Levels of Experiences, Part One

From memorable to meaningful

While there will be ideas, principles, and frameworks throughout the first four chapters of the book on how actually to create and guide transformations within your customers, the last two chapters, 5 and 6 (as currently envisioned) get to the heart of doing so.

The core of chapter 5 is the Delta Model that I discovered thanks to the feedback from my subscribers here on Substack on two earlier frameworks of different types of transformations. I told that story, including how the Delta Model came to me and all of its levels, in the post here, with links to a video presentation and written summary of the video.

Now in this post and Part Two to follow, I will more formally present not the Delta Model itself, but the bottom segment of it – Experiences – which will then lead to the middle segment, Transformations. This first part will discuss memorable and meaningful experiences, with the second going over transporting and transformative experiences. In the chapter as planned, after these sections I’ll discuss how if you want to stage great experiences – transformative or otherwise – you need to make them cohesive, robust, personal, and dramatic.[i] I’ve already posted on each of these elements here on Substack, and plan to include them in the chapter in this order (with edits, enhancements, and perhaps different titles):

·         Being intentional

·         The four realms of transformation

·         Personal transformative experiences

·         The hero’s journey with Applying the hero’s journey

Given just the first segment of the Delta Model is 5,000 words plus another 8,000 or so for these four sections, I’m either have to do a lot of editing or split it off into its own chapter, and then do a separate chapter on the Delta Model; we shall see.

Let me also thank those of you who responded to my Table of Contents post; you offered some very insightful thinking that I appreciate, including one link to another thinker whose thoughts on meaningful moments actually relate to this chapter. And a reminder: I cannot tell who responds on Google Forms, so feel free to provide your name/email, or remain anonymous as you prefer.

Joe

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Recall the Progression of Economic Value given in Chapter 1 and how each higher level of offering is built atop the one below it. Or, to say it differently, each successive offering subsumes the ones below it.

And so it is with transformations, which are created out of experiences. We only ever change because of the experiences we have. Determining and guiding transformations, therefore, not just leans heavily on but requires depicting and staging experiences – transformative experiences in particular.

The art and practice of transformation guiding therefore subsumes that of experience staging. Every idea, principle, and framework that you can apply to experience design you can also apply to transformation design. This chapter therefore focuses on creating transformative experiences, providing a number of ideas, principles, and frameworks that you can use to guide your customers in achieving their aspirations.

It begins by looking more richly into the Progression of Economic Value, recognizing that within the experience level this economic offering itself progresses with successive “sub-levels” of experiences.[ii] These begin with merely memorable experiences, expand with highly meaningful experiences, intensify with deeply transporting experiences, and finally grow into truly transformative experiences. Similarly, transformations themselves, as a distinct economic offering, progress from changes in degree (such as enhancing our capabilities, heightening our understanding, or refining our tastes) to changes in kind, those that transform our identity in some way, shape, or form (such as modifying our values, altering our beliefs, or adding a new element to who we are).

Just as with the all the levels of the Progression of Economic Value, each successive sub-level of experiences is subsumed within the ones above it. It all starts with being memorable, a key distinction between experiences and services.

Memorable Experiences

Recall the definition of experiences as a distinct economic offering that I gave in the first chapter: memorable events that engage each individual in an inherently personal way. Note that first word: memorable. For an offering to be a true, distinctive experience it must create a memory, the residue of the experience that lingers long after it is over[iii] – and the longer the better. If there was no memory, there was no experience. Period.

Of course, in the English language the word “experience” covers a very expansive set of situations. There is a sense that if we are awake and conscious we are experiencing, but such mere “sensing” lies largely outside of economic offerings (and where it is part of an economic offering, such ordinary events happen at the service level).[iv] In the economic relationship between company and customer the offering must be memorable to rise to the level of an experience.

To be memorable you must be engaging, reaching inside of people and creating the experience within them. Commodities, goods, and services exist outside of us, while experiences happen inside of us, which is what makes them inherently personal. When people in enterprises and as consumers think of being engaged, generally they only think of emotional engagement – triggering happiness, sparking surprise, building suspense, and so forth. But understand that you can engage people not only emotionally but physically, intellectually, and spiritually. All four contribute to human flourishing, so in your (transformative) experience design don’t confine yourself to just designing for emotions.

While all of the frameworks on designing experiences I will give later on this chapter apply to every level of experiences, the four realms of experience is most particularly a model of engagement, helping you design experiences that are robust. But as you do that, you don’t have to limit yourself to designing engaging, robust, and therefore memorable experiences. Think of how you can design your experiences to be meaningful.

Meaningful Experiences

Meaningful experiences go beyond memorable by adding a level of significance to us as individuals. Such experiences connect with us more strongly, particularly in appealing to our humanity, to our personal sense of purpose, to our identity in some way.[v]

Meaningful experiences add a level of significance

Seeing a blockbuster movie can be a pleasurable way to spend the evening and give you something to talk about later. But watching a documentary that, say, gives you insight into historical events that impacted you or your family can have much more weight and consequence. Attending a class in college can be memorable for a number of reasons (one of which is hopefully to remember what’s needed to succeed on the test). But taking a community ed class as an adult because you want to learn about gardening, engine repair, or welding can have more lasting significance. Playing golf on a summer Saturday with your buddies and recounting it afterword on the 19^th hole can be most satisfying. But taking a once-in-a-lifetime trip to play golf in Scotland, including a round at St. Andrews, makes much, much more of an impact on your psyche. And walking into an art gallery as you stroll down a city street may be memorable for what you see and discuss. But experiencing a beloved Vermeer painting in the flesh that you had only ever seen in books proves so much more meaningful.