The optimism of #Purpose & science of #design in forging #digital customer experiences! Opinions my own!

Everything upstream, the closer were get to there Why; that’s where the big-bang happens. And it happens every few years, but we are seeing that cratering as well – faster and faster we hurtle.

Here the human dreams, aspirations, their indomitable will and spirit (let’s hope it’s for good!) aka Purpose is transmuted, transformed, transmogrified some say ‘bent’ (energy, matter) into new products/services; the coming into existence , the synthesis of such is akin to genesis. In this ‘state’ we see Innovation sparks, maelstroms of possibilities, like lightning bolts, everywhere. Here too we Design. We humans design the world we can (re)imagine, we want to re(write) and shift the future, we want to (re)define what’s possible. There are other forces at play – luck and risk as the book the ‘Psychology of Money’ describes – but there’s also extrinsic and intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of these ‘new’ products/services are brimming, almost spilling over, raring to be birthed, to meet the world. These new products/services, these new form(s) of energy/matter either generates or incinerates value for human kind. They are derivative(s) of a founder(s)’, a brand’s, a company’s Purpose in that they embody (literally), they have a payload of reagents required to terraform a little piece of this world/universe – again, hopefully into a better place ie. being a force of good for good, and some loftier sights e.g. for our species to be multi-planetary and eventually, space faring.

These products/services, assuming ‘successful’ (success here simply means many/majority subscribe and are aligned to the founder’s/company’s/org’s Purpose, their Why), their Extrinsic values will increase exponentially – during our times. Contrast that to products/services with much less Network Effect (Metcalfe’s Law) during the Industrial Age – they rose in value too – just a lot (a lot!) slower. I digress. Any ways, these products/services accrue Extrinsic value – something I call (Human) Experience Equity, the measure of which is Return on Human Experience (ROX). Yes, it should be ROHX but that’s a mouthful so just ROX ok?

In my humble opinion, ROX might be considered a new assetclass, new type of Equity bcos it can (and will be) tokenised in the near future. That’s another deep rabbithole and I’ve shed some ‘predictions’ how that macro scenario would play out in other articles.

The extrinsic (and intrinsic) value of these products/services increase/accrue but can only be realised, actuated, eventuated in the balance sheet when they’re activated vs ‘consumed’ by humans- and activation happens, you got it, downstream. Now that all sounds nice and dandy especially being ‘upstream’ – but the orgdesigns of today (I dare not even think tomorrow) must rethink value attribution, realisation of benefits should be commensurately vested over time. Case in point, if product designs are shite – something I call Experiential Debt – happens. The design flaws are ‘pushed’ downstream and manifests itself in common things we call (we’ve been conditioned to think) issue/problem resolution tickets, average wait/handling time, efficacy FCRs and a plethora of other (unfair, misguided) operational metrics! The generation of ROX is cyclical upstream and is rather constant, like a drumbeat, downstream – as it should be. Most downstream journeys (part of the journeys) have Agile biorhythms – think of them like DevOps. Yes, DevOps seems like it’s just applicable to application and software development. No! It’s a way of executing, thinking, ideology even – that increases (much) the probability of successful delivery/outcomes. What does that even mean? They’re constantly burning down user stories (solving, fixing problems) i.e. incessantly ‘rowing’ using a dragon boat analogy. Everyone is equally vital in a dragon boat! There’s the drumbeat -the Scrum Master – but the burn down (rate of solving problems) rates go off the charts when team(s) get to know each other better – these fixes are applied to, in our case, the product/service – the very design flaws rearing it’s ugly head upstream.

Now if the team(s) downstream are trying to plug too big a hole e.g. if the product ‘quality’ is sub optimal, even their best execution velocities and prowess might still fall short. Too ‘big’ or too ‘complex’ a problem here is arbitrary – but we get a good idea scrutinising, diagnosing, triangulating real-time feedback to glean invaluable insights – but again, the extrinsic value isn’t realised until action is taken.

If the feedback (received) is not actioned – e.g. it doesn’t even make it into the product backlog – Experiential Debt reaches critical mass very quickly, exponentially in fact. Eventually if left unchecked/un-actioned we reach a breaking point. At this exact point in time, ROX erosion happens (value is being destroyed), and there’s only that much deficit a brand/org can take before the inevitable.

Keep a look out for Experiential Debt – like using margins when you’re trading, you really need to know which side of luck/risk you’re on!