A book that produces sensory experiences while bringing the concept of experience itself into relief as a subject of criticism and an object of contemplation. Experience offers a reading experience like no other. A heat-sensitive cover by Olafur Eliasson reveals words, colors, and a drawing when touched by human hands. Endpapers designed by Carsten Höller are printed in ink containing carefully calibrated quantities of the synthesized human pheromones estratetraenol and androstadienone, evoking the suggestibility of human desire. The margins and edges of the book are designed by Tauba Auerbach in complementary colors that create a dynamically shifting effect when the book is shifted or closed. When the book is opened, bookmarks cascade from the center, emerging from spider web prints by Tomás Saraceno. Experience produces experience while bringing the concept itself into relief as an object of contemplation. The sensory experience of the book as a physical object resonates with the intellectual experience of the book as a container of ideas. Experience convenes a conversation with artists, musicians, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and neuroscientists, each of whom explores aspects of sensorial and cultural realms of experience. The texts include new essays written for this volume and classic texts by such figures as William James and Michel Foucault. The first publication from MIT's Center for Art, Science, & Technology, Experience approaches its subject through multiple modes. Publication design by Kimberly Varella with Becca Lofchie, Content Object Design Studio. Cover concept by Olafur Eliasson in collaboration with Kimberly Varella (Content Object). Contributors Tauba Auerbach, Bevil Conway, John Dewey, Olafur Eliasson, Michel Foucault, Adam Frank, Vittorio Gallese, Renée Green, Stefan Helmreich, Carsten Höller, Edmund Husserl, William James, Caroline A. Jones, Douglas Kahn, Brian Kane, Leah Kelly, Bruno Latour, Alvin Lucier, David Mather, Mara Mills, Alva Noë, Jacques Rancière, Michael Rossi, Tomás Saraceno, Natasha Schüll, Joan W.Scott, Tino Sehgal, Alma Steingart, Josh Tenenbaum, Rebecca Uchill

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they’ve turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject—customer loyalty—with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty. Yet CEB’s careful research over five years and tens of thousands of respondents proves that the “dazzle factor” is wildly overrated—it simply doesn’t predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive wordof-mouth. The reality: Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service. If you put on your customer hat rather than your manager or marketer hat, this makes a lot of sense. What do you really want from your cable company, a free month of HBO when it screws up or a fast, painless restoration of your connection? What about your bank—do you want free cookies and a cheerful smile, even a personal relationship with your teller? Or just a quick in-and-out transaction and an easy way to get a refund when it accidentally overcharges on fees? The Effortless Experience takes readers on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal—and disloyal. The authors lay out the four key pillars of a low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are already using the principles revealed by CEB’s research, with great results. And they include many tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, decrease customer churn, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the “dazzle factor” fails to deliver. The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

Up-close and uniquely personal, like never seen before, this exquisite fine art book showcases the glowing beauty of fireflies, as seen through the lens of the award-winning nature photographer, Radim Schreiber, who spent nine years creating this stunning body of work.This is a collection of hauntingly beautiful photographic portraits of fireflies, lightening bugs, glow worms, and other bioluminescent creatures in their natural environment captured in Iowa, the Smoky Mountains National Park, and other locations around the United States.Firefly Experience takes the viewer into mysterious realms, offering marvelous photography on every page. The images are accompanied with informative detail and personal anecdotes.Discover more atwww.FireflyExperience.org

Contrary towhat one might imagine, there is no such thing as an experience designer. Atleast not in the sense that we might talk of an individual recognised as such.To make experiences is to be human. Shaman, architect, food engineer - you nameit, they are all experience designers. Informed by an understanding of people'sneeds and wants - our stories, our rituals, our myths - the beautifullydesigned experience has the power to transform lives. “/i>iThe Experience Book is an ode to that power. Essentially, it is a book abouttime and how we use it to design and make experiencesthat define the spaces we live, work and play in. Divided into a guidebook anda sourcebook, it begins by explaining what it is about the human mind that sodeeply feasts on the notion of the experience, and then employs this knowledgeto suggest a method or framework fordesigning experiences. The guidebook done, the sourcebook serves asinspiration for the art of experience design, with precedents drawn from the past 35,000 years' worth oftransformative experience making. The first publication about theattributes that together make what is fast becoming a recognised discipline, “/i>iThe Experience Book is beautifully presented. Comprised of a wonderfully eclectic range of written forms, illustratedby a fantastic mix of drawings and photography, and backed by historicaland contemporary examples from the worlds ofarchitecture, branding, fashion, music, art, sport and business, it introducesthe maker of experiences as part ethnographer, storyteller, master planner andperformance artist. Challenging theorthodoxy of function, reasserting process over monument and product, delighting in the unexpected, and championing the spectator over the spectacle, this is a book for anyone interested in the power of design,be they creator, communicator or consumer.

In this groundbreaking volume, Krzysztof Ziarek rethinks modern experience by bringing together philosophical critiques of modernity and avant-garde poetry. Ziarek explores, through selective readings of avant-garde poetry, the key aspects of the radical critique of experience: technology, everydayness, event, and sexual difference. To that extent, The Historicity of Experience is less a book about the avant-garde than a critique of experience through the avant-garde. Ziarek reads the avant-garde in dialogue with the work of some of the major critics of modernity (Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Jean-François Lyotard, and Luce Irigaray) to show how avant-garde experiments bear critically on the issue of modern experience and its technological organization. The four poets Ziarek considers—Gertrude Stein, Velimir Khlebnikov, Miron Biaoszewski, and Susan Howe—demonstrate the broad reach of and variety of forms taken by the avant-garde revision of experience and aesthetics. Moreover, this quartet illustrates how the main operative concepts and strategies of the avant-garde underpinned the practices of canonical writers. A profound philosophical meditation on language, modernity, and the everyday, The Historicity of Experience offers a fundamental reconceptualization of the avant-garde in relation to experience.

This book provides a review of the current theory and practice of experiential tourism and how it is marketed. Many societies today are characterised by widespread individual wealth of an order previously confined to the elite with the consequence that ownership of ‘ordinary’ physical goods is no longer a distinguishing factor. Instead people are now seeking the ‘extraordinary’ with examples being bodies enhanced through surgery, personal fitness trainers, and, in the case of leisure and tourism, seeking unique and unusual places to visit and activities to undertake. This trend manifests in the increasing consumption of services and the addition of experiential elements to physical goods by businesses aware of societal changes. The trend is enhanced by rapidly changing technology and economic production methods providing new sectors of the world’s population with access to the consumption experiences that are repeatedly featured in the media. This is the experience economy, characterised by a search by consumers for fantasies, feelings, and fun. This book was based on a special issue of Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Mangement.

This book examines the strategic principles that define the customer experience. Building on the recent findings in the domains of behavioral economics and social psychology, Customer Science discusses the customer experience from three different perspectives: what customers do—how they identify a problem, seek a solution, and interact with the offering; what they think and feel during this process—how they evaluate different market offerings; and what motivates their behavior—why they act the way they do. In this context, it examines all components of the customer experience—from activating a need to buying a company’s offerings, to becoming a loyal customer and advocate for the company. The different stages of customer interaction with the company and its offerings are presented in the form of a customer experience map, which functions as the organizing principle for this book. The customer experience map is the blueprint for understanding the different stages of the customer experience and facilitating managerial decision making at each stage. The customer experience map is also the foundation of the customer experience canvas, a practical tool to identify the key questions managers should ask as they strive to create impactful customer experiences.