What’s in a name?

John Gyorki
November 20th, 2007.

Just because you give something a new name, it does not mean that the something automatically becomes the thing you renamed it. For example, I recently received an e-mail message from my Internet provider, SBC Yahoo, which said it was going to improve my e-mail “experience.” They claimed that they were thinking of my best interests, so they were going to start placing advertising on my otherwise uncluttered e-mail service. How thoughtful of them! Just what I need, more distracting images flickering and jumping in front of my eyes while I try to concentrate on writing messages.

But when and why did the word “experience” replace the word “service.” I have seen this misleading term used recently in magazine and newspaper advertising, and puzzled over it, until yesterday. I was cruising through a book store and came across Tom Peters’ book, “Design: Innovate, Differentiate, Communicate.” In Chapter Three, “Design in Action, Providing Memorable Experiences,” Peters has a chart that implies “…that which was called a product or a service should now be called an experience.” Mystery solved! Peters gives examples to justify his idea of changing the word “service” or “product” to “experience” by saying that we no longer buy coffee from Starbucks, we buy an experience. He apparently wants us to believe that by calling it something else, it means more to us, has more value, and we will buy more coffee and happily pay more. By the same reasoning, he reports (using his and others’ words) that cars are no longer vehicles, but they are adventures, art, and mobile sculpture, which also happen to provide transportation. And he goes on with more examples. In my opinion, this is so much baloney. I buy cars so I can go from point A to point B, reliably.

Don’t misunderstand. I like Peters and his books and articles. They are stimulating and make you think. In fact, I enjoyed the book and recommend that you read it if you have not already done so. His emphasis on “Design,” what the book is really about, is great. But, because he is something of a guru in the business world, many people tend to follow him blindly, no matter what he says. And to be fair, Peters does warn readers that some people will embrace his “experience idea,” but miss the point, and use it improperly; He says it is not a semantic twist. SBC Yahoo (and many others) do not understand this.

I think Peters is telling us to look at service from a different point of view. He wants us to believe that our purchase should be an exciting, emotional, and positive experience so we will remember the company favorably and buy from it again. Moreover, this should be an engineer’s goal in designing a new product or service. But as a new product development engineer, I don’t recall having designed a new product because I particularly wanted to give my customers a new or memorable experience; I designed it to give them a quality product that lived up to its specifications. I get my “excitement” when the product accomplishes the task (service) for which I bought it.

As a design engineer, what is on your mind when you set out to design a new product or service? Do you think of designing a product that makes the customer emotional and excited, or do you want to deliver a quality product that meets or exceeds specs and flies through your Quality Control… oops!

I mean Quality Assurance Department?

jgyorki@designworldonline.com