Title: How to Create Compelling Brand Experiences
Context: Features? So what. Experiences? Yes please.
Synopsis: Many companies, agencies and consultants spend hour upon hour with customers asking them what new features they want to see in the products they use. Not to say that’s in and of itself a bad thing but it is certainly not (or at least should not be) the end all and be all. Did Henry Ford really say “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse?” Who cares. It still resonates with us as designers because we believe – hopefully with cause – that we have the skills and gifts to tease out the real, unspoken, subconscious desires of our end user and deliver them in a forehead slapping epiphany of why-didn’t-I-think-of-that amazement. But achieving that is not easy. Hell, oftentimes its not even possible bar an act of serendipity so off the beaten path that it can almost be considered accidental. But there are processes we can implement that can raise the odds of unearthing these subliminally craved interactions. Accomplishing this requires that we reorient ourselves away from analyzing specifics and towards influencing emotion which is more up the fuzzy-logic pathways we designers are comfortable traversing anyway.
Best Bit: “It is unreasonable to expect that typical customers will have the imagination necessary to describe a future that is much different from today’s reality.”
Anonymous
Freaky! Henry Ford popping up every where. Used the ‘as long as it’s black’ quote myself recently in a talk to show how attitudes toward customers has changed then the keynote countered with ‘faster horses’. Guess we need a balance in innovation, but our Henry was quite the fella!