WEW8 - Instagram Experiences, Programming Your Personality's UX, and Employee Expectations

Saturday, I attended an art exhibit called Inter_, which felt more like a commoditized event than a specific creator's work. The installation was geared towards foot traffic and creating Instagrammable moments. This particular experience involved walking through a series of rooms, the first featuring galactic projections on the wall.

“Jump! Dance! Move!” a sign instructed.

But as I danced, spun and twirled throughout the room, inspiring bewilderment in the 20 other people who stood statuesque, I couldn’t see any notable affects of my movement on the projections on the walls.

I didn’t know HOW to interact, or why I was trying to interact at all.

The Experience Economy

This week, I read "The Experience Economy" by B. Joseph Pine II, James H. Gilmore, et al. The book greatly influences my perspectives on the topics discussed below. The main idea of the book is that everything is a form of theater. To create a successful business, it's important to think beyond just the product or service itself and consider the entire experience that a customer has. Often you should literally sell the experience instead of the product.

A coffee shop isn't just the coffee, it's every single part of the experience that a customer has, from finding the shop to walking out the door. The design of the cup, how others perceive them as they drink it, that feeling of being seen by others.

The book also made me think about the importance of setting clear expectations for anyone you interact with. This concept applies to various situations. For example, if someone tells a movie-goer that a film is just "okay" before they watch it, it can change their perception and expectation of the film, which in turn can affect their overall experience of the movie. Clearly setting expectations can have a significant impact on the experience of the person you are interacting with.

My reading led me to consider how certain experiences built specifically to be Instagram-worthy installations, are marketed as visually striking and shareable on social media, but often do not provide fulfilling or memorable experiences for the people participating. People are willing to pay for the opportunity to project these experiences to others and often value that over the experience itself.

The Expectation of Acknowledgment

We have come a long way since the websites in the early twenty-teens, where every bodega had its own peculiar homepage with a unique navigation system, often designed by a well-intentioned but inexperienced relative who knew just enough HTML to be dangerous.

Design and interaction have evolved, with the advent of design systems, style guides, and best-practices that have helped to standardize the way websites look and function. There are ways we have learned as a collective to interact, and expectations we have for interactions.

At an exhibit that encourages movement during a projection, we expect to see that projection profoundly altered by our movements. We are used to the digital world responding to us. This isn’t just true for immersive experiences but for liking social media posts, or scrolling down in an app to force a refresh. When we interface with code-made-experience we demand a response, a validation that we were heard. The projection must shift, the heart must light up, and the content must refresh.

As we move into a world of conversational interfaces, this expectation of acknowledgement and response will become even more important. When interacting with a conversational interface, users will come to expect a reply that contextually acknowledges their input. They want to feel that their actions have been heard and understood.

When building your product, every action matters to a user, and every response comes with a series of expectations. How you meet then and make a user feel heard will tie deeply into how they feel about your product and your business.

Employees Know You Are Not Actually Human

Employees often view managers as non-human. This is a common experience among employees. I even see this in founders when they are interacting with investors or the board. When looking up the organizational chart, it can feel as though those at higher levels have a vastly different perspective and understanding of the world. They often do.

Leaders and managers act as interfaces for employees, similar to the way digital interfaces respond to user input. Employees expect clear and meaningful responses to their input and for it to achieve their intended goal.

Employees expect their managers to respond in a functional and effective way, much like how users expect digital interfaces to respond. The management system is the interface that employees experience the company through, and if clear expectations are set, such as "technical escalations will be taken seriously" and these expectations are not met, it can cause the system to feel broken and unresponsive. This can lead to disappointment and mistrust among employees.

As a leader, you are responsible for designing and shaping the system that employees interact with. By clearly stating expectations, providing direction, and establishing clear communication pathways, you can make yourself more easily understood as an interface for your team. This can lead to more positive interactions with employees, as they will feel more satisfied when their expectations for attention and presence are met in your responses.

Wrapping It Up

I covered a lot of ground this week, but its because my mind is in a whirl. What experiences have I missed out on curating because I didn’t see them as experiences at all? This concept is broad and extends to everything from user interaction to hosting parties to how you react to your partner when coming home at night.

Is there an experience for others you have curated or considered thats outside the normal realm of expectations for what we plan around? If so how did you identify it and how was what you curated received, did others interact/react as expected? I’d love to hear your strange stories.