Family dynamics have been changing for a long time. It’s true. Companies spend most of their time understanding and delivering value to individuals. If they see families at all, they see them as a group of individuals, each with their own set of needs and preferences. Toy makers see parents as decision-makers and children as users. Content creators tell stories aimed at individuals within families. Consumer goods companies focus on decision-makers in families and assume that if the decision-maker has a family then … she will be busy. And therefore the best thing the goods can be is convenient!

Justin Jackson

Fiserv

Product Management - Digital Payments

What does Experience Strategy mean to you?

In my business, we always have to remember that while a person’s money is an incredibly important part of their life, it’s also just that – a part. A strong Experience strategy allows us to ensure that our products and services are aligned to driving real benefit in our users’ lives.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Ryan Hutmacher, an award-winning chef and founder of the Well Beyond Food project. As a self-proclaimed experientialist, his company creates custom food experiences designed to foster connection & promote inclusion within organizations and their teams. Tune in as we discuss the importance of authenticity to brand-building and ways to measure the ROI and impact of intangible experiences.

This year’s final bootcamp session focuses on how to engage customers who have extremely high expectations. If there’s one theme that weaves its way through all our sessions, it’s that customer engagement requires more than just friendly service and an NPS score. People’s expectations move faster than most companies realize. In this session we will discuss four concepts that are advanced, yet necessary to be at the forefront of experience strategy and digital context.

Jessica Frick

Sr. Manager, Strategic Experience Design

Best Buy

What does Experience Strategy mean to you?

Tactically, Experience Strategy strives to envision differentiated customer experiences that are desirable and inclusive by taking the time to understand the environment, the needs and aspirations of the people impacted by the experience, and the motives or drivers of the business, but it means so much more to me. For me, Experience Strategy is part of a larger human-centered design movement. A movement that is pushing businesses to better serve the communities in which they exist. What it all comes down to for me is that Experience Strategy means good citizenship and using our resources to improve the lives of those around us.

So much has happened since Dave Norton wrote Digital Context 2.0. In 2015, based on work done in the Collaboratives, Dave argued that the smartest place in most people’s lives would be their home. He described how channels would change too, predicting that omnichannel would not be the final step. We are on to Context 4.0 and we wanted to share with you and your team key concepts that will help your company solve for the nexus between channel and experience.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Dwayne King who works at the intersection of experience transformation, human-centered innovation, UX design & research. His unique view of organizations has allowed him to diagnose the real reasons 90% of innovation labs fail. Tune in to learn how to lead the other 10% and set your innovators up for success.

This session is demonstrative.

Systemic thinking and the meaningful experience framework.

This session is actionable.

Today’s we are joined by Julie O’Brien Ph.D., a behavioral scientist working at the intersection of wellbeing and technology. Julie shares insider knowledge into how companies of all sizes can use science to improve their customer experience. Tune in as Julie shares the seven most important behavior change principles for Experience Strategists.

This session is meaningful.

This session is transformative.

While some Americans have returned to their offices full-time, almost every sector has seen lasting change in where and how employees work. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2021 Work and Well-being Survey, American workers across the board saw heightened rates of burnout in 2021, and 79% of employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey. Nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation, or energy.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Ron Swidler, Chief Innovation Officer at The Gettys Group Companies and creator of the Hotel of Tomorrow® Project, a think tank that unites teams of hospitality experts to ideate, prototype, and test innovations for the near and more distant future of the hotel industry. From technological innovations and new business models to unprecedented shifts in customer expectations, Ron shares the top 10 things hotels should be doing to prepare for the future.

Why Job Types

About 8 years ago, I met Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor who was most famous for ‘disruptive innovation’ and ‘jobs to be done.’ The world’s most renown thinker on innovation of his day, Clayton was a kind and generous man. We were at a conference. He was the keynote speaker and I was running workshops based on the keynote.

After his presentation, he and I met and I shared with him some research we had conducted into jobs to be done. Because we at Stone Mantel study experiences, we see things a bit differently from those who focus exclusively on innovation. The customer hires the company to get a job done for them. Companies who know the job to be done are more likely to innovate successfully. That’s where innovation thinking often stops. Experience strategists ask additional questions about the job to be done. They want to know how to maximize the value that people get from the experience of having the job done for them.

Today we are joined by Joyce Cadesca, Founder and President of famHQ, a tech-enabled family concierge service supporting working moms in managing their households and careers.

In this episode we look at the functional, social, emotional, aspirational, and systemic Jobs To Be Done in this exciting new startup.

Recently we were discussing with consumers what types of answers they would want from smart sensors. Of course, they wanted heart rate--table stakes. They could name off a number of biometric requirements. I was impressed. The most requested new feature they wanted from their sensors was a ‘recovery score’. Not how long they were in beast mode. Not how many steps they had taken. Not even their sleep number. What they wanted to know is how long after a hard workout or a stressful day at work did they need to rest to recover. And not just ‘rest’ as in sit like a lump in a Barcalounger. They wanted know how much meditation, connecting, and stretching they needed for specific high performance activities: biking, hiking, etc. 

Last week Stone Mantel announced our newest Collaborative: The Transformation Economy Collaborative (TEC). This is a big deal and we are extremely excited about the program. When we launch a new Collaborative, we intend for that program to build and grow over seven to eight years. So we are making a seven year commitment to new content, lots of new research, assistance, and insights.

Which is exactly what we do with all of our Collaboratives. This year we will have three Collaborative programs: The Digital Healthcare Collaborative, which is in its 6th year. The Meaningful Experiences Collaborative, which is in its 4th year. And the TEC.

Experiences, like umami flavors, can be difficult to pin down. Both ideas transcend words, so how do you define them? How do you measure them? How do you help leaders and customers understand the value? In this episode, we are joined by Aga Szóstek, Ph.D. a strategic experience designer and author of "The Umami Strategy” as we discuss how to create experiences that are not just memorable, but powerfully impactful.

It’s almost universal. When we ask people about behavior change, personal transformation, nudges, encouragement, and other aspects of transformations where they know they need to change, they say they like support and guidance but they also want control of their change. Of course, it would just be so much easier if our customers, patients, employees, and audiences would just be compliant. After all, they hire us to know what we are doing. Shouldn’t they want to follow our process?