Experience Matters

Building Blocks of a Successful Digital Experience: Part One

It’s been said before—planning, designing, and building a successful digital experience is not unlike building a house. And like all good homes, a successful digital experience bears similar hallmarks of a well constructed building. It’s structurally sound, the plumbing and wiring works—it’s got curb appeal. And of course a home can be unique—both on the inside and out. Interior and exterior design appeals to our emotions, sensibilities, and preferences. Some home designs attract us while others do not. Sometimes it’s subjective and sometimes it isn’t.

The following series of posts to come will take a look at the building blocks of a successful digital experience from the ground up. If you look at the visual associated with this article—we will begin at the foundation—at the business brand and customer level. This is where we will build our house—through establishing a solid foundation based on understanding the needs and objectives of all three constituents. With a firm foundation in place, we’ll take a look at what we would consider “the basics”—creating a digital experience with a purpose—one that is both useful and usable. See diagram below:

Source: Kevin Mullet, The Essence of Rich Internet Applications (Macromedia, 2003)

If you think of the objects like the iPhone in this context, this means the design had to nail down the basics of making phone calls and playing your music. Without these nailed down—the iPhone wouldn’t be the success we are witnessing. But as we all know—useful and usable aren’t enough. Today’s users, consumers and participants are demanding—sophisticated. In Bryan and Jeffry Eisenberg’s book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? the authors surmise that consumers are behaving more like cats than dogs. Fickle, finicky, and individualistic vs. blindly loyal and predictable. Only experiences that are compelling, desirable and relevant will appeal to creatures like this—and this now includes the social aspect where dialogue and connectivity is becoming increasingly important to the average individual.

Nailing the basics as it turns out doesn’t cut the mustard anymore—and what’s worse, most organizations struggle with simply getting the basics right! But the ones who do get rewarded and the ones who take it further, creating demand for their brands end up in enviable positions. Think Southwest for air travel, Trader Joe’s for grocery shopping and perhaps Facebook for social media. Be sure to come back soon as we take apart and re-construct the building blocks that are critical for any successful digital experience. I’ll be referencing real world examples to balance the theory that goes with this kind of analysis + synthesis. So ya’ll come back now ya hear?