From the Vault: Experience vs. Expectation 03/2003
I thought I would bring up a post from the ExperienceCurve Vault, called Experience Vs. Expectation. The post is inspired by Don Norman polling a group of designers on what products and services they “loved”, and in 2003 Google was pretty much the most mentioned web site, and back then they were just a search engine. Here’s the post pretty much in it’s original form with some minor colorization:
I don’t believe that Experience Design or competing in the Experience Economy is necessarily about providing the best experience. I find that in the Experience Economy (Pine and Gilmore) focus too much on the theater and glamour of an experience and not so much on the satisfaction of a need or, the delivery of a promise. I don’t think you can talk about a satisfying experience unless you talk about expectation, a yugo might provide a vary satisfying experience if it manages to deliver beyond the level of expectation that has been built through communication, pricing, information, Word of Mouth etc.
Don Norman did a poll of some people on a user centered design list about products people “loved”, under the category of web sites many people professed there love for google. It exceeds peoples expectations with little fuss or muss.
I quote:
made a mistake in spelling what I am searching for. It makes
suggestions. 99 % of the time I have been able to get to the right
search based on the suggestions made. Something that puts a smile on
my face every time I visit the site is that the logo on the site
“Google” is like a little cartoon changes with relevance to something
current. They will have a little devil peeking through the O for
Halloween, or some snow caps on it during winter. I just love that.
the clean white screen with its simple search box. most of the web is so
frenetic, so cluttered, it’s like a room full of kindergartners trying
to get your attention.
search engine. I also like the improvements that are added without a big
self-promotional extravaganza, like news, and the feature i haven’t yet
tried, the ability to search print catalogs online.
and smart. I mean why can’t the other search engines know what I “meant”
to search on.
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Adam Lawrence
I think that Pine and Gilmore take it as read that expectations are being fulfilled more and more. When every available offering fulfils my expectations, which one do I choose?
That is where the experience economy takes over.
This is also why Pi&Gi talk about “customer sacrifice” rather than “customer satisfaction”. The latter deals with expectation, the former with hope and the potential to be suprised.
Feb 6th, 2007
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