ExperienceCurve

Associating experience design or user experience with competitive advantage is an attempt to try and increase this young disciplines standing in business. It is also driven by a belief that business is changing and that companies that understand the broader experience a customer has with them will drive financial performance. Companies that are able to understand a customer and exceed a customers expectations at every turn will win. Amazon, Ebay, and Starbucks are developing what I would characterize as unassailable competitive positions through understanding the customer experience is everything.

The question of how disciplines gain legitimacy, standing, resources etc. in the business world is a fascinating topic.

Disciplines come about to solve problems or achieve goals, Marketing came about because in the 50’s mass-production actually began to outstrip demand. Business had a lot of products and not enough customers, they needed to develop a bigger market.

Experience Design I think is joining the rest of the design community in asking the question or making the statement, if you like, “We are very important to your business, more important than you think”. Design faces a long history though, of being pushed around by marketing folks and account managers and implementing things that might have been better if the designers had been involved at the beginning of the process.

Why? Read on…

Designers have traditionally been associated with developing tactical solutions and delivering tangible products/services. Design has exacerbated this by organized itself to deliver these tactical solutions, hence companies do not generally look at design as a strategic resource (Some companies do and they do very well).

Design related activities have been connected with delivering tactical solutions
Designers have organized there consultancies around delivering those tactical solutions
Design consultancies have positioned themselves to be firmly connected to a discipline, graphic, product, archtecture
Design consultancies have been the tools of marketers

Branding is one of the only examples of design being used at a strategic level in organizations and that should give us a clue in the experience design community as to where we should be going.

Branding itself is not a (tactical) discipline like graphic design but it is a linking function that connects graphic, product, environmental and many other tactical disciplines. Branding is strategic, it helps companies support a strategy of differentiation (one of Porters generic strategies).

I believe that Experience Design should not be positioned as a tactical discipline but, like branding it should be the linking function that connects design disciplines.

If we can align Experience Design or User Experience with a higher level business goal we would have businesses knocking on our doors asking for our help. The needs of business are driven by the needs of business, generally we think of businesses being out to make money but really money is a means unto an end. Businesses are out to succeed, to survive, to win.

Here are some examples of design companies distancing themselves from the tactics of design:
Architect:
http://www.degw.com/
Change Management through interior design

Experience Designers:
http://www.36partners.com/
http://www.pumpernickle.net/