ATOMICITY OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

ATOMICITY OF EXPERIENCES?

To understand the intricacies of a Human Experience (HX) we first need to dig into what it’s made up of. There are several layers to this, each cogent, depending how we examine and what’s the required application or use case.?

We will use analogies profusely in this section, as it best helps convey the heavy abstraction - rather I share my world view, my point of view, and you decide if analogous, whether it’s comprehensible.?

First principles, without Trust and empathy, there’s nothing (no human connection). This is primal. The?interplay between these yin and yangs have brought human civilization to where it is today. I believe in a future of abundance (vs scarcity) - utopian vs dystopian -

As we hurtle towards a net zero economy, an abundant world where utilities like electricity are free. Societies will flourish, our thoughts will progressively shift to building legacies and increasingly on the future.?

?It will be an enlightenment and ascension of sorts. Humanity will live out its Purpose, more will chase their dreams and do great things. We will probably be a space faring species, as we seek out new adventures and fuel lifelong learning. That’s me, thinking it’s squarely in our hands to build this better world for humanity. There’s the alternate reality - dystopian - where post singularity will essentially give way to a new world order where Artificial Intelligence dominates. Contrast this to my belief; a world where I think?Humanity aided by AI will coexist and do great things together, as civilisation evolves.?

Another way to think of it -if we continuously play the Infinite Game and seek improvement and betterment, we ascend.?

Now let’s discuss the layers, peeling back the HX onion as it were.?

Layer 0: Trust and Empathy?

Nothing is possible without these two?‘atomic’ molecules.

The customisation of commodities and goods into?services.

Services that are?personalised, become experiences.

There must be enough Trust and empathy to catalyse these transformations.??

To increase Trust payload, the map and language of value must be aligned; consistency and sustainability are table stakes. Failing to deliver the most basic goods and commodities (transactions) is ‘bad’ service. Similarly, efficient yet steril services may not morph into enduring experiences. Enduring experiences have elasticity and tensile strength; over time this ‘reservoir’ of Trust becomes our social credit (reputation, credibility).?

To summarise: exchanges of good/commodities are transactions.

Transactions when customised become services.

Services when personalised become experiences. It’s all about efficiency when we transact, but as we render/consume services, we begin to see an increased Trust and empathy payload (more Trust than empathy to be precise). In its final form i.e. experience there’s a 50/50 Trust and empathy composition. In fact, empathy may even become the primary catalyst for some premium ‘high-end’ experiences. The Experience Economy book discussed a similar value chain (progression of value upwards) - here we attempt to go under the microscope to study the atomic makeup of each ROX entity.?

We’ve observed that the Trust and empathy payload?gradually increases - starting from zero in transactions - and in its final form (experience), empathy may even be the primary makeup. .

Layer1:’ Upstream?and Downstream?

We discuss Journeys and it’s constituents in the next chapter. Here we explore the rough bifurcation that I simply call Upstream and Downstream.?

Wesay the Upstream focuses on innovation?and design, orJourney Design. (subset of Journey Management).?

Downstream we have Journey Orchestration, focusing on DevOps and longtail execution (meaning, the burn down of the backlog and user stories).?

These user stories are groomed and packed into backlogs (think of it as a repository of activities, enhancements)?are the fixes, the close gaps to the pain points sprinkled all over journeys.?

So that makes XM = XD + XI (Experience Design, Experience Improvement)

XI includes XO + XA (Experience Orchestration, Experience Automation)

And so it follows Upstream =?JD + Downstream = JO

Layer2: HX = CX +EX?

The Human Experience is largely a summation of CX and EX.

We are all connected citizens, empathetic employees and convergent customers, simultaneously.?

It’s simpler to perhaps view HX as 2 sides (CX, EX) of the same coin - both are ROX generative. However in the last decade, CX was?the focus for most large scale Digital Transformations. The past 2 years have exacerbated the need for good EX - and as we speak - it’s already the #1 priority for orgs in 2022. The struggle is real, we are even calling this The Great Resignation. Many experts are calling EX the ‘new’ CX - I prefer to think bothEX and CX?builds and accrues ROX, but the former faster given the potential/chasm/divide created in the last 10 years ( EX was ignored largely) and of course, the global pandemic more recently. Companies now contend with trying to make The Great Resignation The Great Pivot or The Great Adaptation.?

Let’s unpack HX = CX + EX a little.?

Either CX or EX are made up of strains (lots and lots) of Journeys, intertwined.?

You might think of these as separate multiverses; all the transactions, interactions, experiences (CX, EX) making up each circular journey. And as we discussed before these journeys are further classified upstream vs downstream. There are endless ways to splice and classify these XM entities (hence why we have to study the Atomicity of each) - but for Economics and ROX purposes - we take it that the general HX = CX +EX equation holds true. We will have to adapt these into InfiniteJourneys with new events in the timeline e.g.?Web3.0, Industry5.0 and the Metaverse.?

Layer3:?People, Process and Technology??

Yet another way to observe the?XM entities?is to take a more classical view - closer to what Systems Thinking is.?

In the Experience Economy book - this would roughly correlate to the actors (performances), scriptwriters (processes), technicians (technology, stage crew). The entire team, each and every member is critical in staging the experience;?the cast members as Disney has popularised them.?

That is to say, using the same analogy, an org is made up of people, processes and technology.?

Processes are like the operating system of the company, defining how things are done- e.g.how transactions are executed. These transactions may be internally focused, some describing interactions with alliance partners and the ecosystem. The bulk of these, at least the focus in the last 10 years have been client-facing or customer-centric processes. ECommerce comes to mind, the UXUI facelifts are another favourite for Digital Transformations.?

There are processes describing how services are rendered; but (still) rarely how experiences are created. Obviously, rarer still are magical, exceptional experiences - which we have to build (capability)?up fast, accrue ROX (which is sustainable value) entering the Exponential Age. The Exponential?Age will?see explosive growth and innovation, things such as the net zero economy, climate action, DeFi, and DAOs. This I believe will bring us closer to a world of abundance.?

I think we are missing the point altogether! Transformations are about ;to me) building a tranche of future value. Much like an appreciating asset to be consumed in the future.?

Transformations are about the ultra individualisation of HX.

Just a few years back, we’d settle for Transformations are all?about the hyper personalisation of experiences. I believe with Web3.0 and Industry 5.0 that no longer holds.?

Layer 4: Staging a performance?(Front, middle & back stages)?

To colour processes (better) - besides classifying them in broad strokes as internal vs external facing, we’d have to tag them further as front vs middle vs back stage processes. This analogy is probably borrowed from stage performances from centuries past e.g. Commedia dell'arte.

This (tagging) has proven to be immensely useful. Take a journey mapping exercise for example. Hopefully we’d all agree there’s insights aplenty, but it’s about accruing and realisation of these (economic) benefits that key stakeholders are after (even if they’re not able to express that need/want properly). Don’t let journey mapping remain an art project - sure there are lots of beautiful squiggly swim lanes describing what each persona/archetype needs/wants. In this case, the secret sauce is in the verbatims, what these groups of customers have actually expressed through Omni Channel?feedback and surveys. It’s less the aggregate (NPS, CES)?score, but the efficacy of the actions that ensue, that matter more to the bottom line.?

Each pain point or more positively, each experience improvement opportunity (EIO) - are tagged front vs middle vs backstage (amongst other things - we typically label on?other metadata e.g. complexity, technicality).?

So what’s front, middle, back stage specifically? If staging experiences are opined to be analogous to the performing arts (by Pine in the Experience Economy), then you’d allow front stage to be client-facing functions, back stage to be corporate ‘shared services’ such as finance, admin, logistics etc. the middle office then typically refer to things such as Corp Strat, planning, analytics etc?

What’s important is that each EIO is linked to a root cause e.g. the delay in the eCommerce check-out function is due to a slew of potential reasons including a logistics SKU discrepancy check, payments processor time outs etc. With the right diagnostics, DevOps teams quickly triangulate to solve. Usually EIOs may be tagged across 2 spheres of processes: front and mid, or mid and back stages. However it’s entirely possible to have an EIO straddling front and back stages.?

We typically use methodologies such as?TQM and BPR to double, triple click on journey maps to distill EIOs from the many needs/wants. This way, we’re one step closer to the realisation of benefits and true balance sheet impact. I’ve seen orgs go on an incessant MVP and prototyping death spiral. Maybe cherry picking would be more apt. Essentially a bunch of Low hanging fruits, or what I call over solved EIOs = prime candidates for rapid prototyping and minimum viable products. These work for a while, and should be the premise for the first few scrums and sprints, but detracts leadership confidence very quickly. This is also another reason why facelifts and UXUI reskinning have been mistakenly deemed transformative. Using financial terms, these are akin to window dressing, and are speculative at best (ROX short?spikes attenuate over time). Short termism is the other major culprit -the current cadre of?leadership are still largely present forward thinkers, through no fault of their own.

I personally don’t like extending these labels into departments - which to me?increases the thickness of the siloes already built over the years. I argue for a Journey-led Org (JLO) with every ‘stage’ equidistant from the customer (which also includes employees in EX).?

We will discuss this aspect of Journey Science in the following chapters l - using the Experience Calculator asset to illustrate the algorithmics.?

Service is time well saved. Experience is time well spent. That goes to say, an Experience-led Transformation is time well invested.

And it is- sustainable Transformation programs accrue and build ROX sustainably, over time.

We want consistent, compounding growth. Don’t be mistaken, there will be ups and downs, but the overall trajectory should be going up.?

Another, updated take on the Atomicity of Experiences. Transactions are in fact the vanilla exchange of goods/services. They’re just that, transactional.?Interactions are core transactions with #Empathy & #Trust lathered on when rendering/delivering a service. Now then at its highest/evolved form, an Experience has a payload of?#ExtremeEmpathy + exponential lvls (consistency) of #Trust;?

This leverage model has seen the value of a cup of coffee range between $50c to $10-15 a cup!?

leveraged ‘value’ of ? spent >100-1000x?| #cx #metacx #InfiniteJourneys #rox

Transactions, into interactions, into experiences built on and underpinned by Trust.?????

Coincidentally the Government of Singapore is building what it calls the Moments of Life or LifeSG.?

?I thought we could build on that to discuss what actually makes a Journey and what are it’s constituents??

Taking on a citizen’s lens, a? sample journey would be for example? “first time home buyers”. Singapore has one of the best, if not the best, public housing scheme in the world - a subject? studied by other governments far and wide, especially China (which since has lifted close to 800m citizens out of poverty!)?

An episode within that Home Buying journey might be an application for a home loan, all the way up to transfer of keys and moving in.?

Within say, the Transfer of Keys episode we might have several Scenes. These could include meeting up with gov officials (HDB or Housing Development Board in Singapore)? a? final administrative? paperwork and regulatory? checks including official strata ownership etc?

Finally, we have Acts. The actual act of the new? homeowners inspecting their new property would be an example.?

That was a Home Buying Journey - which would typically fall into the remit of the Housing Development Board (HDB) in Singapore. If you think about the entire life-journey of a citizen, they’re home-buyers at a certain life-stage - somewhere nearing the ‘middle’ of their life-journeys. You’d imagine birth, parenting, school going, National Service and joining the workforce - these would be the earlier journeys, episodes - and there would be a ministry, or government agency with jurisdiction over those. So it goes that to string and stitch together a coherent/seamless citizen journey, we need the entire government to unite! That’s why in the last 2 years, I’ve always said that governments across the world have really upped the ante on HX. It’s not just, it’s no longer just? a plain eGov, Digital Transformation thrust with a focus on? CX (Citizen Experience). It’s about saving lives, and it’s about rebuilding, cementing Trust with heavy flavours of extreme empathy and? transparency e.g. in 2020, first stamping out, controlling the spread, then getting everyone vaccinated.?

The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) of Australia is attempting the same, to streamline? a citizen’s journey with clever service design.

Similarly, we could attempt to deconstruct Telco journeys.?

Journeys >> Episodes >> Scenes >> Act?

Imagine a journey, say a “home Fibre Broadband installation” journey typical of a telco. This journey may comprise several Episodes; Customer request eg new home address, creating/ scheduling , the appointment and maybe the actual field team being deployed.?

In the Episode where the field team is deployed, a Scene could be one of the technicians testing signal strength in multiple locations within the domicile. Finally an Act could be the technician downloading a floor plan/layout to pin-point blind spots with zero network?coverage. Having this taxonomy - or ‘fish bone’ as the author calls it, allows XM teams to be more accurate when triangulating atomic experience gaps.?

Using NPS as an example survey mechanism, an org putting dipsticks too loosely (kinda like buoys in an ocean) might miss out on ’weak signals’ that may otherwise be preemptive. Using the same Home Fibre Broadband journey illustrated previously: NPS scores might be ‘high’ at the start and end of the journey; but if we take an average across all the episodes, scenes and acts- things could be drastically different. Positively, it’s that much easier to pinpoint corrective interventions e.g. in the authors actual experience, minor tweaks (choice of appointments slots, field team’s script when initiating first contact) saw major improvements in the overall journey.?A