Archives / November 2005

Sam Brown '03 is now guest-authoring for our friends at 37signals on their blog Signal vs. Noise. See his first post here:
in the future my mistakes will stop haunting me

Jytte Hilden, cultural director of The Royal Library and former culture minister of Denmark, has accepted our invite to speak at euroGel 2006.

Jytte Hilden's bio (in Danish): http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jytte_Hilden

Bob Mankoff '05 profiled in the New York Times on his humor research:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/fashion/sundaystyles/27POSS.html

Good Experience interview of Bob Mankoff from this past April:
http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000138.php

In Slate, "Too Many Choices: Why seniors won't sign up for the Medicare prescription drug plans", by Barry Schwartz '05:
http://www.slate.com/id/2130932/

The second MP3 Experiment by Charlie Todd '05, which I pointed to a couple of weeks back, went off without a hitch:
http://www.improveverywhere.com/mission_view.php?mission_id=52

More info about Gel conferences: gelconference.com

I recently wrote about the integrated experience, talking about the multiple factors that often comprise good experience, and now I take the next step by describing what exactly those factors are.

While it would make good business-book fodder to have just two axes, which would allow the two-by-two matrix favored by consultants who write business books, there really are three strands of good experience, as I see it: aesthetics, meaning, and efficiency.

To clarify:

1. Aesthetics encompasses the artistic side of life; the entertaining, pleasurable, or glamorous. A visual and aural spectacle like Cirque du Soleil, for example, is an experience that relies heavily on aesthetics.

2. Meaning is no easy topic to summarize in 50 words, especially since people find it in different places. Many people attach primary importance to their family, their spiritual discipline, or some other significant activity or community. (Of course, aesthetics often plays a big part in creating meaning.)

3. Efficiency: Also known as usefulness, effectiveness, or practicality. Many popular websites are good examples of this strand: if they quickly and easily deliver an answer, or help you complete a task, you consider it a good experience. Well-run hospitals, banks, and airlines could be other examples of good "efficient experiences".

While these strands often come together to "gel" an experience, making it hard to separate where one ends and another begins, I would argue that they are in fact separate factors. To underline this point, here's a thought experiment:

Consider what happens when organizations, communities, or individuals pursue each of these factors to the near-exclusion of the other two.

• To see "aesthetics at all costs", walk down the Strip, the main street in Las Vegas lined with spectacular hotel facades. Or watch a Hollywood blockbuster action movie, which may bring to mind the "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." It's entertainment with something missing.

• Walk inside a Las Vegas casino, and you'll see efficiency in full swing: lights, sound, floor layout, and "game" design all calibrated to the tiniest detail, intended to elicit the maximum number of dollars per hour from every visitor. Don't look for anything meaningful here, though.

• Keep walking, outside the casino, outside Las Vegas, and into the desert, and you may come across a monastery where ascetics attempt to realize ultimate meaning by stripping away any and all other factors. All major religions include the ritual of fasting, or some discipline of material denial, for the same purpose.

Of course, these are just outstanding examples intended to provoke and make a point. In practice, the three strands of aesthetics, meaning and efficiency are usually woven together in varying degrees - sometimes dominant, sometimes supporting, sometimes creating paradox - to make up an experience.

And in many cases, when one strand is more appropriate to the situation, the "good experience" must rely heavily on it. For example, a well-run bank, airline, or hospital must primarily be efficient. Other factors are only important, secondarily, once the primary factor is fully guaranteed.

As a counterexample, consider one of the major banks here in New York: this bank has cute, aesthetically pleasing advertisements that promise benefits in my family relationships and other meaningful areas. But according to some customers, the bank is inefficient, bureaucratic, and irritating, even in the simplest of transactions. The bank invested in exactly the wrong areas - aesthetics and meaning - and, missing its primary opportunity, created a bad experience and thereby harmed the company's prospects.

This framework - or part of it, anyway - isn't new. The first two strands go all the way back to conversations in ancient Greece, and the third is only recently more important to everyday experience. Perhaps we could call it "truth, beauty, and Google": our modern experiences are often shaped by two very old ideas, and a new one - instant efficiency - which we've come to know and demand from the Web and the rise of digital culture.

I look forward to reading your reactions.

For more reading...

The overdetermined experience (Good Experience - Nov. 2, 2005):
http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000377.php

See those bank ads here (including "Hugs are on a 52-week high"):
http://www.citi.com/citigroup/showcase/liverichly.htm

Slate's review of the ads:
http://www.slate.com/id/2068683/

TIB/37signals on the bank's inefficient experience:
http://www.thisisbroken.com/b/2005/11/citibank_accoun.html

If you really want to explore truth, beauty, and paradox, dive in here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein05/goldstein05_index.html

Geoffrey Canada '06 was named one of "America's Best Leaders" in US News & World Report (Oct 31), joining Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, and others:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051031/31intro.htm

Erin McKean '06 in the New Yorker's Talk of the Town (Aug 29):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050829ta_talk_alford

Douglas Rushkoff '06 has published a new book, reviewed on Boing Boing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/07/rushkoffs_new_book_g.html

Seth Godin '06 also has a new book now in the Amazon 100:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_kids_say_th.html

Marissa Mayer '03 is on the cover of Fast Company this month in "The Beauty of Simplicity":
http://208.39.44.204/magazine/100/beauty-of-simplicity.html

Read the Good Experience interview with Marissa from three years ago:
http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000066.php

More info about Gel conferences: gelconference.com

Long-time readers know that simplicity is no foreign topic in this space, as in Customer Experience in Four Steps, and a Whitepaper (July 27, 2005):

It seems, though, that simplicity is having a kind of "media moment" in the wider media and on the Web. Consider several examples:

The cover story of Fast Company this month is "The Beauty of Simplicity," featuring a quote from (past Gel speaker) Marissa Mayer: "Google is lke a Swiss Army knife, closed. It's simple, you can slip it in your pocket, but it's got the great doodad when you need it." Since the article isn't online (?!), here's my interview of Marissa from three years ago, which contains some similar thoughts.

Philips, also mentioned in that Fast Company article, has launched a major Simplicity initiative, including this whizzy Flash "showcase".

Citibank has launched a new "Simplicity" card, whose main benefits include the ability to reach a human operator by dialing 0 (Daily News article).

This New York Times article describes how hard it is to pick out gadgets as holiday presents (without mentioning Uncle Mark :)

(For what it's worth, this NYT story points readers to Funagain.com and Carcassonne... both Uncle Mark recommendations.)

This rather cluttered site contains some good tips on reducing clutter: http://www.december.com/simple/live/index.html

This column - Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic - compares the presentation styles of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and draws conclusions about the differences between Apple and Microsoft products. Well done analysis:

Perhaps my favorite link on the subject I've found lately is A Culture of Simplicity, describing Japanese "wabi-sabi".

Is it just me, or is "simplicity" the new "innovation"?

Over at This Is Broken: Overly aggressive sales clerks

I'm now selling printed, bound copies of my Uncle Mark 2006 Gift Guide and Almanac (described in Problems of complexity and choice, Oct. 27).

I'm selling them at-cost, which is $16.50 and includes shipping. (New York State residents will have to pay sales tax on top.)

Two views of the guide (click to see bigger):
 

If you're interested, paypal mark at goodexperience.com the at-cost price of $16.50 ($17.86 for NYS residents), and include your shipping address.

Thanks to Marian Rich for pointing me to this CMO article, which describes how companies are investing in "good experience" in a number of different ways. It's a trend worth knowing about, given the amount of attention it's getting in board rooms across the country.

I'll admit to a slightly different take on the matter. I like to find experiences that are good by themselves, in and of themselves, without having been dreamt up by a marketing group wanting to "get us some of that experiential marketing we've been hearing so much about."

(Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Just that the natural and organic seems to be more compelling and, well, authentic.)

With that in mind, here are four good experiences that I've found in New York City recently, which are good without being touted as "experiences." For example, the skating rink is "The Pond", not "the Library Ice Experience" or some such nonsense.

I've also included plenty of links to show you the experience online, even if you can't make it in person.

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1. At MoMA, Safe: Design Takes on Risk explores "objects designed to protect mind and body from dangerous or stressful circumstances."

I took some photos while there, including "stuffed animals" of harmful microbes - here and here...

A safe chair that allows one to hook a bag under the bag to prevent theft - every NYC bar and cafe should have these...

...and a Sporran-Utan, a kind of Scottish safe-purse.

Finally, dining at MoMA now is always a good experience, thanks to Danny Meyer's company for running all the facilities.

MoMA overall is just plain good. Go there, if you haven't yet.

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2. Just up Fifth Avenue, "Russia!" at the Guggenheim is one of the best exhibitions I've been to. The museum's famous upward spiral allows one to walk a smooth circular path, chronologically, through five centuries of art: Medieval icons to contemporary works. It's like a crash course in Western art, showing all the major styles (impressionism, realism, cubism,..) from artists you've never heard of.

Review in The Economist

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3. Skating: Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, has a new skating rink, where you can skate for free (just a skate-rental fee, if you need it). It's a wonder to be in this park, which only ten years ago was still a bit "sketchy", now a gem in the middle of Manhattan with a beautiful new rink.

Views of the rink: here and here.

Hours and prices

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4. Finally, a movie recommendation for this weekend only: I highly recommend the documentary "After Innocence", which is showing at Quad Cinema (see address and showtimes) through this Monday 11/14 *only*. So this is the last weekend.

I went last night and it was one of the best, most important movies I've ever seen... a story about demonstrably innocent men who spend years, sometimes decades, in prison before being freed on DNA evidence. Extremely well-made documentary.

Definitely see it, if you have an opportunity this weekend.

(P.S. If you're outside New York, read about The Innocence Project, which is helping many of these men get exonerated.)

At long last, several announcements I've been waiting to make:

1. Gel 2006 in New York in May

2. NEW: First-ever euroGel in Copenhagen, Denmark on September 1, 2006

3. Complete redesign of the Gel website

4. All Gel attendees can now upload photos and meet each other on the new Gel Community site

5. Need help convincing the boss? Request a Gel 2005 DVD

Details below.

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This is a special Good Experience post, announcing the launch of two Gel conferences next year - one in New York in May, and the first-ever euroGel in Copenhagen, Denmark in September!

The Gel conference is the annual - now biannual - gathering of our community: people across the world who are interested in exploring the idea of "good experience" in many contexts.

Gel (short for "Good Experience Live") focuses on good experience in all its forms: how it's created and what it means in art, business, media, community, society, and technology. A few speakers are Internet-related, but most are outside the tech world.

Gel is a thought-starter; a meeting place for the community of people who are interested in good experience in their work and life; Gel is an experience in itself.

Past attendees have said Gel is "amazing", "life-changing", and that they "can't wait to go again". Others have said that Gel is the best event they have ever attended. See more past attendee comments.

There are two Gel events in 2006:

- Gel 2006 in New York (May 4-5, 2006)
- euroGel 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark (September 1, 2006)

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Official announcement: Gel 2006 conference

Gel 2006: The fourth annual gathering of the Good Experience community

When: Thursday-Friday, May 4-5, 2006 (a two-day event)

Where: The Equitable Theater
787 7th Avenue (51st/52nd Street)
New York City

Price: $900 through December 12; bulk discount available.

Why Buy Now:
1. Each order by Dec. 12 gets a Gel 2005 DVD included.
2. Upload your photo and start meeting other attendees as soon as you buy the ticket.
3. Day 1 experience-choices are assigned in the order that you buy your ticket. (Buy earlier = easier to get your 1st choice.)

Buy your ticket or see initial speaker list: Link

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Official announcement: euroGel 2006 conference

euroGel 2006: The first gathering of the Gel community in Europe. euroGel will be a pan-European conversation about "good experience" led by speakers from across the continent.

When: Friday, September 1, 2006

Where: The Theater at the Black Diamond
The Royal Library
Copenhagen, Denmark

Price: €400 (US$480) through December 12; bulk discount available.

Why Buy Now:
1. Each order by Dec. 12 gets a Gel 2005 DVD included.
2. Upload your photo and start meeting other attendees as soon as you buy the ticket.

Buy your ticket or see initial speaker list: Link

(To pay in Euros, order here via PayPal.)

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New community site, and requesting DVDs

All Gel attendees can now upload photos and meet each other on the new Gel Community site.

To get your login data, just buy a ticket. (If you have come to Gel in the past, your old login data will also log you in right now.)

And as soon as you do so (by December 12), we'll send a Gel 2005 DVD right out to you.

For those of who you have not attended before: need help convincing the boss? Then request a Gel 2005 DVD.

If you're likely to attend a Gel event next year - Gel 2006 or euroGel 2006 - but haven't bought your ticket yet (perhaps you need the boss's approval?), then this may be for you.

Here's the deal: you have to promise to organize a group viewing of the Gel 2005 DVD, to spread the word to coworkers or friends who also want to learn about Gel.

The DVD contains over four hours of footage, showing every speaker presentation from Gel 2005. It's a great introduction to Gel, especially for people who have never attended a Gel event.

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More Involvement

If your company wants to get more involved in the Gel community, here are two ideas:

PRIZES:

If your company would be interested in donating a prize for a prize drawing during the day, contact us.

Prizes from past years (from IcelandAir, A&E TV, HBO, Crayola, NBC, Six Apart, Discovery Channel, Sam Brown, and other generous people and companies) each ranged in value from US$200 to US$1,000 (from €170 to €850).

SPONSORSHIP:

If your company would like to be a major sponsor, or to sponsor one of the five Friday breaks (breakfast, lunch, cocktails, or either coffee break), at either Gel or euroGel, contact us.

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Next Steps

1. Log in to the new Gel Community site and upload your photo.

2. Reserve your seat NOW for Gel 2006 (which will get you a login)...

3. ...and for euroGel 2006.

Remember that the price jumps, for both events, after December 12...

Worth a look this week:

- Good BBC News piece on (essentially) the integrated customer experience.

- It's time again for 37signals' annual holiday e-commerce ideas.

- (After my deep column today...) For more "deep" reading on philosophical topics, try this survey of Western philosophers.

The late M. Scott Peck, one of my favorite authors, once wrote that significant things are overdetermined. In his words, "For any single thing of importance there are multiple reasons."

I'm often asked exactly what "good experience" is (or what the Gel conference is about, for that matter), and this seems to be one of the better frames for explaining it.

Consider a few examples.

The Gates, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's artwork in New York's Central Park this past February, was a good experience because of the color of the fabric and the framing of the surrounding natural beauty and the participation of the community and the samples from the Gates workers and...

In the same vein, Theo Jansen's "beach creatures", or strandbeest, that we saw at Gel in April were compelling for a number of reasons. They wove together several themes: sculpture, evolution, environmentalism, the "challenges of the creator," and sheer mad-science invention.

In both cases we see one "thing of importance" - a good experience - overdetermined by several factors: artistic, functional, humanistic, community-oriented, and perhaps, in some cases, even spiritual.

This pattern of overdetermination reaches into the business world, too. Consider Whole Foods: the produce is fresh, and the selection is good, and the employees are treated well, and the company supports philanthropic causes.

Or JetBlue, which offers a good experience because it runs on time and has DirecTV and offers low prices and one-way fares. (Or so I heard recently, as one passenger enthusiastically told his seat-mate, a stranger, on an American Airlines flight I was on.)

A good experience is rich, something worth exploring, telling others about, and experiencing again. It's overdetermined - or holistic - or integrated. And being integrated makes it (often) hard to explain, since one can't truly reduce an integrated whole to a simple cause.

Whether you're in business, education, philanthropy, art, design, or any other area, this is a rich challenge for you: how do you create a good experience in what you do? What are the multiple factors that will overdetermine that experience? How do you integrate that experience within your larger context (customer needs, business goals, the environment, society at large)?

I know this is a bit "deep" for this column, but I think it's useful to have a language to work with as we continue to explore. (Speaking of which, look for the official Gel announcement next week; maybe this helps set the stage, so to speak?)