Experience revisited, again

Just as I keep revisiting "service" and becoming increasingly ignorant of what it actually is, I have now revisited "experience" and explored it from a few more angles than in I did in the XLA Pocketbook and adopted in Reflections on XLA. Not that the old definition ("the set of emotions, feelings, and judgments that result from sensory perception while living through an event") was wrong, but it is more nuanced.

The major insight is that while the old definition provides a clear and structured way to think about experience - dividing it into emotions, feelings, and judgments - it oversimplifies the interplay among these components, and underrepresents the roles of memory, context, and embodied cognition. The new, more nuanced definition acknowledges that experience is an emergent, dynamic, and context-dependent phenomenon, arising from a continuous interplay between sensory inputs, bodily states, cognitive processes, and social and environmental context.

Understanding the dimensions of human experience

As IT professionals, understanding the nature of human experience is crucial for developing and delivering effective digital products and services. This article presents a comprehensive definition of experience and explores its key dimensions through easy-to-understand explanations and figures.

Defining experience

Experience is a complex phenomenon that can be defined at various levels of detail. Here are three levels, followed by an explanation of 16 dimensions.

1. Experience is the dynamic set of our thoughts, feelings, and bodily reactions to something, shaped by what we sense, know, and expect. ?

2. Experience is a continuous, evolving cycle of internal states (physiological, affective, cognitive) + sensory input + dynamic reactions. This cycle is shaped by our expectations, learning, social context, and ability to correct our understanding, creating our personal interpretation of situations.

3. Experience is the dynamic, emergent phenomenon arising from the continuous, context-dependent interplay of sensory inputs, embodied physiological states, affective states, cognitive processes (memory, attention, evaluative judgments), and the dynamic responses and reactions to these inputs and states. This integrates immediate reactions with anticipatory, reflective, and interpretative dimensions, shaped by personal agency, social interaction, and cultural discourse. It evolves through maturation and learning, involving increasingly sophisticated integration of bottom-up sensory processing with top-down predictions, mediated by error-correction mechanisms. Individuals actively construct, share, and modify their understanding of interactions within power-laden social and cultural frameworks.

Let's break this down into more digestible parts using four key figures.

The foundations of experience

This figure illustrates the basic building blocks of experience:

1. Sensory inputs: Information we receive through our senses, like sights, sounds, or smells.
2. Cognitive processes: Mental activities like thinking, remembering, and decision-making.
3. Affective states: Our emotional conditions, including moods and feelings.
4. Physiological states: These are the body's conditions, such as being tired, hungry, or energized.

These elements constantly interact, influencing how we perceive and respond to the world around us. For example, a tired and hungry person (physiological state) might react more negatively to a minor inconvenience than someone who is well-rested and fed.

The temporality of experience

This figure shows how our experiences unfold over time:

1. Immediate reactions: Our instant responses to stimuli, like flinching at a loud noise.
2. Interpretive reactions: Assigning meaning to our experiences, often influenced by our personal history and cultural background.
3. Anticipatory responses: How we prepare for expected events, such as feeling nervous before a presentation.
4. Reflective processes: Looking back on past experiences and making sense of them.

Understanding this temporal aspect helps us recognize that a person's experience isn't just about the present moment but is shaped by past events and future expectations.

The development of experience

This figure illustrates how our ability to process experiences evolves:

1. Top-down predictions: Our expectations and prior knowledge influencing how we perceive things.
2. Bottom-up processing: Information coming in from our senses.
3. Error-correction: Adjusting our understanding when our predictions don't match reality.
4. Maturation and learning: As we grow and develop, our capacity to understand and respond to experiences changes. We gain new skills and knowledge that affect how we interpret and react to situations.

This development process explains why people at different life stages or with different backgrounds might experience the same situation very differently.

The external context of experience

This figure illustrates four external factors that influence the emergence of experience:

1. Social and cultural influence: Our experiences are shaped by the society we live in and the cultural norms we've internalized. ?
2. Personal agency: Despite external influences, individuals have the capacity to make choices and influence their own experiences. ?
3. Power dynamics: Societal structures and hierarchies can significantly impact how people experience various situations. ?
4. Shared meaning-making: We often construct our understanding of experiences through interaction with others. ?

Example

A remote office worker, Sarah, is trying to access a critical file on the company's shared drive but keeps getting a "permission denied" error. She calls the IT help desk.

The encounter (and why it goes wrong):

• Sarah: "Hi, I keep getting a 'permission denied' message when I try to open a file on the shared drive. I need it for a meeting in 15 minutes!"
• IT agent: "Okay, what's your username?" (types something) "Okay, try again now. Should be fixed."
• Sarah: "Still doesn't work! The meeting is about to start!"
• IT agent: "Hmm, well, I reset the permissions. Maybe try restarting your computer?" (sounds dismissive)
• Sarah: "I don't have time for that! Can't you just give me temporary access or something? This is really important!"
• IT agent: "Look, I've done all I can do remotely. If it's still not working, you'll need to submit a ticket and someone will look at it when they get to it." (ends the call abruptly)

Sarah misses a critical part of her meeting, feels unsupported by IT, and is frustrated by the lack of a timely solution. She perceives the IT department as unhelpful and uncaring.

Analysis:

• Foundations of experience Sensory inputs:?Error message on the screen, dismissive tone of the IT agent. Cognitive processes:?Focused on the urgent need to access the file, evaluating the IT agent’s response as inadequate. Affective state:?Frustrated, helpless, angry. Physiological state:?Stressed, time-pressured, possibly anxious about the meeting.
• Temporality of experience Immediate reaction:?Frustration upon seeing the error message. Anticipatory reaction:?Increased anxiety about missing the meeting. Reflective reaction (after the call):?Perceives the IT agent as unhelpful; feels unsupported by the company. Interpretive dimension:?Interprets the situation as IT not prioritizing her needs.
• Development of experience Top-down prediction:?Expects IT to provide a quick and effective solution. Bottom-up processing:?Observes the IT agent’s dismissive tone and unhelpful suggestions. Error-correction:?Rapidly revises her initial expectation of competent IT support. Maturation/learning (future calls):?Develops a negative perception of IT support, potentially becoming more hesitant to seek help in the future.
• Context of experience Social and cultural influence:?Company culture that may not prioritize rapid problem resolution for remote workers. Personal agency:?Sarah feels a lack of control over the situation due to her dependence on IT. Power dynamics:?Imbalance of power between the IT agent (gatekeeper of access) and the employee needing assistance. Shared meaning-making:?If Sarah shares her experience with colleagues, it could create a shared negative perception of the IT department.

Key takeaways:

• The bad experience isn't just about the technical problem; it's about Sarah's emotional state, her expectations, and her perception of the IT agent’s responsiveness.
• The IT agent's actions (or inaction) significantly shaped Sarah's interpretation of the event.
• The broader company culture and power dynamics contributed to Sarah's feelings of frustration and lack of support.

By understanding all these dimensions, IT service providers can proactively design their interactions to create positive experiences, even when technical problems arise.

Conclusion

Each person's experience is unique, influenced by a complex interplay of internal states, external inputs, personal history, and social context. By understanding these dimensions of experience, professionals can better empathize with the product and service recipients. This helps them with design, development and delivery.

Other experience-related articles

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/experience-hype-mark-smalley-nxpre/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/experience-dominant-logic-mark-smalley/