Delighting the user is a key goal when designing experiences. Brands spend a lot of time and effort creating engaging user experiences; with a focus on reducing friction and looking for opportunities to elevate the experience beyond the expected in a move to differentiate from the competition.

There’s a huge amount of value to be gained from focussing on the user experience to achieve these emotional highs, but an often overlooked consideration is… at what point could, or should, emotional highs take place?

When designing user experiences, there’s often a tendency to focus on the doing part of the experience itself — the focal point of the experience where most of the action takes place, where the user interacts directly with your product, service or offer. What’s often overlooked is what happens either side, either before or after these core touchpoints. There are often opportunities to elevate the user experience by considering how to create emotional highs either Before (anticipation) or After (memory and outcome) the core experience takes place.

This article takes a look at some of the behavioural science associated with experiences and emotions. We’ll look at the role of emotional highs in three places: Before, During and After, and reflect on what it means for brands designing user experiences.

Before: building anticipation

In today’s hyper-connected world, having to wait for something — a response, product delivery or a service slot, is increasingly seen as an inconvenience. Seamless interactions and quick responses are expected by today’s users and customers.

However, there are situations where slowing down, or waiting longer for something has a powerful impact on perception and satisfaction. In particular, the anticipation of experiences, where the pleasure involved in imagining and looking forward to the experience can be as enjoyable as the experience itself. A number of scientific studies including the project trackyourhappiness.org and research by Kumar et al. have shown that people derive more happiness from the anticipation of experiential purchases than material purchases, and that waiting for an experience tends to be more pleasurable and exciting than waiting to receive a material good.

The implication for brands is to spend time and effort on building the excitement and anticipation around experiences, which could be anything from developing a ritual around usage of a particular product — the steps leading up to the moment of consumption/usage, through to developing touchpoints leading up to the core experience that help people imagine and look forward to it.

There are many brands that do a good job of building anticipation, for example:

• Lush — UK cosmetics retailer Lush are known for the intense sensory experience they create in their high street stores. The combination of smell and colour builds anticipation and excitement around using the products at home.
• Paynter Jacket Co. make limited edition jackets celebrating iconic styles, designed in East London before being made by a small family run factory in Northern Portugal. The jackets are made to order, in limited edition batches, just three times a year. The storytelling behind each jacket, combined with its exclusivity and long wait time create real anticipation around the product that heightens its perceived value.

During: enhancing the experience

Focussing on the key touchpoints where the user interacts directly with your product, service or offer is understandably important, with brands looking to remove friction and pain points, and find moments to elevate the overall experience in order to delight the user.

From a behavioural science perspective, one of the most interesting concepts to consider when designing experiences is the difference between the experiencing self, vs. the remembering self. As Daniel Kahneman describes in his seminal book Thinking Fast and Slow, we tend to forget many of the specific details about the experiences that we have, and the way we remember them can be quite different from how the moment-by-moment experience actually felt at the time.

We can all relate to this in some form, such as looking back at experiences with rose-tinted glasses, or assessing past relationships on how they ended rather than how they were overall.

Critically, research has shown that the three most influential elements that determine the lasting memory of that experience are: how it starts, how it ends and the “peak” of the experience (whether good or bad) — particularly the last two.

What does this mean for brands? It suggests we should be designing experiences for users, clients and customers that start and end well, and have a strong positive peak or “delighter” moment (known as the Peak-End rule). Arguably, other aspects of the experience are not so important as long as they are not overly negative.

After: from experience to transformation

There are a number of ways in which emotional highs can manifest after an experience has taken place. As just discussed, a strong positive “peak” or “end” of the experience can have a lasting impact in memory which can continue long after the experience has finished.

Another interesting concept relating to the after-effects of an experience is the role of transformation. In 1998, Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore introduced the concept of the Experience Economy, describing the value that brands can create through shifting from the provision of goods and services to the delivery of great customer experiences. They added to this work in recent years, suggesting that transformation will succeed the experience economy as the next big economic era. Rather than just providing an engaging experience, transformation focuses on the long-term outcome, or change that is seen as a result of an experience or activity. In particular, an improvement in physical, mental or emotional wellbeing.

The interesting thing about transformation is that the steps needed to get there can be hard, painful and difficult to complete. Training for a marathon, learning a new skill or taking part in dry January are all experiences which can be challenging — physically, emotionally or mentally. In these situations, it’s the end state, or desired transformation that motivates us to continue and achieve our goals.

Transformation is well exemplified by brands operating in the health and wellness space, where the process itself can be tough. Health and wellness apps such as Calm, Fitbit and Noom support users to create routines, change behaviour and achieve goals to improve mental and physical health.

The overall implication for brands is to look at how their experiences can help customers self-actualise, reach goals, change their behaviour in a way that has lasting positive impact.

Summary

Exploring the human experience is a fascinating and complex topic. Taking time to design the lead-up to an experience, and considering how an experience can have lasting impact can be as important as the direct experience itself.

So, think of the next experience you are planning — a party, a client project or workshop — how will you design for this experience? How will you build anticipation, how will you make sure to have a ‘peak’ delighter moment and strong end, and is there a way you can create lasting impact by helping people achieve something important through the experience they have.