Beyond delight; the memorable experience framework
By: Audree Lapierre
Tags: Framework, Product Design, Design, Usability, UX

Your company probably has some product strategy documents with gleefully optimistic headings like “deliver an incredible customer experience,” “inspire customers,” or “delight in unexpected ways”. You probably haven’t a clue what these aspirational statements mean in practice, but they sound so uplifting!

One thing that’s clear: good, functional UX isn’t enough these days. To be successful, the experience must be memorable and emotionally engaging for the customer.

In theory, if you get this right, users will tell everyone they know about the amazing product they discovered, waxing lyrical about how more efficient they’ve become since they started using your product, or how the product has irrevocably changed the way we live (or book travel, or work, or share photos). Strava, Duolingo, Instagram, all have that memorable quality, and sit at the top of their respective market category.

On the product team side, everyone seems to have a different definition of what “memorable” means in a product context, which can often result in a prescriptive formula of cute animations and witty customer support emails. On the one hand, these elements can certainly delight the user and add to the personality of the brand. But to be truly effective and stand out from the competition, these delightful elements need to be ingredients that contribute to the big picture in a strategic way.

Why? Engagement will increase customer loyalty, which will lead to long-lasting relationships between the user and company, and ultimately, greater revenue.

Products that acknowledge emotion and enhance well-being without breaking trust will stand out. — Pamela Pavliscak

At Officevibe, we use the memorable experience framework (Miro template provided at the end) to bring the design vision and emotional design requirements to life.

The opportunity

In my opinion, the trickiest UX challenges offer the best opportunities. Officevibe is a digital platform that aims to bring out the best in teams; creating a space for real talk between team members, improving one-on-one meetings and helping managers become better leaders. For us, the biggest challenge-slash-opportunity was the onboarding experience.

Most product onboarding processes have just one aim: to train a user on the tool. For example, Asana shows users how to create projects and tasks, but it doesn’t guide them towards becoming effective project managers.

By contrast, Officevibe doesn’t just attempt to create competent users of the tool, it actually tries to teach users how to get better at their jobs from day one.

When I saw how users considered their Officevibe score a measure of their own performance it became clear to me that accompanying users through their transformation could create a truly engaging and differentiated user experience.

What is a memorable experience? Quick answer: It’s not delight.

Memorable is defined as something worth remembering, especially something special or unusual. It’s an experience that involves anticipation, emotional involvement, altered perceptions of time and involves a process of doing and undergoing.

In UX, delight sits at the top of the pyramid, but is usually just a topcoat applied to a functional experience. Things that tend to sit in this category include helpful/sassy microcopy, subtle animations, and relevant images, making it feel personable, approachable, and fun. Delight is sweet as candy, with many empty calories.

An experience that is memorable, however, places the users’ objectives at its core.

Aarron Walter’s Hierarchy of User Needs

From the customer’s perspective, functional and reliable experiences are expected and taken for granted. Delivering them will not result in satisfaction, but when they are missing, it will lead to instant rage. You probably won’t brag how clean a hotel room is to your friends, but if it’s dirty, that will likely be the first thing you’ll complain about.

Delightful elements are just that: delightful. They will inevitably lose their appeal over time and will come to be expected. It’s why it’s best to leave them at the periphery of the experience for aspects we see once, like the sign up page, empty states or error messages.

A memorable experience is a step above a delightful one. It enhances the sense of meaning, connection, and wellbeing in people. It’s not about the UI, but the user.

A transformative UX for the transformation economy

Users today are constantly growing and evolving every moment of every day. They’re learning a new language on Duolingo, fighting their anxiety with Headspace or becoming jogging legends on Strava.

This is called the Transformation economy — an economy where experiences are elevated from mere enjoyment to actual personal transformation. It’s the natural evolution from the Experience economy, in which customers seek enjoyable experiences over products.

According to Jasmine Bina’s Medium story, brands can create a new brand model if they speak to customers who aspire to that kind of change.

If you had to take a second look at what truly defines us as consumers, it’s clear that we are experimenting, testing, pushing, changing, discovering, formulating, creating and effecting. […] All of these new labels indicate a state of becoming.

The memorable experience framework strongly supports that sense of transformation.