Design experiences, not products
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“My pleasure.”
There’s no better feeling than hearing these words after ordering a 12-count chicken nugget meal with a lemonade from Chick-fil-A. It’s the thing that differentiates them from every other fast-food restaurant on the planet: the experience.
In 1998, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore wrote a book explaining this exact phenomenon. They called it the “experience economy”. This concept is best explained as prioritizing and creating a personal, emotional experience over simply providing a good or service.
Running a successful business in today’s world is no easy feat. Markets are oversaturated and the cost of running operations and producing product is higher than ever. Differentiating your business by building an experience around your product, according to Pine and Gilmore, is the most effective way to stand out in a competitive market.
Look at Disney Land for example. They have literally created a business model on eliciting emotions from the people who are willing to pay to get inside their parks. The music, the scenery, the characters; they do everything they can to take you out of the real world and put you into the “happiest place on earth”.
The idea that Pine and Gilmore are suggesting considers the fact that users react to design with emotion and that controlling that emotion will result in greater success. This connection between design and user psychology is something that can be observed in a number of ways.
“An experience isn’t just consumed in the moment. It engages consumers in a theatrical performance, creating a lasting memory and an emotional bond”
Color is one great way to evoke certain emotions in users. Color theory is the idea that different colors have implicit connections to different emotions. A variation/visualization of this concept is Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. You can see on this wheel that red can be associated with anger, blue can be associated with sadness, green with disgust, etc.
Designers use these ideas to force certain emotions to a brand. If you want your brand to feel trusted and accepting, you will use green. Look at BetterHelp as an example. As an organization that offers therapy online, they want people to feel like they can trust them and that they will not be judged when they visit the website. By using green in their branding – in theory – users will feel these emotions when they enter the website and therefore have a better experience.
Color is not the only way to trigger emotions and create a better experience for your users. Different fonts impact emotion. Hierarchy guides users. Limiting choices as stated by Hick’s Law forces decisions. The possibilities are endless when you intentionally create a specific experience that users will remember.
Although these suggestions are great, it’s not as easy as creating an experience and guaranteeing that your product or service will see more success. When considering a user’s experience during the design process, it is crucial to understand that designers and users do not experience a product the same.
Donald Norman and Andrew Ortony of Northwestern University wrote in their article Designers and Users: Two Perspectives on Emotion and Design that, "Designers hope to shape the emotional responses of their users through the development of emotional affordances, but in fact, they have no direct control over the emotions that might result." This is because the designer and user each have different perspectives on a product.
The primary concerns of a designer when making a product tend to be related to function and appearance more than anything. As designers, we do our best to make these things relate to the needs of our users to the best of our ability. We go through processes such as design thinking, where we use empathy to attempt to put ourselves in the shoes of the user. As much work as a designer may do to understand their user, it is unfortunately impossible to understand the full story.
The disconnect between designers and users is formed through personal experiences and memories that designers will never be able to be tapped into. As humans, we all develop personal and individual cognitive biases which contribute a ton to how we feel toward things.
Because of these biases, designers will never be able to fully control the emotions of users, they can only “suggest” an emotional response.
Despite this, the idea of the experience economy illustrates an important point about design: design is performed to solve problems. By considering how users experience a product rather than just creating something for them to use, we will do a better job alleviating pain points in our users lifes.
Hi! My name is Peyton McKenzie.
I am a professional graphic designer, photographer and content creator.
I encourage you to explore my portfolio to get a better idea of the work I create. If you are interested in working with me or have inquiries of any kind, don’t hesitate to reach out over email.
