“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day.

When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.”

It appeared in Yahoo! Mail just a few minutes ago. The big type caught my eye. Nike is a big brand (you may have heard of them), so I paid attention expecting to witness a phenomenal banner execution that I could learn from.

Wow. No.

I’ve been running in Vibram’s Five Fingers for over a year and don’t expect to be buying a traditional running shoe for a long time. And when I did wear traditional running shoes, Nike wasn’t my brand of choice– the fit is never right for me. All this to say, maybe I’m not in their “target audience” and that’s why I’m not getting their strategy.

But let’s say that being a women 25-35 who runs regularly (or almost regularly in the last few, hot months) and subscribes to Runner’s World does makes me a qualified target. The media buyer gets some points for the placement.

That is where my compliments for this ad and brand experience end.

So, I was curious, “What is Nike claiming its shoe and I can do together to yield awesome fitness results?” Well, I didn’t find out by moving my mouse over the banner. No, the only interactivity in the banner is to change the color of the shoe. I’m offended. I’m sure some research firm found that color is the number one factor in the athletic shoe buying journey of women and it seemed like this was all Nike needed to do to sell me the shoes. But, seriously? What does this shoe do? I care about the color, but there are actually other factors in my decision-making. My female brain is able to hold at least 3-4 purchase criteria at once. Okay, I’m easily offended, but you’re trying to sell me some sort of shoe technology, so at least treat me like I have a brain.

I certainly didn’t want to reward Nike, their creative agency, and the research firm with a clickthrough to their site, but I did. Still in research mode, I thought, “Maybe there is an awesome site experience that isn’t done justice by this ad that I should check out and maybe find out what these shoes do.” My expectations are way too high.

Click 1

Okay, wouldn’t you expect to get to a page of a website that contained, if not a full explanation of the shoe, at least a passing mention of it? Well, my friend, you’re expectations are far too high as well. I was dumped on the front page of Shop Nike with no mention of the shoes in the banner. Luckily the site uses a traditional navigation approach, so I figured I was only one more click away.

Click 2

Okay Nike, you’re really making your potential customers work now. If clicking on “Women” in the navigation bar doesn’t take me to a page containing picture, or at least a mention, of these wonder shoes in fabulous colors, I’m pretty sure you don’t care about me at all. I’m starting to form very negative impressions about your brand. In fact, this whole adventure took so long that I forgot the name of the shoe and had to go back to my inbox and look at the banner to remind myself. I promise you Nike, if I wasn’t into experience strategy, I wouldn’t have the attention span. I soldiered on because I was interested in how hard it would be to actually find the shoe on the site.

Click 3

So, the shoe content area on the page didn’t contain the name of the shoe I was hunting (Trainer One, which I learned back at my inbox), so I clicked the “more” option expanding the module as you see above. The Trainer One wasn’t there, so I actually clicked again on “all women’s shoes.”

Click 4

Finally, the mythical shoe! And it’s in the first position in the page. So, selling the Trainer One is obviously a priority for the Women’s Shoe division of Nike. I’d imagine their sales are far less than the Men’s Shoe division and the Clothing division which is why they don’t get to message on the homepage, but they should at least get a placement on the Women’s category page. Failing that, they should ensure that their Trainer One banners link here, where the shoe can be found quickly by interested visitors, or even better to the page that actually answers the question, “What do the shoes do?” That page is one more click away.

Click 5

This is where I expected to land on my first click from my inbox. I was reading my e-mail, so you can assume that I might have better things to do than chase down a shoe whose benefits I don’t know (I mean, unless the colors are just super awesome…rolling eyes.) I’m not actually sure the benefits of the shoe are on this page. I basically took this screenshot and bailed to write this post. But, unless their strategy was to frustrate UX bloggers (or sometimes bloggers) to the point of writing about their shoe for a buzz boost, this whole experience was a complete failure.

Nike has the savvy and money to do this right. There is no excuse for how bad this experience is.

About this version:

Goals

1. Explain what Experience Design is.
2. Describe who is involved in designing experiences.

I don’t think User Experience people own Experience Design — developers, graphic artists, clients create the space we work in and are more than stakeholders.

People
Getting to knowing the minds of others is classic UX space, but this sort of empathy is also practiced by designers, marketing professionals, and developers. But, simply knowing people and their needs does not create an experience.

Technology
How the experience will be built from design phase deliverables to final experience is just as important as People. Of course, the decisions about what technologies to use are complex and rely on an understanding of who the experience will reach and what it’s trying to accomplish for the business.

Business
At the most basic level, without someone to pay the bills, you can’t do much of anything. Whether it’s brand awareness or lead conversion, creation of an experience implies that there is a goal in mind that relates back to that investment.

Audience
Where a technology and people interface, you have an audience. If you choose a technology that few use, your audience is smaller. And if you pick a technology that lots of people use, you audience is larger, but perhaps the interactions you’ll be able to design for will be limited.

Medium
Where technology and business overlap you have a medium (or maybe a channel). The kind of technology selected for an experience has to suit the audience and the business. The technology that might provide the best experience may be too expensive for the business to invest in. We have to find the balance.

Commerce
I mean this in it’s largest sense. It could be e-commerce transactions, but discussion is commerce in a social experience.

Experience
This is where the technology, people, and business come together for an audience engaging in commerce within a medium. Yes?

Story
The definition of experience seems very cold and unemotional– almost like an e-commerce site’s checkout app. Story warms it up by adding the business’s story (brand), the people’s story (culture) and technology’s story (interaction.)

I feel like I’m getting closer, but please comment away!

Please Note: I put my previous post and versions of the model after the break to try and clean this post up a little for people who might be coming for the first time.  I’d create a new post, but the comments on this one have been so tremendously helpful and insightful that I don’t want to separate them from the updated model.

______________________________________________________________

What I’m trying to do:

Last night I couldn’t sleep because I was trying to draw Venn diagrams in my head and keep track of all the overlaps. Eventually I got out of bed and jotted down some things in a notebook, but my old friend Visio and some time discussing technology with my husband really help me get this to a point where I’d like to share it and get some reactions.

I don’t want to over-explain this. If I have to explain it too much, it’s not doing the right job. My intent is to show that Experience Design isn’t a process, deliverable, or even a single discipline but a fundamental understanding of the interconnections of people, story (context and narrative), business, and technology. The purpose is to show how fields are interconnected and why collaboration at every stage is not just valuable, but help projects reduce risk by ensuring that all facets of the experience are considered.

My questions are:

• Is it clear what I’m trying to convey and does it meet that purpose?
• Are the 4 main circles the right things to start with? Have I left anything out?
• Do the words I selected for the overlaps seem natural or too much of a reach?
• Is there another type of diagram or way of showing this that you think would provide a better understanding?

Don’t be shy. If you don’t understand it, it’s my problem, not yours. I really need to know if I’m on the wrong track!

Based on Gavin’s comment:

March 6, 2010 11:20 PM Update

Thank you everyone for the awesome feedback so far. It’s really helping me formulate a clearer view of exactly what it is I’m trying to communicate and how best to do. This is where I am right now:

I’ve put the Experiencer and the Experience in the center. All the work that happens around the center is to create that magical connection between them. The circles that comprise the diagram are now skills that must be brought together in order for that magical connection to occur.

Where Storytelling and Empathy overlap, I’ve put Artistry. By than I mean something like a “house style.” If you are a great storyteller and know the mind of an audience, you can create a very pleasing style. But because Business Knowledge and Technological Understanding aren’t included, you may not be able to actually build it and if you do it may not suit the needs of the business.

Still a work in progress. Thanks again everyone. Comments still very much appreciated!

Thanks,

Me

I’m sorry to be an Apple fan girl, but the best pieces of technology I’ve ever owned are my MacBook Pro and my iPhone. My previous iPods and MacBook were great friends, but Apple’s products just seem to get better and better. That is why, I’m giddy about the fact that Flurry Analytics has detected 50 Apple Tablets online in Cupertino.  If price weren’t an consideration, I’d probably be camping out in front of an Apple store on launch day to get one, but it’s going to take some pretty slick new features to get me to spend $600-$1,000 in the near term.

It was the same way I felt about the iPhone. I knew it was cool and would change the way I used the Internet, but it took me a while to feel comfortable with the price tag. I needed lots of people using it in real life telling me about the benefits to make the investment. In fact, it took me getting an iPod Touch to realize how awesome apps were. But, if I had it to do over again, I probably would have skipped the Touch and gone right for the iPhone. Apple eased me into the idea of device cost plus data plan by offering me a less expensive device that worked on my existing wireless connection. I hear that may be an option with the Tablet too. If it could tether with the iPhone, it would be pretty great, but I bet AT&T or Verizon would come up with some reason why I  need to pay them more.

On last thought, Apple makes products which create demand (the opposite of what I was taught in Marketing class) and because they’ve delivered so well in the past, excitement prior to launch is a huge asset to the company. Without spending money, they get blog posts, tweets, news stories, word-of-mouth, and other fan-driven, fan-consumed media that must be worth millions and millions of dollars. They have their detractors like everyone else, but if you are even a little excited about the Tablet, the Apple fan machine is probably the driving force.

That said, 2009 has turned out to be pretty great to me professionally and to my family. I feel fortunate and hopeful. 2010 is queued up to be a better year and I hope that will mean great things for you.  Or, at the very least, different.

But, to truly enjoy the opportunity that a new year brings, we should change the way we should do enter it with a fresh perspective. Here are some ways to do that.

1. Question

I grew up in an environment where questioning what was true and real (vs. superstition, religion, custom) was encouraged and it’s a big part of my life. In my work life, I’ve often found an answer I like and never asked the question again.  Understanding the limits of certain technologies is important, but so is reexamining what is possible. What couldn’t be done in 1999 is commonplace in 2009. To be innovators, we have to question our assumptions and our limits constantly.

And when you ask questions, make sure you listen to the answers. Pay attention to the people who try to shut you down quickly without really considering possibilities. You’ll have to work on these people. But, if you’re lucky enough to have people around you who delight in debate and inquiry, you have an environment ripe for innovation and great work. Work with what you have, but make sure you’re bringing and open mind.

2. Adjust

Adjusting your media filters can be a great way to change your perspective. One of the things I plan to do differently is how I consume news. For instance, I’m typically an MSNBC viewer. I find it is where I get the news that is most relevant to people like me. Lately, I’ve been watching CNBC in the morning instead. I don’t consider it to be made for me, but it’s so interesting to see the kind of news that people in the finance industry and big business get. It’s almost like a cultural exchange program. The agency I work for has many clients in the financial industry so it has the added benefit of teaching me more about their customers and business challenges. So, shake it up a little.

3. Write

I started this blog in 2009 and it reaffirmed my belief that the process of writing is important to thinking. Having to synthesize ideas and communicate them in a way others can understand forces you to think harder and find the core of the idea. I often start writing a sentence expecting to say one thing and find I need to pause, think a while longer, and then edit my original idea. Writing for an audience is a great way to not only capture your best ideas, but to have others challenge them.  A post I wrote this year about healthcare turned into an interesting debate on facebook and my understanding of the issue is different as a result.

If you don’t have a blog and aren’t in the market to start one, there are other ways. You can start an idea log or journal. You can write letters to the editors of magazines or newspapers. You can comment on the blogs of others (ahem!). And, if you’re employer has a blog or newsletter, maybe you can contribute to it.

4. Play

Yesterday, someone told me I shouldn’t hold back on being silly. If he knew me better, he probably wouldn’t have said that. I am often very silly. But playing around with new ideas isn’t silly, it’s actually a great way to brainstorm. You’re silliest idea may not be a winner, but who knows where it might lead?

And don’t just play with ideas. Play with things. Have you been to a toy store lately? How about a big electronics store or sporting goods store? There are so many fun, innovative things to try. Play with them and then think about what goes into designing and marketing them. When I do, the world seems like a happier place where good ideas can lead to good things.

5. Move

You need to move to another country. I know that’s probably not an option for most people, but if you get the opportunity, go! Living in a foreign country as a child and then again as working adult has been one of the great privileges of my life. The differences in culture can be astonishing, but the similarities in the human spirit are uplifting. The world would be a better, more peaceful place if we could imagine it from the perspective of others .

So, if you aren’t going to pick up  and move, what can you do? You can visit. Being a tourist in a foreign country is the same as living there, but is still a great experience. But, if traveling isn’t something you’re able to do, you can start by just being aware of what’s happening in other countries.

As an American, I know it’s easy to think about our country as the center of the news universe. Do you think people in other countries feel that way about America? Probably not. Things are happening all over the world and we only seem to notice when they’re bad. Let’s be open to the idea that we’re all connected and understanding how is knowledge worth having.

1. Facebook

I’m connected to old friends and far flung family members on a daily basis. It’s wonderful to share pictures, thoughts, and links with people I know without having to actually make time for it. Picking up the phone (or writing letters) feels impossible most days and I’m so thankful I can check in when it’s convenient.

2. iPhone

Having my e-mail, the web, and my favorite apps with me wherever I go has given me an amazing freedom. In 2008, i I was waiting for an important e-mail, I had to sit at my desk. In 2009, I can be anywhere — the grocery store, the park, the car (not while driving, of course.) I feel much more productive and in control.

3. Runkeeper.com and the RunKeeper Pro App

Running is a new-found joy of mine and Runkeeper puts so much information at my fingertips. During a run, I know how fast I’m running, how far I’ve gone, and get audio cues reminding me to speed up or slow down. After a run, I get a map of where I ran, a calories burned estimate, my splits, elevation and more. And having a single place to see all my runs over time helps me to see my progress and motivates me to keep going.

4. Active.com

This website has its flaws and usability issues, but it seems to be the best way for fitness-based events to collect registration and payment information. All 5 of the 5Ks I’ve signed up for this year have used Active.com. I’m thankful for the convenience of searching for events on their site and the ease with which I can sign up. If each organization used a different platform, the experience would be much more difficult for them and for me.

5. Twitter

My favorite part off Twitter is the sharing of news and information. I follow a variety of new sources, bloggers, and other media people. As a result,  I rarely visit Google Reader anymore. I like the combination of selective filtering (choosing who to follow) and currency (based on what time I am looking at my stream). To me, consuming information this way feels much less overwhelming that RSS feeds.

6. Freshbooks.com

For the first time in my career, I’ve needed to create and send invoices this year. I was a little overwhelmed about how best to do this and went to Google in search of some templates. What I found was a great, free site that makes invoicing so simple. It’s easy to get started and the customer service is great.

I’m certainly not saying that you should stop focusing on social media. Depending on your audience, social networking may be much higher on the list. And understanding the new opportunities to engage with your audience is important. I just don’t want the excitement of social networking to mean that the best user experience people are drawn away from the key experiences most people are having online.

For instance, I’ve had quite a bit of experience with traditional .com and .gov websites. Lately, I’ve felt like that was sort of a negative. I’ve had much less experience with social networking sites than some of my peers and I’ve been afraid I’d be left behind. But, looking at these statistics helps me to understand how important traditional websites still are. They should and will evolve, but they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

And marketers should think about these numbers too. Clearly search optimization is still one of the most important things you should be doing online. Depending on your target, display advertising on news, weather, and e-mail portals can’t be forgotten. So, while you’re listening and engaging with your audience on Twitter, don’t forget they are a small (albeit engaged) portion of your audience.

Twitter is powerful and has become the way I find and consume a lot of information. It may just be who I choose to follow, but it seems like Twitter users love the service and love to share posts about how great it is. So, if you’re a Twitter user, it feels like everything and everyone that matters online is using it and getting fantastic results. Inversely, anyone not using it (particularly businesses) is missing out on the best thing ever.

Maybe one day, but not yet.

Here’s a breakdown of the issues:

Information Architect

First of all, it’s a simile. What we do with information is sort of like creating blueprints for a building. That’s troubling for some and it’s also limiting in that it doesn’t take into account the things like usability evaluation and rich transaction/interaction based elements of the job. Worse, there are also people on the development site of software and web projects with the title Architect. I know this is a problem from needing to hire IAs and getting techical architect resumes.

Verdict: I no longer consider this title to be a good fit for what I do. I think this title is best used by those who are working primarily with large amounts of content that needs to be organized, named, and tagged.

Interaction Designer

I like this one because it does take into account the richer interactions we’re now documenting in our wireframes and siteflows. I’m not just organizing content into pages, I’m creating experiences. But again, this one gets us into trouble because graphic designers don’t consider user experience people to be designers and there is a particular sensitivity to the overlap between interaction designers and interactive designers (those who create the actual interface elements that will be visible to users). It’s getting more and more common, so maybe that will help with some of the resistance from the graphic design community, but again, what about the usability evaluation, heuristic analysis, and other research focused aspects of the job?

Verdict: Unless there is a separate group doing the research portion, you are probably and interaction designer plus a usability analyst.

Customer Experience Architect

I like this because it has the customer/user right up front. And rather than limiting me to the information or interaction design, it expresses looking at the entire experience. Putting customer and experience before architect seems to do a better job explaining what we do — information is such a vague term on its own. One criticism is that you don’t always have “customers” particularly if you’re a government agency or non profit, but to that I’d say that we all have internal and external customers of our work.

Verdict: This seems to capture more of what I do and overlaps with fewer, more established development team roles. I’d like to see it used more.

At the end of the day, it’s the work we do and the value we provide to projects and teams that keeps us all employed. What we call ourselves isn’t as important as ensuring that our deliverables are standard enough to be recognizable and understandable, but are also innovative enough to capture details of projects using the newest technologies. From what I’ve seen, that appears to be happening (or have happened). Now is really the time to think about how we want to brand the profession and what qualities we want to make our central focus.