The initial idea
About twelve months ago, I started building a shared language for experience.
If you’ve worked with me, you’ll probably recognise some of it: Jobs, Friction, Moments, Heroes.
I kept watching the same thing happen in workshops with leadership teams. Halfway through, something would click. People would start seeing their own work differently.
Along the way, I met David Willows and Suzette Parlevliet from Yellow Car.
Yellow Car is the leading experience strategy consultancy in the international school space.
As we spoke and began to think about the convergence of our work, we realised we’d been building toward a really similar thing. Embedding experience. Distilling language. Thinking in frameworks and mental models.
Bringing Experience Builder™ to life
Three minds are better than one. So, we began testing ideas with international schools.
David tells the story this way:
“It originally came out of a conversation with colleagues about how to make the process of building a communications strategy more efficient. Several iterations later, we ended up with a tool that is actually a method for building experience strategies, and not just in schools.”
That tool is nearing completion, and we’re ready to start sharing it.
Collaborating with Yellow Car and over 30 schools around the world on the early development of the Experience Builder.
Meet Experience Builder™
Nine dimensions of experience. Seventy-eight cards. A thinking framework that helps teams see experience clearly before deciding how to shape it.
The challenge is no longer about what you can build. It is about building the right thing.
The most useful thing a team can do is learn to see experience clearly enough to shape it well.
Pick up a card, ask a question, and you (and your team) start to see something you hadn’t seen before.
What is the person at the centre of this experience actually trying to get done? What’s getting in their way? How should you show up for them?
This is only the beginning. I believe this thinking has the power to change how organisations see and shape what they offer, by giving them a way to see what’s already happening more clearly, and the language to do something about it together.
