In an experience economy, you guessed it - the experience rules. That's probably the most retentive element in the minds of customers, visitors, associates and communities. Experiences and especially those that we literally live, are touched by and spend time in, become larger & deeper than tattoos in our mind. They become memorable. We return to these experiences time and again.
We love places and spaces. Great spaces. They keep us coming back for more - seconds, thirds and fourths - we love the helpings. This is true for a fantastic destination, an amazing retail store experience, a happy workplace that literally embodies a brand, a museum that is forward thinking and ceases to live in its past or a restaurant which tells a story before the food is served on your plate.
Spaces today, where we are persuaded to spend a lot of dwell-time by the brands - be it retail stores, work-places, experience centers, hotels, restaurants or museums - are becoming the very story itself. The experience itself becomes the brand. And not being on-brand, on-people and on-experience can be a costly mistake.
Why many flagship stores often don’t seem like holding any flags? Or why signature restaurants a lot of times are ho-hum and pedestrian.
Flagship stores shouldn’t be just stores or joints. They ought to be like stories. Flagship stores shouldn’t be commodities that painfully look like their cousins. Indistinguishable from the rest and simply not inspired or inspiring enough to wow the visitor / the consumer. "Make them remember" is a motto that should drive every experiential space.
But the above is not true for all spaces. Some spaces and places remain iconic and memorable, while the others disappear from the customer's mind, vacate the visitor's mind faster than Houdini. In an experience rich world, being good is not enough. If one has to make one's experience, space and its story remembered, one has to overcome mediocrity and conservatism. Great experiences are adventures that dare the possible. They are the ones that get past our attention deficit disorders.
If the customer doesn’t feel the difference in experience, doesn’t sense the crackle in the air and the vibe in the store, please rest assured the store is doomed to ignominy and lost investment. This is the same for experience stores, signature restaurants, workplaces or for that matter any habitat where people invest time and love.
Why does this happen? ...Primarily because of templated thinking or timid thinking.
For spatial imagination, and outstanding experiences, capital and ideas working together are indispensable. The bravery and appetite for the unique amongst owners, founders, CXOs must collaborate with the imagination of experience designers. If the desire to genuinely lead in experience and be the new benchmark, is there amongst the owners of the space, then genuine experiential innovations can result and in fact do happen.
The most experiential spaces share three common characteristics - (1) Powerful story they bring alive, (2) Experiences that stay cohesive and unique & (3) Culture centered design.
But simply by not attempting to push the envelope further or simply not daring to break the templates results in simply being ordinary. By not being brave to capitalize on true design thinking, experience architecture, storytelling, technology, diverse collaborations, brands often wallow in their mundaneness.
Creation, curation and storytelling with plenty of imagination helps.
Design thinking, cultural anthropology, customer journey exercises, understanding of state of space and state of mind, technology, material & production skills, sensorial design, content and storytelling can be huge differentiators and strengths when creating a transformational experience. An interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial design team can help blend fantastic skills to truly reimagine the spatial experience of places.
Spatial Experience Design brings it all together cohesively
In store and around store experiences, immersive spaces, storied restaurants or experience centers, dramatically affect the fortunes of brands and products they present.
Each product/brand almost always (at least the ones that are worth it) need their narratives and habitats to be brought to life intelligently, to be manifested beautifully. And all of this while rightly interpreting the brand and its values, living up to a personality.
If Nike is about daring to go the distance, Apple is about sustained innovation. If Amul is about a mission to nourish India and empower a coop-movement, a Flipkart could be a giant gift box and a Johnnie Walker ought to keep you walking. Design always begins with a clear, singular brand promise of the product/service to be brought alive with spaces, experiences, messaging, materials, media and human-centered logic. The translation of these intangible values into defined experiences wrapped in a beautiful story is the challenge that Spatial Experience Design sets about to solve for.
Spatial experience design puts method and creativity, logic and imagination together. Starting with understanding culture, the business context, the brand promise, it understands how people move and interact in the spaces that matter to them, and then designs ways to improve them. This includes engagement, navigation, brand touchpoints, the hyper-experience points and looking at how people interact with and are affected by space as well as the appearance of these spaces.
Want to play safe? design a box. Want to be memorable? think out of it.
Spatial experience design ticks the following boxes for brands that want to create memorable experiences with spaces.
1. Narrates a progressive experiential story with spaces, and the customer journey. A story that is unique for the client / brand in design & experience and yet completely in sync with the brand's values. It becomes an experience that moves with the times.
2. Offers both clarity of navigation to the visitor as also plenty of curiosity so that the customer is engaged, and has an easy state of mind. This is done with empathy, communication, play-points, content and multi-media.
3. Creates the "moments of truth" where it defines, creates and amplifies some of the hero experiences in the space that stay with the visitor/customer long after the experience is over.
4. Socializes the venue by growing a community around the space. Here both digital platforms, content programming and IPs help.
5. Creates and curates without loss in translation. Spatial experience design brings to the table a collective of talents and experts including conceptual designers, material experts, the master-storytellers, production studios, experience designers, architects, tech experts, UIUX specialists in some cases and of course a lead team that understands creativity and business.
6. Thinks integrated and gets into the core of the place with service design, genuine experience design and ideation. Remember it's the power of the idea which is as powerful as the manifestation and delivery of the idea's experience.
When you are planning your dream space, be it a flagship-store experience, a great concept store or a forward thinking museum or a signature restaurant, it pays to be an explorer. To venture with imagination.
As venture designers and place-makers, we have always been curious about that one element that makes spaces memorable. The answers during every one of our voice-vote sessions, veers towards the story. Spaces are always a story that we live in and experience. They must be inhabitable stories. And if this powerful unique story can be brought alive with social science, sensory experiences, narratives, design, media, materials and technology then it becomes a memorable space. It can be as long and deep as an epic.
And epics are remembered. Epics sell.
About NYUCT Design Labs
As a venture design firm we work with you to blueprint and design ventures, innovate or simply solve a problem. Our lab and its interdisciplinary collective of techies, designers, strategists, experience architects and branding experts explore what your customers, employees, and partners want in order to create transformative strategies, ventures and experiences. With a collective wisdom and experience of more than 188 years amongst the team, we love to make the amazing and build the better.
Should you have a spatial adventure in mind or want to explore possibilities with innovation & ideation or want to create an extraordinary experience, we would love to hear from you.