Understanding Experience

And Its Forms

Experience: Knowledgable

I am lucky enough to have been exposed to things in life that many at my age haven’t. Being brought up by a businessman and having gone into business at a reletively early age I have gained a certain wealth of knowledge from experience. I have experienced useful things such as establishing a relationship with a supplier in a foreign continent, and I’ve also experienced horrible things such being ripped off or defrauded — although among businessmen, that’s worn as a badge of honour (in hindsight) and is referred to as “paying school fees”. But it’s important to understand that the value in this form of experience (knowledgeable) is derived from the other form of experience.

Experience: Sensational

By which I mean, of-the-senses— a feeling experienced from your senses, both mind and body. The feeling of ‘cold’ comes from 1 of your bodies 5 senses while the feeling of frustration comes from one of your minds many senses. We won’t be delving into psychology or phisiology right now however it’s important to note that the word sense is both objective and subjective — and both contribute (independantly or simultaneously) to the composition of sensational experiences.

A Correlation

An interesting observation to be made here is the correlation between these 2 forms of experience. When a series of events occur around you, your mind relies on your senses to understand the context of whats happening. You experience; fear and bravery, success and failure, joy and pain, satisfaction and frustration from whatever event that has lead you to it. Once your have felt these sensational experiences you learn from them and, over time, convert them into knowledgable experiences. But you must learn from them. When I first started learning how to drive, I was cautious and fearful. Over time I got more comfortable, which lead to more confidence. 15 years later, I am a pretty “experienced” driver, but I wouldn’t be if I didn’t learn from the time I got complacent and flipped a car, or when I was careless and forgot to indicate. Knowledgable experience comes when you learn from your sensational experiences and the events that occured for those to happen.

Capitalising From An Experience

There has been a recent boom in the field of Experience Design by companies rushing to create pleasurable experiences for their customers. It turns out that paying attention to the way your product/service makes your customer feel, really does matter. In many instances it is what sets your company/brand apart. Apps and technology based products rely on designing micro events that flow and lead users along a journey lined with sensational experiences, from start to finish. At least that’s what they try to do anyway. With so many variables in an ever changing world, what’s obvious is that there is no absolute version of UX design for a given product/service and many versions could do the job. But what’s not so obvious is that what matters more than a pleasurable experience is a meaningful one.

Designing An Experience

Before I can even look at redesigning the mechanisms behind the creation of experiences, as an experience designer, my task is to empathise with the user and understand how their sensational experiences are meant to feel like first. Once I have that, I can then look at all the options available to me in order to ensure that those experiences are delivered by the product/service, holistically and on a cellular level. It’s an involved and iterative process but it’s not all that complicated. One of my main strengths as a designer, is that I come with the experience of a multitude of experiences preinstalled. While I’m far from knowing everything, I should at least know where to start, I’d hope. My philosophy in life however is called being a “Student of Life”. My interests lay in experiencing experiences and being awake for them in order to maximise my learning. This is where mindfulness comes from, this is where you find beauty in life, this is where knowledge is unearthed and intellect developed. This is what sets people apart and this is where I aspire to be.

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer. — Randy Pausch