Last Friday, I gave two presentations at NEFLIN’s technology conference in Jacksonville, FL. The first one was Designing the Digital Experience, which is based on my book. Here’s the Slideshare version of the presentation!
Tyler, from the 344pounds.com blog, was kind enough to take this snapshot of Designing the Digital Experience sitting on the shelf at the Richland County Public Library and email it to me! Here’s what Tyler said about the book:
Hey David,
I bought your book off of Amazon yesterday, but also went down to the
Richland County Public library to check it out until it gets here.
Attached are the pics from that visit!
I found about you and your site a little while ago by searching for
something about designing a better blog for users (can’t remember exact term). I started a personal blog, 344pounds.com, about 3 months ago — I
don’t have a huge technical background, but I’m learning as much as I can
so I can make sure my blog is “good” for my customers, aka readers.
While your book is *marketed* towards designers and business owners, I
think that anybody who has any type of website can benefit from the book,
even a small “not for profit” personal blog like mine. I’ve already found
quite a few things from reading your book that I can apply to my blog.
Feel free to post this on your blog or testimonials page or whatnot — I’d
love to help sell the book, it’s great!
Tyler
Thanks Tyler for buying the book, taking the pics, and the kind words! You rock!
Joseph Pine and James Gilmore noticed this thing they called the Experience Economy. They think we’ve moved beyond purchasing mere goods and services – now, we can purchase “experiences” (hence, the experience Economy). In their newest book, they blend the idea of experience with something they call Authenticity.
But Experience or the Experience Economy isn’t the only thing this notion is called – this post will introduce you to some other similar terms.
For example, when I read their book, I didn’t see much in the way of website experience. Certainly, the underlying ideas were there, but no concrete examples were given (it was written in 1999, so I’ll give them a break). That bugged me enough to write my own book about it, and I called the website version of it the Digital Experience.
Rohit Bhargava, who writes the Influential Marketing Blog, comes from a customer engagement and marketing/PR background. In his book Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Brands Get it Back, he calls it personality. Here’s a quote from the introduction that explains what personality is:
“The theory of Personality Not Included is that personality is the answer. Personality is the key element behind your brand and what it stands for, and the story that your products tell to your customers. Every element of your business, from your interactions with your customers to the packaging of your product is an element of your brand personality, and these are the elements that inspire delight or indifference among your customers. In short, personality matters.”
I heard Jane McGonigal speak last year at SXSWi 2008. She presented on gaming and alternate realities … and called it happiness. Here are some notes I took from her presentation:
Question – are you in the happiness business? Our primary product soon will be happiness… Happiness is the new capital
Four key principles of happiness:
McGonigal’s description of happiness sounds VERY similar to Pine & Gilmore’s description of experience and Bhargava’s description of a company with personality.
Ever heard of Touch Points? It’s sort of like usability … but doesn’t focus primarily on how the thing works. Instead, it focuses on the experience customers have during their interactions with the product or service or website.
Ok, one more. A few years back when Kathy Sierra was still blogging, many of her blog posts focused on this same concept – but she called it enchantment and kicking ass.
See what’s going on?
It’s not quite usability (but lives there). It’s not quite marketing (but it lives there). It’s not quite design (but it lives there too). It’s not quite customer service (yep – lives there). Not quite library 2.0 (even lives there).
There’s a convergence in many different fields right now – gaming, marketing, PR, web design, customer service, etc. – that all have, as their utmost goal, providing the customer with a positive experience … an authentic experience … happiness … attracting them with personality … enchanting them … helping them “kick patootie.” (ok, my wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap upbringing just kicked in – sorry ).
Question – how are you working to enchant your users? Not just meet their information needs … but delight them? Are you providing a positive experience, and if so – how?
I recently gave a book-related interview for a local-to-Topeka magazine, TK Magazine. People actually read it! I’ve had a number of people stop me and say they saw “my article” – that’s sorta cool. Here’s the interview:
**********
In the March/April 2008 issue of TK, we introduced you to the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library’s new “Digital Branch” – a library branch that exists entirely on the Web, enabling you to check out books, pick out movies and music, and just about anything you else you want to do at the main library (except you can do it all in your PJs!).
The whiz behind the development of the library’s website [aside - LOTS of very smart people built our website - definitely not just me!] is David Lee King. He has just published his first book, “Designing the Digital Experience,” which aims to help you create a website that offers such a positive digital experience that your visitors will not only return, but will share links to your site with all their friends, family and co-workers.
TK: What is “experience design?”
DK: Experience design is the practice of designing, well, lots of things – products, services, events, and environments – but with the customer’s experience fully in mind. A good example of experience design in action is a visit to two restaurants, McDonalds and Hard Rock Cafe. At McDonald’s, you get a sandwich, and the normal fast-food experience – rather bland (some would argue, just like the sandwich).
But when you visit the Hard Rock Cafe, the “experience” you have while at the restaurant is geared toward a theme – that of rock music. Everything, including the food and drink you order, the decor of the place, t-shirts you can buy, even the background music playing, is themed to provide you with a “rock and roll” experience that you can’t help but notice.
Hard Rock Cafe has designed an experience around rock and roll – only part of the total experience involves the actual food.
TK: How does that relate to my website?
DK: Websites are rapidly changing from electronic brochures about an organization or business to an actual destination, where real-life, real-time transactions take place. Take my bank, for instance. At my bank’s website, I can balance my checkbook, pay bills, and transfer money. I can do actual, real-world things at the website.
Organizations are starting to improve the experience their customers have while at the site in order to better serve their customers.
TK: What will our readers learn from your book?
DK: My book will quickly get you up-to-speed about what digital experience design is, and different approaches to take with your website in regards to digital experience. I also provide ideas to help jump-start your thinking about what your customers experience while at your website, and ways to help improve those experiences.
* original article online at TK Magazine, used by permission
** Photo by Bryan Nelson
Here are my slides from my Designing the Digital Experience presentation… enjoy!
Sarah Long, Director of the North Suburban Library System, interviewed me a couple weeks ago about my book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love on her Longshots podcast series (part of the Library Beat blog).
Give it a listen!
My book has been reported in the wild! Someone told me via twitter that she’d received my book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love, from Amazon a few days ago – so that’s cool.
What else is cool? How about giving you chapter 1? Here’s a snippet:
Chapter 1: Welcome to the Experience Economy
“What’s my daughter playing on the computer this evening? Oh, she’s on the American Girl site, and she’s playing Kaya’s Catch of the Day. She also sent an American Girl ecard to her cousin and looked at this year’s new doll. We receive American Girl catalogs and magazines in the mail and check out the latest books from the library. We even visited American Girl Place in Chicago last winter as a birthday surprise (the girls and mom watched a musical, had ate a party, and shopped, while my son and I checked out the science museum and LEGO Store).
What’s going on here? Why is my daughter so into this stuff? Because American Girl is all about the experience. It focuses on the fun of exploring and living as a girl in America’s past. The American Girl people are engaging their market in creative ways - specifically targeting grade school and middle school girls. They know how to delight their customers. I know – I’ve seen my daughter’s smiles. As we continue to think about experience, let’s consider the experiences of a trip to an amusement park and the purchase of a computer.”
Want more? Here’s the rest of chapter 1!
David Armano, the guy who writes the Logic + Emotion blog, was kind enough to write the foreword to my new book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love.
Want to see a sample of it? Here’s one paragraph: “So if you went out and bought this book, you’re heading in the right direction. The reason why social networks are such a big deal these days is that they act as both the great equalizer and amplifier. Customers who have a crappy experience with a company’s products or services now have a virtual arsenal of communication methods to be heard. Often times the search engine’s powerful algorithms (Google) finds their content and links to their complaints. When a certain “power consumer” couldn’t cancel his AOL account despite several pleas with the voice on the other end of the phone, he decided to take matters into his own hands and record the horrendous experience. What resulted was a PR nightmare for AOL that started online, gained momentum and was quickly reported on several national news stations. What starts digital becomes something much bigger, and it all starts with an experience.”
David has a bit more on his blog … so this is still a teaser – you’ll need to get the book to read the rest!
I am one of the presenters/conversation starters at BIGWIG’s Social Software Showcase at ALA2008. What is the Social Software Showcase, you ask? From the website: “The general idea for the BIGWIG Showcase is to highlight up-to-date technological innovations for libraries, while giving as broad an access as possible to the content and the presenters.”
So – I’ve created a screencast. Here’s what you do – watch/listen to my presentation, and then you have a few different options:
Here’s my presentation:
Description: Engaging your library’s local community is NOT an easy task. Engaging your library’s local DIGITAL community is even harder. This presentation introduces the concept of the experience economy and mashes that up with digital community participation and engagement. What’s that get you? A headache! No, wait… that’s the wrong answer. It REALLY gets you … Community Experience, aka the Conversation Economy.
So watch/listen to my presentation (if the version above is too small for you, go here for a 640X480 version)… and then come experience the conversation economy in action at my table at BIGWIG’s Social Software Showcase! Hope to see you there!
Still reading and thinking about blogs – it’s the fault of Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Wb 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize, and Engage Youth, by Ben Rigby. It’s a good book – I suggest you read it!
So today, I give you two thoughts about blogging and engaging blog communities.
On page 28, Ben writes: “A handful of elite political bloggers now wield tremendous influence, but like celebrity reporters, they’re in constant demand and are therefore more difficult to contact. However, they rely on so-called B-list bloggers for story sourcing. By looking at comments and links on an elite blogger’s site, you can begin to understand the structure of his or her network. You can reach out to the less popular bloggers and become a trusted source to them. In turn, they will feed your perspective and ideas to the elite bloggers.”
Engage the A Listers
There’s two ways to look at this. First, the obvious way. Want Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan or the ReadWriteWeb dudes to notice you? Find out who they read, then engage THOSE authors. The “B list” authors are more likely to hold conversations with you. If you strike up an engaging conversation with them, and that conversation ends up in the B lister’s blog, then … you just might get noticed by the “big guys.” Of course, if you’re like me, you’re starting way down the list (maybe the “Y Listers”?), so I have a much longer road to travel (unless the bloggers I linked to actually read their ego feeds – if you do, please say hi!).
Engage Your Community
Secondly, the much more interesting way. Ben continues (on page 29): “By developing trusted relationships and treating bloggers as a core part of your outreach efforts, you can take a proactive role in shaping news that affects your organization. You’ll also be prepared to respond rapidly to negative news and to promote your achievements.”
This means engaging local bloggers, or bloggers near and dear to your organization. In libraries, this means other librarians (to bounce ideas off of) and THE LOCAL COMMUNITY. Find bloggers in your area. Subscribe. Engage. Repeat.
There ARE bloggers in your area, already saying stuff about you. You have a chance to engage those bloggers and be a little more in control of what is said – at the least by correcting bad information or providing an another viewpoint to the situation. Better yet – you have a chance to tell your story to your community. Share your good stuff. Ask how you can make it better.
But to do that, you have to engage.
Blog by David Lee King, runs on the cool Thesis WordPress Theme
email: davidleeking [at] gmail [dot] com | Twitter | Facebook
