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Our experiences are built on many layers of detail, some of these details are designed to be acknowledged and are there for you to pursue within the experience, while others are so subtle that you may not even be aware of your interaction with them.
In a world where we are bombarded with sensory overload, now more than ever we have to fight for attention, maybe for peoples eyes in attracting customers for our products and services, for new talent or maintaining talent we already have.
Whichever it is, it’s important that the experiences we design stand out. That’s why when it comes to experience design we have to design moments of impact or moments to allow behaviour change.
Our experiences are built on many layers of detail, some of these details are designed to be acknowledged while others are not
The details of our experience design truly matter for this reason, as that's what will separate us from all the other noise.
Your employee and customer experience should all be built in the same space, on the same foundation, with the same amount of focus on detail.
Brands such as Amazon, Zappos, Disney and Costco all have experience built into their DNA. Some have it focused on customers, whilst others have it focused on employees.
The ones that truly stand out and are constantly ahead of the curve in customer satisfaction and employee experience are the organisations that don't separate these experiences but see them as interdependent.
Your employee and customer experience should all be built in the same space, on the same foundation, with the same amount of focus on detail.
It’s important to acknowledge from the start that the moments and touchpoints we design throughout these experiences are layered like an onion.
Layer on layer of specific details to allow these nano moments to shape the overall experience. As we will see below, these nano moments tend to be the most important moments to shape the overall experience that matters from the actor's point of view.
Macro to the Nano
So let's say for the ease of writing this article, those nano moments are different to experiences (they aren't as I see each moment as an experience) but for now, let's acknowledge moments are the building blocks to experiences.
A typical business experience would tend to look like this:
As we can see here
The Macro Experience is the big overall experience - think strategy level.
The Micro Experiences, the breakdown of the macro - think of the interactions in the employee experience.employee experience.
The Nano is all the touchpoints within the Micros sections - ie pre-boarding, day 1 etc.
As we can see, this tends to cascade from the top down. The challenge I have seen here many times is the top-down approach -decision makers are no way near close to the actors and customers.
So how can they design an experience that matters to the actors?
I’m glad you asked - I think I have an answer!
For me, this is where XD and HCD slowly start to blend into one (remember XD is designed from the actor's point of view my definition can be found Here). We need to be as close to the actor/customer as possible and understand their frustrations, worries, and moments of dip.
If we don't understand the wants and needs of our people then the experiences we design tend to be as successful as a chocolate teapot.
The above model shows that these experiences tend to be ones that just never really align to actors/customer and their challenges
What we tend to be left with is more a process rather than a cycle of impactful movements and experiences. As can be expected, the output tends to be one of low customer satisfaction, poor employee experience, and just a general overall weak emotive experience.
The XD approach
How I think we should be designing the experience:
As I mentioned above I will jump into more detail on the Macro, Micro, and Nano in future posts, but I think it's clear to see that the business experience vs the actor's experience is very different and unfortunately opposed to each other.
This approach tends to lead from a bubble up approach and starts from the nano which leads to a much better and actor focused micro which, as you guessed it, leads to a much more actor and customer focused Macro experience.
Using XD to design this Nano to Macro approach will not only create true alignment from customers and employees, but it will also reduce the waste in resources from the organisation.
XD spectrum
The last thing I want to point out is the XD spectrum, as mentioned in my definition XD isn’t limited to the physical or digital, it’s the wrapping of it all via the actor's interactions.
At one end you can have an experience built on many nano moments that simply nudge the actors through various touch points. These can be low cost with moderate impact right through to the other end which is a deeply immersive experience, taking the actor right out of their day to day life and immersed into something highly emotive, but this also tends to come with a nice price tag.
In a world where we are bombarded with sensory overload, now more than ever we have this fight for attention of our customers and talent
All are of massive value and can be shaped into Macro, Micro or Nano experiences, the trick is to understand the cost vs impact and when to use the right experience for the right challenge.
In summary
Design experience from a bubble up approach rather than a top-down
Impactful experiences start in the nano, not the macro
XD is a wide spectrum but all of value to the right challenge
It takes many layers of detail to create an experience but only one bad bit to pull us out
With so much noise if your not designing experience are you even relevant
Create experiences not processes
Published on June 24, 2019 on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-experience-design-heres-why-danny-seals/