Everybody is talking about experience, or user experience, and, really, this is where we go.

Let’s make a simple analogy with the real world: we know that different buildings serving the same purpose, may (hopefully) offer various architectural experiences. Le Louvre doesn’t offer the same experience to its visitors than the Guggenheim Museum. Both are museums, but it is absolutely pointless to compare them in terms of performance, or ease of access, or whatever kind of objective criteria. Both museums are unique and serve their own purpose very well, “simply” because they provide great experiences to the visitors.

The same consideration will apply for any system involving human-machine relationship. Mac OS is no better than Windows, and vice versa, they just propose different experiences. In clear, they tell users different stories, and each story is absolutely relevant and valuable for different people, different purposes in different contexts.

I was just wondering that, right now, a system or a web service, should tell a specific story to its user. That best pratices in usability and interface design should be the basic tools used to build a place that was carefully thought and designed by an architect’s — or writer’s — mind.

In today’s burst of ideas and concepts, making something unique carries a lot more value than trying to outperform the competitors.

Diversity has always been the key factor of success for an ecosystem, be it natural or man-made. Many example can be found in recent technological innovations; my favourite is certainly Nintendo and the Wii: necessity — i.e. inability to follow Sony and Microsoft in their race for raw power — pushed them to write a different story of games: what humans do when they “play” ? Certainly not counting the frame rate and the number of polygons processed… Nintendo proposed a unique experience. Not the best. Just something different, a new “story”. In the other hand, Sony and Microsoft are competing with the same story. One will have to lose, but Nintendo won’t lose (this time) because Nintendo is now out of their fight.

The punch:
1° - Seeing User Experience Design as Story Telling appears to be a key to connect with an audience and, even more, to create an audience. Then, as in litterature, diversity and possibilities become endless.
2° - Take serious care of User Experience, at the early stages of your project, and build your own ground, instead of entering the others’ battleground.

Your comments on this envolée are welcome!

Ref.: “Experincing experience” by Tom Guarriello in UXmag (Oct. 10, 2006)