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We are in the experience economy.

This Harvard Business Review article is written by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore and published in 1998.

As goods and services become commoditized, the customer experiences that companies create will matter most.

There is a book written by the same authors.

“The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage”

A few weeks ago, I bumped into a blog, where I learned the simple mantra of experience economy.

I’m not an order taker. I’m an experience maker!

This mantra reminds me that, all we are designing/creating experiences for our clients/customers.

It’s the picture that I took with iPhone in a restaurant in Seoul, Korea. The poster was on the front wall of the kitchen where waiting staffs get dishes from the kitchen. It says, “From the moment you step outside here, you should be an actor/actress.”

Korean companies are also investing on user/customer experience as a way of innovation. For example, SK Telecom has HCI (Human-Centered Innovation) group and KTF has CEM (Customer Experience Management) team.

We, D’strict helps companies create their original and unique customer experience, especially in digital display market. I will write more about this later on.

Update: I decided to change the category “User Experience” to “Customer Experience” since the latter is broader and more appropriate.

Amy Tenderich wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs, asking to use Apple’s design expertise to invent a device which helps diabetics to have a better life. Diabetics can’t leave their home without an insulin pump and/or blood glucose monitor wired to their body. Even though they have portable devices but those are far short of our expectation in terms of design and usability. It’s annoying sometimes and clunky.

We are, of course, deeply grateful to the medical device industry for keeping us alive.But while they’re still struggling with shrinking complex technologies down to a scale where we can attach them, hard-wired, to our bodies, design kinda becomes an afterthought.

She also said:

In short, medical device manufacturers are stuck in a bygone era; they continue to design these products in an engineering-driven, physician-centered bubble. They have not yet grasped the concept that medical devices are also life devices, and therefore need to feel good and look good for the patients using them 24/7, in addition to keeping us alive.

And not long after her blog, surprisingly Adaptive Path, a company with usability expertise responded to her call and designed an excellent conceptual product. You can find the story about it on their blog. This is a video overview:

I felt a headache whenever I was told that I should take a look into bio & nano technologies and the next revolution would happen where those technology meet IT technology. Logically I couldn’t agree more with the idea but I was baffled because I don’t have any background in those fields and didn’t know where to start. But when I saw the Charmr video, I felt like seeing a ray of light in the dark cave. This might be a sign of ‘€œSingularity’ as Dr. Raymond Kurzweil is telling us in his recent book. You might think that we don’t even have wearable computers yet and that kind of thing wouldn’t come into our lives in the near future. But think again, iPod is a wearable computer and Charmr is one, too. We *are* already in that stage.

If you wanna dive into the world of these new technologies, you will find this interview interesting: Guy’€™s interview with Moira Gun, the author of Welcome to Biotech Nation“.

The world is changing and everyone is saying that. So it’s nothing more than boring and you are getting deaf whatever they say, until something hits on your head. As far as we are in the IT industry and trying to invent new technologies and innovative services, it’s hard to ignore a new generation called Net Gen. They take new things without any fear. They don’t take precedent rules. PBS has a show called FRONTLINE and they’d done a special report, ‘The Merchants of Cool‘. This show gives us some insight about today’s teens. You can watch the full program online here.

Now let’s get back to our real life and watch people around you who are under 25. If you don’t have anyone around you, go out and find them and meet them and talk to them. You will find that they are a new human race absolutely. In the “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything“, authors claimed that this new generation would change not only market place but also our working environment. It’s our job to leverage their yet-unleashed power and to drive their passion for innovation.

“Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”

For myself, I am trying to learn WIKI and to find best ways to collaborate with Net Gen. It won’t be easy to adopt open source concept and to find my position in the new world. To be honest with you, God, it’s a hassle until now. I only hope that no more new generation will come in the future. Not again, at least not in my life, plz.