which category a case falls, or whether it's for a client or experimental. Also, if you have an example of experience design that doesn't fit within the categories, send it along anyway. Our field is growing like Topsy: there are always new expressions and formats. Also, I'm interested in instances where research methodologies, like usability and ethnography; and application methodologies, like interaction design, wayfinding, and corporate narrative, have contributed to successful experience designs.
As for the much-debated “user experience,” I'm interested in on-screen presentations and discrete products if they were integral parts of more complex experiences (for example, integrated media campaigns, the interior of a vehicle, or exhibitions).
Please be sure to include with each case suggestion a point of contact (email and phone if you have them). The POC should be an individual associated with the case project, with whom I can arrange the case's submission for review. Send your suggestions to my Gmail address, please. Please include in the Subject Line, “Experience Case:” and the case's working name. I'd appreciate it also if you'd share this invitation with your friends and, if you're a blog author, your readers. Thank you!
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March 7, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
Sometimes good experiences get taken for granted. Here are two projects that deserve commendation.
 The US Passport Office has issued a new passport dubbed the e-Passport. It's an unfortunate name, because it puts the focus on the passport's inclusion of an RFID chip and not the excellent look-and-feel of the passport itself, which is what most impressed me and will impress most passport holders. The RFID chip has drawn a lot of controversy. It's supposed to make it easier to screen returning Americans and more difficult to counterfeit by ne'er-do-wells (as always, terrorists come first to mind, followed closely by drug dealers and gun runners) -- and already, the chip's own vulnerability to cloning has been demonstrated. But that's not what got my attention.
What got my attention, however, was the e-Passport's excellent graphic design (Flash version) and textual contents of the e-Passport. Yes, textual content. In the past, US passports have been uninspiring examples of bureaucracy-speak -- don't get in trouble, don't volunteer to serve in foreign militaries, don't import cigars from Cuba, etc. -- hardly the stuff to instill pride in Americans overseas. The e-Passport is different. It feature beautifully rendered two-page portraits of American landscapes coast to coast. (Pictures of actual Americans, glorious in their diversity, would have been equally welcome; but what can you expect from a nation that still adorns its drab currency with pictures of old white men, dead now for centuries?) The multicolored engravings are complemented by inspiring quotations on every page. And not just patriotic cant. One quote that will stay with me forever, now that I've seen read it in my daughter's new e-Passport, is Dwight Eisenhower's sage advice:
"Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America."
Whether jaded border guards and customs officers in foreign nations will appreciate the beauty of the e-Passport, whose pages they will besmirch with their inky stamps, is unimportant. What is important is that Americans, now traveling overseas in record numbers, can proudly display their passports to friends, family, and business colleagues and so help to tell an American story -- an idealized story, but one to which we can aspire. And the e-Passport, in addition to the standard English and French diplomatic greetings to foreign readers, finally includes one in Spanish: “El Secretario de Estado Unidos de America....” It's about time. Kudos to the anonymous civil servants who put this together.
 Of purely domestic importance but ubiquitous and collectively beneficial is Folger Coffee's new HDPE coffee cannister. This is an easy to handle, air-tight canister that allegedly keeps coffee fresh longer than conventional coffee in metal cans and hard-to-reseal plastic bags. It features a “peel-away” AromaSeal with a built-in air valve (which critics have attacked as being essentially useless, but that's another story). The main benefit of the canister is that it's ergonomically convenient, unbreakable, rust-proof, and recyclable. It even won an award from the Arthritis Foundation for its ease of use. Lastly, the canister's bright color is useful early in the morning when you're too bleary-eyed and grappling for that first cup of coffee (as I can testify). Kudos to P&G for this good idea that could have been mundane but which isn't, and which can be experienced and enjoyed on a daily basis.
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January 10, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Harry Shearer on “Le Show” (a highly recommended alternative radio program) brought to my attention the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) plan to offer advertisers a chance to assault a captive audience -- travelers waiting to be screened for airline flights -- with more marketing gook. The plan is described in full on Aviation Week's Commmercial Aviation website:
“TSA plans to launch a one-year pilot program where airport operators may enter into an agreement with vendors, who will provide divestiture bins, divestiture and composure tables, and metal-free bin return carts at no cost to TSA,” said spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. “In return for the equipment, TSA will allow airport operator-approved advertisements to be displayed on the bottom of the inside of the bins.”
(“Composure tables,” as Shearer wryly notes, are those metal slabs where TSA agents -- beneficiaries of the Bush Administration's main “make-work” policy -- dump out your personal belongings and sort through them if you trigger one of the metal detectors. Composure is one thing the TSA does not offer its unlucky victims.)
 SecurityPoint Media supplies the ad-festooned security devices. This fascinating company puts a smiling face on social despair, in the form of advertising revenues. It calls the program “A Better Checkpoint Experience.”
Talk about government welfare! Now airport administrators and advertisers can benefit by the long compulsory wait that everyone is subjected to when they want to fly, whether to Baghdad or Baltimore. The program is one more of the commercial benefits made possible by the campaign of fear-mongering that's been the mainstay of this Administration's political marketing.
So far, reports Forbes, Rolodex is the only advertiser to have signed up for the program, being beta-tested at LAX:
For the advertisers, the program is a chance to reach a wealthy demographic: Frequent flyers. According to a 2004 study of frequent flyers by market research company Arbitron, airline travelers are 80% more likely to have an annual household income over $100,000. They're also more often household or business decision makers.
“It fits well with the Rolodex position of clean and organized,” says Doug Kruep, the company's director of brand development office solutions.
TSA claims that the program has saved $250,000 in the six months it's been running, Probably just a drop in the TSA's overflowing welfare bucket. Airports want to get in on the largesse too, of course, reports Forbes:
Airports believe ads will equal profits. “We are always looking for creative ways to increase nonairlines revenue to help us keep our operating costs down,” said Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Wendy Abrams.
I always thought advertising on buses was an outrageous expression of agency greed. But bus advertising pales in chutzpah before the coming security checkpoint onslaught. TSA is holding an "Industry Day" tomorrw, on January 11, at its headquarters in Arlington, VA, for those interested in participating in the program.
Of course, billions have been wasted already on thousands of unimpressive attempts to make Fortress America a safer place, but most have been invisible. This one is right out there for all of the flying public to experience. What will be the reaction? A lot of grumbling, for sure, but maybe, just maybe, an upwelling of angry public opinion that refocuses Americans' consciousness on how 9/11 has been exploited to make money for commercial interests. I can think of few government enterprises less crass than this one.
I wrote earlier about the yucky experience of waiting in line at Albertsons supermarkets having to endure the ridiculous Avenu advertising videos. Most commenters agreed. Apparently the TSA has taken a cue from Albertsons and is going it one better. You can always shop somewhere else, but if you're going to fly, you're going to endure the TSA-hosted advertising, damn it!
What's your take? Are you looking forward to more force-fed marketing messages? Or will you take the train instead?
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November 26, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 IDEO has broken ground in service design with “ZEST,” a new vacation offering from Mahindra Holidays & Resorts Ltd., a Chennai, India-based membership-travel service featuring the Club Mahindra brand.
A November 15, 2006, Club Mahindra press release describes ZEST as...
 ...A unique vacation ownership for short breaks. ZEST is the ideal short break holiday for the ambitious, hardworking, achieving but stressed young metropolitans.
Designed after extensive research by IDEO, the world's leading consumer experience design firm,ZEST short breaks offer a unique work-life balance proposition to the young metropolitan to head out of the city and catch up with life. Located in places where nature's bounty is in abundance, the ZEST resort's service design caters to a variety of needs - rest and relaxation, family bonding and quality time for couples, socializing and networking, outdoor and adventure activities. Exclusive resort activities include “ZEST Flair Badges” that involve varied and youthful activities such as wine tasting, do your own barbeques, salsa dancing and for the outdoors person treks, biking, camping, and campfires.
ZEST resorts will be unique in that they cater to a “my kind of break” -- a holiday “the way I like it, when I like it, and at the pace I like it to be.”
Minimalist but superbly coordinated spacious rooms at the ZEST resorts are designed for the young metropolitan families and can accommodate two adults and two young children with ease. The resort architecture will include vibrancy, youthfulness and serene relaxed settings. The company also plans to have ZEST Rovers, holiday activity specialists, at its resorts, who would actively engage with members to make their holidays memorable.
Resorts will provide a platform for its guests to have a hands on experience of the people, culture and traditions specific to its area of location. ZEST resorts will also offer child friendly facilities, facilitating quality time for couples with young children.
The company is planning ZEST resorts at destinations that are easily accessible from metro cities. Priced attractively, a ZEST membership offers multiple breaks every year, for 10 years. ZEST resorts will offer a choice of three holiday seasons. The ZEST signature resort is underway at Pondicherry, slated to open its doors in 2007. Resorts at Ooty and Kodai will be ready to offer the ZEST experience by year's end, 2006.
Interestingly, Club Mahindra describes IDEO, better known for its product and innovation design, as a “customer experience design” firm. I guess it is now.
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November 25, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 BRC Imagination Arts, a paragon among visual and experiential exhibition designers, has announced the opening of a new attraction at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, “Shoot for the Moon.” It's a rich experience that showcases BRC's new slogan, “Showmanship Meets Scholarship”TM. BRC's press release describes “Shoot for the Moon,” which includes an interactive theater, interactive displays, galleries of videos and photography, and a collection of artifacts that illustrate “stories told through the firsthand experiences of Captain James A. Lovell, Jr., the Gemini and Apollo astronaut best known for the leadership role he played in transforming the Apollo 13 accident into one of the most successful missions of all time.” BRC describes this as one of its “experience museums,” a 21st-Century approach to presenting educational information.
 Separately, BRC announced that its founder, Bob Rogers, has been awarded the THEA Award for Lifetime Accomplishment by TEA, the non-profit, international organization representing the creators of compelling places and experiences. Rogers joins a remarkable group of previous Lifetime Achievement recipients, experience designers including Harrison “Buzz” Price (1994), the economic feasibility science inventor of the themed entertainment industry; Marty Sklar (1995), the creative head of Walt Disney Imagineering for a quarter century; John Hench (1998), Walt Disney Imagineer and master art director for 65 years; and Yves Pépin (2005), creator of world expositions, special events, and international event spectaculars including the Millennium firework celebration at the Eiffel Tower. (More about TEA in a future entry.)
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November 9, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 GlaxoSmithKline's Aquafresh toothpaste comes in five varieties for as many types of toothpaste consumers (identified by GSM's marketing). Its recent sales success, rising from No. 3 to at least No. 2 among the top contenders (Colgate Palmolive's Colgate and Proctor & Gamble's Crest) -- makes for good press. Aquafresh has been written up in FastCompany, trade magazines, and market research reports. Hub magazine's blog features a lengthy interview with GSM VP of Innovation Donna J. Sturgess (available as a PDF file), in which Ms. Sturgess describes a thorough -- and expensive -- development process that resulted not only in the toothpaste (including novel foaming and color agents used in its composition) but also its packaging, positioning, promotion, and after-sales reinforcement. Most toothpaste is boring, Ms. Sturgess observed. “There was an opportunity to to appeal to people based on the brand's sensory attributes.” “People” meaning mostly women, to whom Aquafresh is pitched as a cosmetic, “a shower for your mouth,” not a personal-hygiene product. The Aquafresh website was redesigned, too, but I'm not linking you to it because it uses Flash in a most uncomfortable way that makes you wait and wait, while your processor is tied up translating.
What caught my attention about Aquafresh was its Extreme Clean version's sublogo, “Original Experience.” My partner, Cherie, likes Aquafresh because it claims to whiten teeth and freshen breath. Finding myself one day without toothpaste, I gave Extreme Clean a try. It cleaned my teeth well. Maybe it freshened my breath. But I'm still trying to discover what about it is an Original Experience. To me, it's just another odd-smelling, odd-tasting mix of chemicals. The German-designed twist-shut cap is nifty (and retro) and the tube is made of shiny silver plastic...but these don't really improve the toothbrushing experience, unless your obsessive-compulsive about toothpaste ooze. What exactly can GlaxoSmithKline say about itself that makes me feel warm and cozy? It's just another cosmeceutical conglomerate. Buy its product and its shareholders get rich. All in all, I found Aquafresh to be a very unoriginal experience. Except for all that development spending and marketing!
I'm a Tom's of Maine natural toothpaste user, not attracted to commercial toothpastes with their undisclosed melange of ingredients (almost always including saccharin or some other sugar substitute, and all of those Aquafreshesque industrial coloring agents). Toms' toothpastes' tastes and aromas are subtle. Tom's lists all of its ingredients, informs us of their organic sources, tells us that they're not tested on animals, offers flouride and non-flouride varieties, and provides a recyclable metal tube. It also manufacturers its boxes from recycled paper, printed using biodegradable soy inks. Taken together, those factors make for a very original experience. Just as importantly, when I buy Tom's, I'm invited to join a community. Tom's includes with its products various newsletters that bio its customers and describe the company's enlightened manufacturing, employment, and philanthropic practices. I'm encouraged to offer feedback not only on the product's quality, but also on the company's operations and extra-curricular activities. Tom's provides its buyers with a lot of collateral meanings, identities, and satisfactions. Tom's toothpaste (like its other cosmetic products) is pricier than conventional toothpastes (including Aquafresh) and it has a harder time getting shelf space. But I hunt down Tom's products with a vengeance, almost never buying anything else. When I use Tom's, I feel good -- emotionally, knowing I'm taking care with what I'm ingesting; and spiritually for supporting Tom's positive engagement in the world.
Oh, and about those five types of toothpaste consumers to which GSM allegedly pitches Aquafresh? Maybe they exist. I don't see buyers pondering the varieties when they shop, however. They just pick what's available. What I do know is that GSM, matched against Colgate Palmolive and P&G, is a victor in the shelf-space wars, commonly won by buying off the retailer with a larger share of revenues. In the rough-and-tumble world of supermarketing, that's what really counts. And why I have to hunt for my Tom's!
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November 8, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Planetizen (plan-NET'-a-zen) is the leading online, public-interest portal and information exchange for the urban planning, design, and development community. It's a one-stop source for urban-planning news, commentary, announcements, book reviews, jobs, events, and more. Community operated, Planetizen was created as a public service for the planning community by Los Angeles-based Urban Insight, a pioneering provider of Web sites and net services for public agencies and non-profits (as well as commercial clients).
Planetizen has now partnered with Smart City Radio to produce a monthly audio segment airing on public radio stations around the country.
Hosted by Carol Coletta, President and CEO of “CEOs for Cities,” Smart City Radio is a weekly, hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life. The new audio segments, which provide a summary and analysis of the most interesting and intriguing planning-related stories featured on Planetizen, are also available online as a Planetizen podcast. You can listen to the latest episode on the Smart City Radio website or download the latest Planetizen podcast.
“The built environment and place making are such an integral part of any city's DNA, and Planetizen is the premier source for the latest news on planning, design and development,” said Coletta. “It makes sense for our organizations to work together to bring Smart City Radio listeners the best information on what so clearly affects the future of our cities.”
For more information on Planetizen, contact Christian Peralta, Managing Editor.
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September 27, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
One of the most enduring problems in experience design is how to ensure that products designed for efficiency and production economy still provide the requisite degree of personal comfort for those who use them. A case in point concerns the airline industry, which through trial and error has come to the conclusion that future airliners must offer comfort greater than is currently the case. Airline travelers will agree.
  In the md-90s, a design trend favoring jumbo and “superjumbo” aircraft became dominant in response to airline and air-traffic efficiency concerns. One result is the Airbus A-380. Able to carry between 550 and 800 passengers, this four-engine, double-deck superjumbo airliner stretches the limits of conventional airliner parameters. Passenger comfort is assured (Airbus claims) by resorting to time-tested factors: interior layouts and appointments, seating sizes and arrangements, adequate cabin pressurization and air circulation, colors and textures of materials, ease of movement (including evacuation), passengers services (including meals), well-trained flight attendants, and in-flight communications and entertainment.
The A-380 is essentially a scaled-up conventional airliner, albeit a leap for manufacturers and airlines alike. Its paradigm is the same that was used by Dutch airplane designer Frederick Koolhoven to design the first commercial airliner in 1919: engine, fuselage, landing gear, wings, tail, and adjustable flight surfaces, with the passengers sitting in a cabin behind the cockpit. All very linear.
Airbus, testing early passenger acceptance of the A-380, reports that it
...went to huge lengths to find out what passengers themselves wanted. Vast cabin mock-ups were taken to eight major cities on three continents and the views of 1,200 frequent travellers – male and female and from a range of cultures and nationalities – were listened to.
This typical prototyping practice (described in IDEO's downloadable paper, Experience Prototyping (PDF)) produced no surprises, just a very nice, conventional -- though somewhat splashy -- interior design. No doubt, flying First Class among 500 passengers will be a different experience from flying Economy among 800. (That is, when Airbus gets around to delivering the A-380. Aviation history's only superjumbo is over a year late due to manufacturing challenges.)
 Reacting to the A-380's early announcements, Boeing Commercial Airplanes began a daring experiment to create a non-conventional airliner based on the radical “flying wing” paradigm. Flying wings have enormous lift and carrying capacity, but inherently are difficult to fly and thus more suited to high-stakes military applications (like the B-2 Stealth Bomber) than commercial air travel. Boeing, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force in the late-90s embarked on a plan to introduce a new paradigm, the “blended-wing” aircraft (BWA) combining the flying wing's cargo-carrying efficiency with traditional aircrafts' ease of control. “How Flying Wings Will Work,” in HowStuffWorks.com, describes these advantages. Like the A-380, the Boeing superjumbo would carry up to 800 passengers, but it would do away with the typical fuselage and place the passengers in the center of the aircraft, enclosed within the wing. This design is clearly depicted in an article on The Wing Is The Thing. As for passenger comfort, Boeing relied on the tried and true factors: color, texture, and spaciousness, as described in a Boeing article, “The Psychology of Comfort in Airplane Interiors.”
 Everything went swimmingly until passengers were confronted with mockups of the BWA interior. (This may have happened at the Teague Customer Experience Center operated by Boeing's Seattle-based design partner, Walter Dorman Teague & Associates.) According to sketchy reports (the only ones available to the public), the passengers revolted. Besides the auditorium seating, passengers resented the lack of windows to see outside. No matter that windows on conventional aircraft are barely useful when a plane is in flight (especially at high altitudes, at night, and in inclement weather). Passengers wanted to be able to see “out.” In a recent article, “The Sky's The Limit,” The Economist reported:
Boeing once toyed with a blended wing-body, a sort of flying wing, to produce dramatically better aerodynamics and fuel efficiency. Passengers would have sat in a wide cabin, rather like a small amphitheatre. But tests with a mock-up produced such a negative reaction that the company dropped the technology, except for military refuelling aircraft.
 Someone at Boeing must have known about passengers' vision fetish, because when airliner windows first shrank with the introduction of jets (larger windows being difficult to seat and seal in highly pressurized environments, not to mention being more fragile), means were employed to make smaller windows appear larger. These include the curving interior “frames,” lighting, and even dual windows with the window on the inside being larger than the actual exterior window. (Today, we take these features for granted and hardly notice them, except when we have to twist and turn to see the Grand Canyon or Eiffel Tower below.) Boeing apparently tried to fix thi |
