connect & attract the initial connection with the person and using that contact to make an effective and affective impression

advocate the person actively communicates their satisfaction to others

compelling
captures the users’
imagination

reverberating ‘you just have to try this’

orientating
help users navigate
the world

orient the overview or preview of what’s available or possible, allowing exploration and supporting the early stages of learning

extend & retain the person comes back for more as their expectations are raised—at the same time a significant level of loyalty and leverageable relationships are achieved

generative promise more good things

embedded become part of users’ lives

interact
the completion of valuable
or valued activities while
delighting the senses,
skilling, and establishing
expectations about the
overall content of the encounters

The experience-cycle model

account for or consciously disregard a customer’s expectations for the stage and design accordingly.

The experience cycle plays out at multiple scales. It plays out “in the large,” across the life of the relationship between a customer and a product. It also plays out “in the small,” across the experience a customer has with each touch point. For example, a good magazine ad connects immediately with readers, presents a clear structure, draws readers in, extends their knowledge, and delights them so much that they show it to other people. A good product package, a good interface, a good support service, and other well-executed touch points enable a similar cycle of experience. These interactions build on one another and further cement the producer-customer relationship.

The experience cycle model suggests experience has a fractal quality—that experience has a self-similar structure at different scales. The model suggests recursion—each stage stands for itself but can also “call” the whole model. The recursion process can continue down to a fine scale as designers work out the ways in which an experience ramifies. (Design also has a self-similar structure at different scales, employs recursion, and ramifies.) Thus the experience-cycle model is useful to designers both in early stages of a project when working out the broad outlines of a product or service and also throughout the process as successive

iterations add increasingly finer levels of detail.

The experience-cycle model moves beyond the push model of the sales cycle, framing interaction between producer and customer in terms of an ongoing relationship. It describes steps that build the relationship, and it offers criteria for evaluating the experiences customers have with products and services. It is a useful tool for anyone involved in planning/designing or managing/operating products or services.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Hugh Dubberly manages a consultancy focused on making services and software easier to use through interaction design and information design. As vice president he was responsible for design and production of Netscape’s Web services. He was at Apple for 10 years, where he managed graphic design and corporate identity and co-created the Knowledge Navigator series of videos. Dubberly also founded an interactive media department at Art Center and has taught at San Jose State, IIT/ID, and Stanford. Shelley Evenson teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in interaction and service at Carnegie Mellon's School of Design. She is the director of graduate studies in design and co-director for the joint master's program in HCII between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Madeira. Shelley has more than 20 years of experience in multidisciplinary consulting practice ranging from branding to product and interaction. She is a frequent speaker on design languages and strategy, design for service, organizational interfaces, and what lies beyond human-centered design.

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May + June 2008

DOI 10.1145/1340961.1340976