Experience design has pretty much taken over my life here at WriterAccess. I’m digging deep and researching what’s new and what’s next when it comes to customer experience, user experience and experience design.
One thing that’s bugging me is the word user, as in User Experience. Who wants to be called a USER? It’s certainly not a very friendly word, and being user friendly is what user experience is all about.
What about Human Experience? That seems like a better word to tag along with experience. Or how about Friend Experience? Yeah, that’s even better. Hey friend, I have Friend Experience and put together a new design for you that I want you to check out. Can you let me know what you think about this new Friend Design? Tell me if you like it. Tell me if it sucks. Just be a true friend and tell me anything so I have something to work with to become a better Friend Experience designer. Get it. Got it. Thanks.
OK, mixing apples and oranges there. But you get the idea.
The UX industry is expanding greatly, moving beyond designers, websites and digital touchpoints. Experience architects are touching every department and every touchpoint a customer has with your company. It’s all human to human really.
Human to Human #H2H
I recently interview Bryan Kramer, CEO of PureMatter, frequent speaker and host of the #H2H Twitter chat, for a WriterAccess podcast. Bryan is the author whose most recent book, Human to Human, explores our need for human connection. I quizzed him about why we share and what happens when we share.
He writes that there is no B2B or B2C, there’s only H2H. He came to this conclusion after interviewing 250 notable people across industries. The number one word that came up in his interviews was “connection.” In the podcast he said, “We all want to connect with one or more people. Sharing is the means to connect with another human being.”
Sharing has always been a fundamental human behavior that has been central to our survival as a human race. Sharing stories, processes, insights, philosophies,techniques, secrets; sharing is how we connect to each other and advance forward.
Now with technologies like the Internet, video, social media and mobile, sharing has increased its ease and scale to a global level. Information is no longer confined to geographical boundaries; proximity is no longer required to pass information from one human to another.
As humans, we need to rethink how, what, why and where we share ideas to influence and affect the direction we want for our global tribe.
A Human-Centered Design Approach
UX has combined forces with brand experience (BX) and customer experience (CX) to form a more holistic EXPERIENCE that encompasses a human-centered design approach.
The customer end-to-end journey involves multiple touchpoints with the company, crosses many departments and support specialists. Experience architecture looks at the end-to-end journey, ranging from the initial brand experience (BX) to the customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) with the product along the way. Human engagement, experience and expectations are an explicit outcome and goal for those that design information architecture. But experience now involves creating non-digital experiences as well, where readers of the information replace the users of the product.
Ok, are you with me? Experience Design is the new User Design, and it includes digital and non-digital. There, I said it. Sorry for all the information noise along the way.
By the way, you can hear Bryan Kramer share his insights from Shareology: How Sharing Powers the Human Economy at CMC in May or follow him on Twitter with the hashtag #H2H.
Write On!
Byron
WriterAccess Founder and CEO Byron White is a serial entrepreneur, with a track record of proven success a mile long. He’s also a published author, popular speaker, content marketing revolutionary and great storyteller.
