Much like how every part of Optimus Prime’s robot body is engineered for the sole purpose of destroying his mortal enemies, the Decepticons; service has to start focusing on engineering meaningful experiences for the customer.

Bill Buxton, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, once wrote an article about the emerging discipline of experience design. The focus of experience design is not so much on products or services, but on the impact they have on people’s lives. To explain what he meant, he used the example of two orange presses. The first was an electronic marvel which processed the raw fruit into juice with just the press of a button. However, it was made of flimsy material and its motor screeched whenever it came to life. The second was a fully manual juicer that sported a crank. To create orange juice, the user had to press down on the crank. Buxton concluded that the juice from the second orange press was better because the machine had given him a sense of mastery. His point was that a designer did not just shape devices, but behaviours around those devices.

From a business process improvement perspective, experience design forces us to pay less attention to individual processes, and pay more attention to thinking about how these processes help reduce the complexity of the organisation, and increase the value of everything else in the business’ ecosystem. Increasing the value of an ecosystem means building intelligence around processes. This involves breaking down silos between departments so that processes talk to one another. What emerges is a seamless experience for the customer, where only the capabilities you actually need at the moment is delivered.