Mindful of the Process

The Practicing Mind is one of those books that I wanted to quit reading with each page, but found myself returning to pick up where I left off.  While it's a completely unscientific self-help book, full of folksy wisdom and specious self-aggrandizing stories about its author, I found it nonetheless compelling because of the cognitive approach that the author was prescribing, and regard it as having significant potential for designing customer experiences.

The thrust of the author's argument is that people in the present day have a sense of constant dissatisfaction because we are ever focused on outcomes.   We want to rush to the finish line, have the fruits of our labor (without doing the labor if possible), and expect to be happy once we have what we wanted.   The problem is that the satisfaction of having something is short-lived and it's not long before we find something else to want, and repeat the process in an endless cycle: getting more and feeling less satisfied by it.

For the reader, the author's advice is to focus on the moment and take pleasure in the process - which has been said hundreds if not thousands of times before and his is just another voice repeating the same message that has been ignored every other time.  I tend to doubt there is any stunning new perspective in the pages of this book that will suddenly turn on a light for the reader and cause them to realize that their way of life, or of looking at life, likely needs to make an abrupt change.

At the same time, it's a good reminder of this shopworn wisdom, and one that I sense that is often neglected in the design of customer experiences.   That is to say that we build the shopping processes to escort the shopper as promptly as possible to the register.   We don't particularly care if the customers are happy with their purchases for long, and it's likely better for us if they are not because they will soon be back to purchase something else.  If their problems are solved or their goals are achieved, there's little chance of getting repeat business.   Or perhaps the author's cynicism about consumer culture has become contagious?

The more salient point the author makes is that the people who are the most happy in life are focused on the process of achieving their goals, and that the completion of an objective marks the end of a pleasant journey and a brief respite before setting off on the next one.   It's a warm and fuzzy kind of thought, but in terms of experience design, it seems to me that a shopping experience that provides a pleasant journey to the destination of a purchase is the entire point of retail.

Manufacturing, meanwhile, must focus on the satisfaction of the product - though it should also be considered as a journey of ownership rather than of acquisition, that begins with the purchase of the item and continues during the period of use, ending when the product has been totally consumed or has become completely worn-out from use.    But this is an entirely different journey - no less important and no less worth of attention, but different nonetheless.

And in that way I have the sense that this book is very closely related to what we do, or ought to be doing, in considering customer experiences.   We can take for granted that the purchase of the item will provide a level of satisfaction and relegate the period of ownership to another department, but we must still focus on the process of obtaining the item as a journey that should be intrinsically pleasant for the user - rather than an ordeal that must be suffered for the sake of accomplishing something else.

The methods by which the retail journey can be instilled with a sense of progress and moments of satisfaction is likely a much more intricate subject with a significant number of variations according to the idiosyncrasies of product, customer, and need - but it is a task to be undertaken with the right mindset.  And it's my sense that this fluffy little book could well be a good mood-setter for approaching the task from the proper perspective.