Experience Design: Brands, Designers & People

Madrid, sept 2012

Designing emotions.

Designing for human complexity.

"What are the motivations of a designer?, Why designers always want more?, Why designers feel responsible for their audience?, Why designing appears to be so easy?, Is there anything in this world that is not designed?

I was asking myself these questions after a month of intensive and exhausting design work.

Experience Design is an multidisciplinar, synergistic, empathic, "humantific" and aesthetically activity that also requires a complex management of oneself and the expected and unexpected environment to create an emotional connection between everyone involved in the experience itself: The brand, the audience, the designer and the team.

Experience Designers need to understand and love their audience and need to be empathic from the heart: Empathy is a magical bond that can not be faked, otherwise there will be no emotional experience, just an exchange.

An Experience Designer also needs to developed managements capabilities with an strong focus on PR Communication skills:

Clients: Communicating complex ideas and insights to an audience/clients not familiar with creativity processes and creativity professionals.
Audience: Communication skills that would strenghten relationships between people that live the same experience and the brand

Designers need to control and manage the uncertainty of designing experiences for people as complex and unpredictable as oneself. 

Designers not only need to be able to deal with uncertainty: they need to enjoy it and include it as a vital part of their creative process. 

Experience designers have to be able to stay firm, confident about their critical thinking methodology applied in the process, and sure that the innovations that they have proposed are going to work out: They have to find out how to be able to transmit self-confidence in every decision. 

Designers have to learn how to feel comfortable working in an enviroment willing to transmit you their fears and insecurities in every stage of the process. It´s time to take control, it´s time to transmit your confidence, t's time to build trust.

Designers have to be confident leaders that create delusion in their teams; They have to pretend that what they do it´s not that difficult: If it would transcent to the rest of their team the real complexity of their management of unpredictability that involves any activity involving people's emotions, NO ONE WOULD TRY TO INNOVATE.


Management of complexity, unpredictability, and uncertainty inherent in any innovation or new model creation is what defines a XXI century designer.

When everything it's over, an experience designer reaches a nice sense of accomplishment, but onces again observes that nothing would have been possible without the participation and generosity of every person involved, and confirms that we better be humble or we will be anything at all.

And the designer moves on quickly to the next project and looks forward to the next challenge... By the way, I read that now Tim Brown of IDEO, talks about designing DNA .. . I am in! ;)

What drives designers?

It's all about people 

What Do Customers Want? Brand Experience and Branded Content

Customers ar collectors of Experiences

2012. We all are consumers of experiences.

Welcome to the Social Media Revolution

The common denominator of all of us is that we share our lives within our circles
of trust as never before. Being social it's about sharing. And we like it.
By sharing our experiences, we fulfill personal, professional, ideological needs: photos, ideas, trips, video, family, events that tell our story  and reveal who we are, what we know, where we want to go, our dreams, goals... And we learn from the experiences of others, too. 

Sharing our experiences enriches us individually: we are developing new social capabilities and  skills. Surprisingly, a tacit respect happens in most social media and groups.

After several years managing our personal social networks, we have literally put together a VISUAL overview of our life experiences. We could say that we have a global vision of our lives like never happened before in the history of human kind. 
It's an opportunity to personal growth: The natural next step is to analyze the pieces of our lives -the collection of our experiences-, to improve it: "What  experience am I missing? What experience I would like to accomplish? How could I complete this aspect of my life?, Always going on vacation to the some place so the same photo year after year? 

We have reached a point when everyone is a designer of their own life: to keep on building oneself up, we need content that would add value and complement our expectations. We are some kind of collectors of experiences that want to enhance our life project. 

We need contents to feed our social media.

Social Media is about people. 

CONSUMERS ARE ASKING FOR BRAND EXPERIENCE AND BRANDED CONTENT BUT WE - brands- ARE NOT BEING TRUST WORTHY AND WE ARE NOT BEING CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING  WHAT COSTUMERS NEED.


And brands.
Everyone living on this planet  is a consumer since birth:  We all have brands that are meaningful to us and are part of our circle of trust, because they deserved it  because they have met the prerequisites required for any relationship based in confidence:

• It is a reciprocal relationship
• It will not betray my trust
• It 's authentic
• It gives me love-value
• We share the same values ​​
• It respect me and wants to know me better
• Optimism and hope
• A BRAND that brings to my life what I need.

And what happens when someone in whom you've trusted, betrays you in any of this points?

• kick him/her off our circle of trust
• Share the betrayal with whom would like to hear it
• Prevent to our friends from him/her
• Won't give a second chance 

What do costumers want?
We want brands to be meaningful to us and capable of adding real value to our lives ... brands trust worthy that won't betray us and smart enough to see that engagement is possible only in a  WIN-WIN relationship ... like in all relationships that work ;)

Illustration by Mae y sus preciosos vinilos

¿Qué Quieren los Consumidores?: Brand Experience + Branded Content

Los consumidores son coleccionista de experiencias

Todos somos consumidores de experiencias y de contenidos. El problema es que no conseguimos confiar en las marcas.

Bienvenidos a la revolución de las redes sociales

No hay más que observar qué hábitos tenemos TODOS: el denominador común es que compartimos nuestras vidas en círculos 
cada vez más amplios de confianza a través de las experiencias que vivimos. Tenemos todos los medios a nuestro alcance para hacerlo y las estadísticas nos dicen que nos gusta cada vez más. 

Compartir experiencias nos satisface aspectos personales, profesionales, terapéuticos, ideológicos...porque si no fuera así, no lo haríamos. Además, socializamos con respeto en la gran mayoría de los casos.

Las experiencias y contenidos que mostramos a nuestro circulo de confianza a través de fotos, ideas, viajes, vídeos, me gusta,...van contando nuestra historia, nuestra vida: van desvelando quienes somos, a quién conocemos, a dónde queremos llegar, cuales son nuestros sueños y nuestros miedos.
Y aprendemos de las experiencias de los demás.

Las conclusiones obvias: la más clara es que estamos compartiendo nuestras experiencias porque nos enriquece individualmente, si no fuera así, no lo haríamos. Y añado que claramente se está desarrollando una "confianza" en la comunidad anónima que formamos todos. Es sorprendente el respeto tácito que existe en la mayor parte de la redes y grupos. Cada vez queremos más.

Después de varios años, ya manejamos nuestras redes sociales y ya tenemos una visión panorámica de nuestra experiencia vital. Se puede decir que tenemos una visión global y visual de nuestra vida, y también la de nuestros amigos y conocidos de nuestro circulo de confianza. El paso siguiente es analizar para mejorar: ¿Qué experiencias me faltan y quiero tener?, ¿cómo puedo completar este aspecto de mi vida que dejé a medias?, Llevo 3 años colgando la misma foto de mis vacaciones en XXX, ¿Por qué no cambio..?

Hemos llegado ya al momento en el que cada uno es diseñador de su vida, y lo hace a través de contenidos que le añadan valor y complementen su expectativas:  somos coleccionistas de experiencias que mejoren nuestro proyecto vital.

LOS CONSUMIDORES NOS ESTAN PIDIENDO BRAND EXPERIENCE Y BRANDED CONTENT PERO NO SOMOS CAPACES DE DARLES CONFIANZA NI DE ENTENDER QUÉ ES LO QUE NECESITAN.

Y las marcas. Todas las personas que viven en este planeta aquí y ahora, somos consumidores desde que nacemos y tenemos marcas que ya son parte de nuestro circulo de confianza porque se lo han merecido: se lo han ganado porque han cumplido los requisitos indispensables que requiere cualquier relación de confianza:

• Me corresponde: es una relación recíproca
• No va a traicionar mi confianza
• Es autentica
• Me aporta amor-valor-esperanza
• Tiene los mismos valores que yo
• Me conoce y me respeta
• Me infunde valores positivos

//Aporta a mi vida lo que yo necesito en cada momento//.

¿Y qué pasa cuando alguien a quién has dado tu confianza te traiciona en cualquiera de estos puntos? 

• Le expulsas de tu circulo de confianza
• Compartes la traición con quién quiera oírte
• Previenes al tus amigos
• No le das una segunda oportunidad ni a él/ella ni a su familia.

¿Qué quieren los consumidores? 

Queremos marcas que nos aporten valor real a nuestras vidas...desde una relación de confianza donde ambas partes reconocen que ésta es una relación de WIN-WIN...como todas las relaciones que funcionan ;)



Social Media is about people.




Imagen inicial: Mae y sus preciosos vinilos.