Original Experience Makers II
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris
Products and experiences tend to be designed with function in mind; a door handle allows us to close a door, a car journey allows us to get from A to B — but the emotional response to the experience tends to be forgotten. How should we feel when we close a door? What emotional experience should we have when traveling in a car? In both cases, you could suggest ‘security’ and ‘safety’. The clunk sound of the door closing should feel secure and fixed, the car journey should feel steady and safe. Every product or experience has both a functional and emotional challenge to solve but, perhaps more excitingly, both a functional and emotional opportunity to seize as well — to know it to be useful and believe it to be beautiful.
NewTerritory makes original experiences using a multi-sensory framework that meets functional and emotional challenges and opportunities.
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What is an original experience and why are they so important?
Only a generation or two ago, commodity as a status symbol was one of the most powerful consumer propositions for brands. The logo on the shirt, or the badge on the car — consumers bought into brands through products. In today’s environmentally conscious, sharing-economy embracing society — which is changing behaviors towards access over ownership — consumer trends are moving towards experiences. Why purchase a DVD when you can subscribe to the convenient access to thousands of movies online? Why purchase a car when you can subscribe to hassle-free car sharing or ride hailing services? Original experiences are important because that is what people want and what the planet needs.
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How do we make original experiences for the user?
At NewTerritory, we’ve been developing a methodology to do just this. Here are some thoughts on how we can create truly unique original experiences for people, planet and profit.
01 Functional + Emotional
Challenges and opportunities for an experience largely fall into the functional and emotional categories. A well considered original experience will have been designed with both in mind. One example of an experience that has been designed for one but not the other is wheelchair access on London buses. While the bus is functionally accessible via an extending ramp, it is not accessible emotionally, as it demands wheelchair users board from the exit of the bus, while others enter at the entrance to the bus, creating segregation that is not discreet.
02 Multi-sensory innovation framework
How do we ensure that we factor in emotional responses to our work? One way in which we do so is with our multi-sensory innovation framework. Here we plot all of the human senses against, typically, a user journey. Human senses split into three main categories;
• Remote; those senses that passively approach your being: sight, sound and smell
• Tactile; those senses that one must proactively engage to sense; taste and touch
• Cognitive; what we think and feel upon interaction
03 Contextual Opportunity
Beyond those human-centered considerations, to make original experience, we also consider the context. Take for example the automotive context and a gaming experience. Traditionally speaking, gaming hasn’t been all too considered in the automotive context, since those regulatory and cognitive affordance restrictions described above make it inappropriate to game in the car. However, as ADAS systems, semi-autonomous and, one day, fully-autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, drivers are doing less of the driving, and there are less drivers. However, as we look to increase vehicle occupancy in order to reduce the number of vehicles on the road for environmental reasons, there will be more users as passengers. This makes gaming in the car compelling again. But to understand the challenges of the car is just one side of the story, the opportunities are interesting too. What unique gaming experiences can be made in a vessel that travels through time and space that a living room gaming console cannot do? What original experiences can gaming afford for the context of the car?
04 Composite experience design
Digital and physical combination creates amazing moments, but it is the consideration of the strategy and service design that applies those moments over timeframes, and journeys. For example, what does a Ford driverless vehicle service feel like to a consumer? How about a Lamborghini’s driverless vehicle service? A Ford driverless vehicle experience will likely feel safe, be family friendly and be the epitome of trust — with the service experience leaning on those characteristics inside and out of the journey itself. A Lamborghini however, might struggle with those same characteristics, but there are other opportunities for those brands…
05 CMX Lab
New office. New ambition. NewTerritory. NewTerritory is setting up a brand new CMX Lab (Colour, Material, eXperience). This will fuse our CMF and physical design competence with digital, interactive, experience driven design for clients. A core part of this will be experience prototyping and making interactive physical/digital prototypes to test hypotheses and accelerate development of ideas that excite.
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What’s next for original experience makers?
We will be diving deeper into our design thinking and the creative technologies we explore. We aim to demonstrate how ‘originality’ in a now, next and wow context can benefit the planet. This means that Original Experience Making is not just about the end consumer, but it carefully balances people, planet and profit.
To be truly original, is to craft something that has sight and ambition for people, planet and profit.
By Tim Smith, Design x Creative Tech Director
