experience matters

“Facebook has been incredibly successful in attracting huge numbers of members.” Not a terribly controversial statement.

“Facebook has been successful because they have delivered a powerful, engaging, robust Experience.” This statement is a bit much more controversial than the first as pundits and commentators can take issue with many aspects of the execution of the Facebook interface. But one can argue that given the huge adoption Facebook has experience, there is something about the Facebook Experience that is terribly compelling.

At it’s most basic level the Facebook experience is made up of a few key components…

1. Simple, crisp design.
2. Ability for each member to create their own “gated community”
3. An Open Platform that allows 3rd parties to continuously provide new and interesting functionality to the members.

Will the Real Facebook Please Stand up?

That compelling experience delivered by Facebook is one side of the coin. The flip-side of the coin is that Facebook consistently delivers initiatives (an element of the Experience in and of itself) that annoy its users (and threaten the value of the huge lottery ticket held by its founder).

For the second time in recent memory Facebook finds itself on the wrong end of a PR “situation’. It seems like it was just yesterday that Facebook launched it’s News Feed feature to great consternation. The user base organized (using Facebook), created petitions (using Facebook) and began to leave the service. Facebook leadership relented and Mark Zuckerburg wrote an apology (on Facebook of course).

Here we are again. Facebook launches Beacon. Users organized… Petitions have been created… Members have been fleeing. Mr. Zuckerburg has once again relented. As Yogi Bera would say “It’s Déjà Vu all over again ! “

How is it that a company that has been incredibly successful at delivering a hightly sought after experience seems to keep screwing up that experience?

“My Kingdom for an Experience Design Strategy?”

The only answer I can come up with to explain this apparent inconsistency is that Facebook has not documented the core elements of the Experience that has made them so successful. In other words they have a secret sauce, but no one has written it down so the recipe can be referred to as they are whipping up the next batch!

I have not built a company with a billion dollar valuation in just a few short years, so it is difficult for me to offer advice to Facebook’s founder. If I had the opportunity (and the gall) to do so, I would respectfully suggest that Facebook sit down with their agency partners and carefully document an Experience Design Strategy built from insights about what got them to the scale that they have achieved. After documenting the strategy, Facebook should empower their agencies, employees and partners to cry foul when any effort is contrary to that strategy.

The Bard gets the last word

In Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, the title character utters his famous line “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”. One wonders if Mr. Zuckerburg should not be willing to give up his kingdom (and his Billion Dollar lottery ticket) for an Experience Design Strategy.