Experience is everything.

Experience design is everything and can be ruined by anything. As a neuroscientist I believe that the way we experience the world is the most influential factor in our lives. If you are in pain it is really hard to laugh at a funny joke, even if that joke is objectively hilarious. Once you accept the premise that everything can influence an experience you begin to understand the scope of an experience designer's job. There is no end, there is no beginning. All one can do is create the best environment and best product that one can. 

In order to create the best of the best, we need to ask some questions. What structural things can impact someone's experience. What can we do to change or influence those. The things I have come up with are the economy, the environment and the human community. 

Let's start with a slightly more scoped topic: the experiential economy. It is growing faster than the standard economy and that is no fluke. It is driven by the social origins of human beings. Now more than ever when many people have been isolated from friends and family, the undeniable need for social interaction is palpable. Science tells us that we evolved in small interdependent units, but we do not need science to tell us that something is missing in our lives right now. Zoom will never truly be able to quench our thirst for human interaction. No product can elicit human emotion quite like other humans. 

Even fantastic games like Covidopoly cannot take the place of human interaction.

https://twitter.com/covidopoly

So then as experience designers we have to ask ourselves; what values are people exchanging when they interact. They are creating experiences. Experiences are the most valuable things that humans have. We can see this in the effort that humans put into preserving the memories of their experiences; pictures and mementos that people keep for years past their practical life. 

In this space we see that experience design is the bridge between the value laden land of human emotion and the profit driven world of technology. It is how we as designers can help bring meaning to the products people use every day. 

Currently many organizations see the people that use their products as a means to an end, a resource to be tapped. However, this short sighted business model is exactly what led the oil and gas industry to burn fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate. Which, in turn has led to a rapid warming of our globe and destruction of the environment. So, just as environmentalists and economists are calling for a circular economy where the environment is respected and replenished ensuring long term stability. Experience designers need to evangelize the long term health of people who use their organizations' products. 

This is not a humanist crusade, but simply an acknowledgment that if companies and society as a whole are going to continue to succeed, sustainability needs to be a pillar on which the future is built. Companies that adapt to the human friendly future are going to succeed and those that continue to exploit will fall behind. 

Designers will need to be both ethicists as well as business consultants, but if we are successful then we can hopefully shift the focus away from damaging short term profits to long term relationship building. In order to build fruitful relationships with communities, companies will need to engage in nontraditional business activities. For example, if the FANG companies want to be associated with anything other than monopolistic villains, they will need to voluntarily choose to pay corporate taxes. FANG and co need to make sure that they give back a portion of the billions in profit to build roads and schools in communities that they operate in. This sense of obligation to community has been lost in many large companies as they grow beyond the reproach of individual communities. We need to remind companies even the smallest deviation from their declared values can have massive backlash. 

A good example of how community building can lead to brand loyalty. The Alamo Drafthouse is a national brand with theaters from New York to Los Angeles, but each theater has its own flair and serves local food and drink. This results in each community thinking that the Alamo Drafthouse in their city is unique. Companies acknowledging and catering to the differences in each community will inevitably build stronger connections between people and those businesses. We as experience designers get to be the ones who talk with the communities and determine what our companies can do to serve them. 

The Alamo Drafthouse sporting niche movie lover art that lets people know they have found their people.

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/09/alamo-drafthouse-brooklyn-petition-hazard-pay-and-health-insurance-1234585392/

Many companies do not intentionally turn away from the interests of the people using their products. For example, YouTubes’ suggestion algorithm started out simply. Recommending content based off of your viewing history. However, YouTube as a subsidiary of Alphabet is a for profit company. The more time you spend on their platform watching content / ads, the more money they make. Thus, they have an incentive to encourage you to watch for as long as possible. So instead of meritocratically suggesting the most relevant videos to you. They suggest the most relevant video that is most likely to keep you watching for the longest. Resulting in YouTube suggesting sensationalized conspiracy theory videos that catch people’s attention. 

This is where experience designers need to step in and start asking questions. Such as, is achieving the short term goal of getting people to view more content worth the potential long term damage to YouTubes relationship with the larger community. Is YouTube becoming known as a generator of misinformation and haven for domestic terrorists worth those additional ad dollars? As experience designers we get to both ask and recommend answers to these questions. We get to make the case for acting out company values and the high return on investment that improving public perception can bring. 

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is so mysterious it has generated an entire market for “hacking” it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v4hJZUb3S8

One specific form of ad dollar chasing is micro targeting. Microtargeting is yet another extension of organizations into our social spheres. With such personalized messaging people feel like they have a connection to the company. However, this connection should not be taken for granted. Just as friends rebuke their friends, people feel like companies that connect on a personal level should be accountable to their shared values. People no longer just want a product that works well, but they want a product that is created with an ethical supply chain and whose workers are paid a living wage. They want to feel like the products they buy are coming from a company that they can feel good about. This is yet another variable in the equation that experience designers must consider. How can we design a product that is equitable and ethically sourced so that not only the people who use the product, but those that help make it have a positive experience. 

I am both excited and terrified about what the future holds. Technology will continue to integrate into every aspect of daily life. There are two ways in which that integration can happen. Following the status quo we have created, where technology companies chase profits and set algorithms loose with the purpose of driving up as much screen time as possible. Or we can thoughtfully design a path forward. A path that leverages technology to better human life, while restraining the greedy nature of capitalist companies. Not to stifle profits, but with the understanding that in order for them to survive in the long run they need to create a positive symbiotic relationship with the people that use their products. To use another metaphor we want to create products that are like healthy gut bacteria, helping us all digest our food. Not like a tapeworm, which is equally involved in a person's digestive system, but to the detriment of the host. As experience designers we are tasked with making sure that our products are made to work with people, not to take advantage of them. 

For me there is no definitive beginning or end to an experience. Every moment is connected to the next. This is why when I ask myself what is experience design, I tend to think in broad terms, about how humans experience life and why. Which ultimately leads me to think about the economy and the environment and how they are not at odds but actually codependent ecosystems. Once that is established it is an easy jump to seeing how focusing efforts on relationship and community building will solve both of these problems since they are all so directly intertwined. The future will be good for humans if we make it that way.