This is a presentation I gave at the Madison + UX conference, UX Camp Chicago and Milwaukee Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event - Focus on UX. This presentation covers why Experience Innovation is the next design imperative and how product/feature innovations are only bringing minimal returns in this day and age.
Introduce yourself. Brief history.
Why are you talking about this –
Experience innovation is the proving ground. It is cheap and easy to keep a feature for feature pace with your competition. Where businesses are going to win is in on the experience side of the equation.
We, as UX designers and practitioners can lead that charge.
Forever and a day businesses have thrived on product innovation to increase market share and revenues. They would “one-up” the competition with a new feature and hope that it gains a loyal following. Take the TV industry for example the features of televisions grew fast and furious for the last 60 years.
But, Fast forward to today: product innovations, and the growth they create, are often incremental, narrow, and fleeting.
Competitors quickly matches the latest features they can turn products around fairly quickly and the differentiation your product once held in the marketplace is gone as quickly as you gained it.
As a result, companies are finding that returns from product efforts are harder to rely on.
Among the Global Innovation 1000, R&D spending rose 5.8% last year, yet revenue for those companies increased less than 1%.
Among the Global Innovation 1000, R&D spending rose 5.8% last year, yet revenue for those companies increased less than 1%.
Technology has allowed competitors to catch up with most innovation relatively cheaply and fast.
Companies would wait until their competitors released there products to a beta level and then would copy the new and latest features – sometimes beating their competition to the punch.
Social media prompts consumers to switch allegiance with each new alluring offer.
Today to achieve success you need to craft the entire customer experience—shaping, innovating, branding, and measuring it.
Mastering “experience innovation” by going reexamining your product or service to reimagine the customer journey.
The result yields new, unexpected, signature moments that delight customers and create significant opportunities for new growth.
This is not a new concept, however there is a lot of businesses who are showing up late to the game or don’t even know that they are playing.
The process of designing a truly innovative experience cannot simply rest on the process excellence of classic customer experience-improvement efforts or the creative brilliance of the marketing team.
Experience innovation isn’t driven by specific product features or design, but by reimagining the broader experience of how customers might use the product or service.
By looking beyond the product to take a broader view of customer issues and activities around the product, companies can find new ways to address unmet needs, create talk-worthiness, and fuel differentiation.
Didn’t re-invent the taxi or car. Didn’t change the drivers.
Changed how you order, meet and pay for a car.
By taking a broader view of what a car service could be, Uber was able to reimagine the entire experience. They offer the user relentless reliability and a seamless system that addresses, long wait times, not having cash, lost receipts, etc.
The company is growing like wildfire—adding almost 80,000 new customers a week and is able to charge a lot more than the typical cab.
Didn’t re-invent the taxi or car. Didn’t change the drivers.
Changed how you order, meet and pay for a car.
By taking a broader view of what a car service could be, Uber was able to reimagine the entire experience. They offer the user relentless reliability and a seamless system that addresses, long wait times, not having cash, lost receipts, etc.
The company is growing like wildfire—adding almost 80,000 new customers a week and is able to charge a lot more than the typical cab.
Looking beyond the product to the broader experiences surrounding it also creates new horizons for growth.
Nike Looked beyond shoes – they looked at enabling fitness has and developed many different lines of products around fitness and leisure activities – products like clothing, equipment, and even wearable technologies
Users can’t tell you about the things they need or want but haven’t been imagined yet. Nor can they articulate how they will do things differently in the future.
Henry Ford – attributed quote.
For instance, customers will tell an airline they really want quick boarding and on-time departures.
Delta Airlines came up with a concept of “delocation” to improve the travel experience in unexpected ways. Created lounges at gates with banquet seating, embedded iPads, gate side ordering, etc.
Delta’s ability to partner and deliver on its essence of “making flying better” in a way consumers might never have articulated in a focus group--and provides an opportunity for a new revenue stream.
This improved the overall Delta experience and the users didn’t ask for it. The results – Delta’s stocks price more than doubled in 2013.
Great experience innovation isn’t about a series of one-off moments, but a holistic vision for a transformed brand experience that evolves over time.
Start with a broad and detailed exploration of the customer journey--and how it could be different.
Don’t ask customers what they need, but observe how they behave and what makes them happy or sad. Then assess what people could do.
Think about what they will notice, and what they will remember.
Look for the big moves--can you take entire steps out of the process, change the sequence, add new value in unexpected places?
think in terms of a portfolio approach to execution, by balancing simple changes that build momentum with longer-term investments that require more radical changes and resourcing.
Disney will open –at times – their gates 5 minutes early to fuel that “I’m about to be at Disney Freakin World” feeling.
Today’s dramatically expanding set of touch points, shorter attention spans, and shrinking time on our hands all heighten the need for an experience that breaks through with increased vitality and dimension.
In that vein, a great brand experience often engages all the senses. It considers the environmental, physical, digital, and even behavioral expression of brand—the way employees interact with both customers and each other.
Products are usually managed by one person, whereas an experience must be curated by several different owners with separate goals and metrics.
Drawing on expertise across functions is essential to push thinking, discover what is possible, and forge connections across operational silos. And, before an experience will come across as real to the outside world, dozens, hundreds or thousands of employees need to be educated and empowered to deliver the vision.
The concept of innovating the experience isn’t new.
Virgin’s airport clubs, Nike’s flagship stores, Starbucks restaurants, and Disney’s Parks set the standard many years ago.
These innovators show us that the experience isn’t just about the planes, the shoes, the coffee or the even the rides—it’s about how we feel when we use the product or service.
The stakes for getting the experience right, and continually enhancing it, have never been higher.