More experiences: other sides of the profession story

discussions about how to deal with the term. Googling “user experience” returns hundreds of hits. Is it more than the newest catchphrase or does it reflect a change in the description of interaction systems? Sometimes “user experience” is simply used as a new word for “usability,” sometimes it addresses a wider scope of factors needed for a system to be “loved” by users. Experience is a fascinating term offering rich interpretations. I offer the following short excursions into two fields which may not initially seem connected, but have both developed expertise in delivering experiences nonetheless. It may be worth connecting to see where else the optimization of experiences is a theme. User experience constitutes an interrelation between all the different aspects of pre-experience (whatever happened in the past), a means to facilitate motivation (e.g. a brochure trying to say something good), the immediate experience before usage (I call this the “impatience experience”), and the usage itself. Customer Experience. Considering users as customers leads us to the world of “customer experience” (another term worth Googling) and brings us more business-oriented language (which is, by the way, much needed in our profession). The goal seems to be the same: Make customers happy, motivate them to invest a specific amount of money, and bring them back again and again. Much more than in traditional HCI, multichannel strategies must ensure positive experiences at every contact point with the company, with its products, with its appearance, and with people talking about it. Customer experience management (CEM) is the process of strategically managing a customer’s entire experience with a product or a company. As Schmitt [1] describes it, CEM connects with the customer at every touchpoint and calls for the integration of different elements of the customer’s experience. CEM is concerned with sales and brand preferences. Before and even after the sale, CEM provides value to customers by delivering information, service, and interactions that result in compelling experiences. It builds loyalty with customers, adding value to the firm. It is very interesting to see the basic steps of the CEM framework described: analyzing the experiential world of the customer, building the experiential platform, designing the brand experience, structuring the customer interface, and engaging in continuous innovation. To take another snapshot, Carbone [2] defines the concept of “clues” that comprise experiences. Each sen-