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.

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.

The memorable experience framework

Although it was developed for tourism in the book “Gamification in Tourism”, I found the framework is easy to apply to other types of experiences, such as product design.

The framework is based on positive psychology, and has five main components that contribute to the well-being of individuals (also known as Seligman’s PERMA model):

• Positive emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment

The PERMA components are what people need to flourish, and the different elements of the framework are ways to get there. Gamification, social media, or product design mechanics can be used to tackle each element.

As teams ideate on new features or initiatives, they should consider how they might better support their users’ feelings and well-being, in order to solidify the relationship with users.

The value of a long-term relationship aligns with growth. If we look at what people choose, when given a real choice, it’s often emotional. If we look at what makes people stay, it’s an emotional investment. — Pamela Pavliscak

1 — Positive emotions

Even in stressful situations, positive emotions like hope, interest, joy, love, compassion, pride, amusement, and gratitude can help people stay engaged. The conventional wisdom suggests that it may also increase brand loyalty. There are three framework elements that can boost positive emotions: familiarity and novelty, surprise and aesthetics.

Familiarity and novelty

😃 — That’s new!

Positive emotions are often generated by anticipation of a change in a product. Users should feel like there is something new for them. Mechanics include trending items, special events, or personalization. For example, Spotify’s Discover Weekly is a playlist that renews every week with new songs based on the user’s tastes. Instagram offers a steady stream of new stickers and gifs to use in user stories.

Surprise

😮 — Whoah!

Despite its brief nature, surprise is a state that stimulates many positive emotions. It can be humour sprinkled in the copy, easter eggs that users stumble upon, or random rewards. Creating delightful experiences often involves surprises. Designers can recall MailChimp’s antics and Asana’s over-the-top unicorn animation at the completion of the first task.

Aesthetics

😍 — I love it!

Classic delighters such as micro-interactions, animations, music, and sound can be found here. It’s the small details that make an experience appealing and engaging, like beautifully illustrated empty states.

2 — Engagement

An engaged person is one who is fully immersed in an activity when the perfect combination of challenge and ability is present. Video games excel at this, keeping their players engaged for long hours at a time. Increasing the engagement of a product’s users can mean the difference between retention and churn. For users to stay in the flow, the trick is “don’t make me think.”

Clear goals

😅 — I know what to do

By giving users a sense of direction and purpose, they will know what they must do to succeed. With apps like Duolingo, users can set goals for themselves, track their progress and validate that they are on the right path. As a more basic version of goals, streaks track how frequently a user performs a certain action in an app. In addition, users may be rewarded for their behavior with access items that can help them achieve their goals even faster. But watch out and stay away from addictive mechanics; make sure the desired behavior is positive for your users, not merely a metric-boosting gimmick. Persuasive tactics will be exposed and will inevitably fade.

Immediate feedback

😅 — I know how to improve

Providing users with information about their progress in achieving their goals helps them understand whether their actions need to be adjusted. It’s about designing so users know how to improve. The difference with Clear goals is in how immediate the feedback comes. As a coach would tell you how to properly position your body or perfect a movement, analytics can provide customized insights that become smarter over time. Negative feedback is inevitable, but if the level of challenge is adequate, the user will not be slowed down by it.

Challenge and skills balance

😅 — It’s not easy but I can do this

Video games engage players by increasing the difficulty level as their skills increase. In a learning environment, different levels can keep users interested as they progress. An onboarding process should begin with an easy task and become more difficult as the user gains proficiency. The levels mechanic is used by Headspace, which has different meditation options depending on how challenging a course is. A placement test can determine the right level of challenge for different language learning paths on Duolingo.

Guidance

😅 — I understand how this works

To ease the learning curve or to keep the user in the flow, tips, walkthroughs, and directions provide information on what the user should do. In the same manner as Google’s navigational guidance, how can the design support the user so that she knows exactly what to do at the right time? A thoughtful, human design anticipates the user’s needs and shows that users are not left alone.

3 — Relationships

Almost always, relationships are associated with positive emotions, engagement, meaning, and accomplishment. Products can leverage the connection that users seek to enrich the human-computer experience with connection, care and compassion.

Acknowledgement
😌 — I am seen

Acknowledgement is the first step toward feeling validated, seen. When someone feels listened to, when they have someone else’s full attention, or when they feel relevant and needed, they experience this. We can use mechanisms like reactions, followers, and ambassadorship positions to make users feel less damn lonely (something relevant during pandemic time).

Support

😌 — I am supported

People want others to connect with what they are feeling and with who they are. Through forums, like KnowYourTeam’s Watercooler, users can seek support from others on the challenges they are encountering. Sometimes the UX is the one showing support, such as when TurboTax thoughtfully and carefully addresses someone’s loss. Social networks know first end how users seek support from each other. Instagram recognizes when a user is searching for words that often encourage behaviour that can cause harm and offers support for dealing with hardships. Mechanics of cooperation, gifting, forums or random groupings (leverage the kindness of strangers) are ways to make users feel supported in their transformation.

Impact

😌 — I have an impact

A person feels important when they see how their actions or influence affect others. It may be seeing how many people have benefited from your help (“Your review has helped 133 people”), or participating in a shared project with others. Anonymity is a way to prevent users from feeling self-conscious and to let themselves have an impact on others.

4 — Meaning

Motivated people, who are also the most productive and satisfied, tend to direct their desires to something bigger than themselves. Embracing autonomy, passions, community, and story can make products feel meaningful to users and irreplaceable. It’s sort of like finding THE one

Autonomy

🤔 — I make my own choices

Users will feel autonomous when they are in control and their actions are aligned with their inner selves and goals. The flexibility of customization, exploration, and filters gives users the ability to make the product more relevant to them as it merges with who they are.

Personal goals & passions

🤓 — I can’t get enough

Offering interesting challenges based on personal goals and passions that stir curiosity or that allows users to pursue who they wish to become. It’s opening a door of possibilities for newly acquired skills, or recommending fresh content to those who just can’t get enough.

Community of interest

🙂 — I belong to something bigger

A different approach to content would be to facilitate access to an interest group based on an individual’s passion or goal. The community can generate conversations and sometimes shared resources like Figma’s plugins.

Story

🤯 — I believe in this

Storytelling is probably the most overused business term. In this case we are talking about higher values and concepts that people want to associate themselves with. Users attribute meaning onto successful brands because they share a transformative belief. Reviews, content messaging and all brand touchpoints are opportunities to express that story that will grab the hearts and minds of users.

5 — Accomplishment

Accomplishment is working toward reaching goals, mastering an endeavour, and having the self-motivation to finish what people set out to do. To create memorable moments, product teams should aim to match their task success metrics with the ones of their users.

That feeling when you made your Kickstarter goal much faster than expected.
— Pamela Pavliscak

Experiencing mastery

😎 — I am good at this

A strong sense of efficacy is developed by perseverant effort in overcoming obstacles. It is for this reason that users dislike when a product’s user interface changes. Structured goals and beginner’s luck are methods for novice users to think “I can do this” quickly, while shortcuts are suitable for expert users.

Modeling

😯 — I can learn from them

People can raise their self-efficacy by watching similar people to themselves. Making the trial and error of one user visible can be a powerful motivator and provide a benchmark for others. Dribbble created a great learning and growth experience through the use of a simplified coaching mechanic combined with a social network.

Persuasive boosts

😊— I believe in myself

People who have been convinced that they can succeed are more likely to put in sustained efforts and persevere in spite of obstacles. Through positive reinforcement, feedback and prompts, product designers can remind users that they can achieve their goals. As an example, The Fabulous app’s first screen lists all the things users have control over in their lives, which in turn promotes an “I can do it” attitude.

Final thoughts

A quick recap on the memorable experience in product:

• Good usable, pleasurable experiences are the norm. Pine and Gilmore have predicted that inability to stage a desired transformation will eventually mean a homogenous, commoditized product offering.
• Cookie-cutter delight techniques will not have a lasting impact on users, but it can help generate positive emotions.
• A memorable experience puts the user’s goals at the center of the experience. Using different dimensions of positive psychology, products can assist users in becoming who they aspire to be and win their hearts and minds.

This framework is intended to make the process of designing memorable experiences more actionable and concrete. To that end, I have prepared a Miro template with examples, mechanics and instructions for team brainstorms.

❤️ Thanks to my wonderful design team for the help in finding product examples. Please don’t hesitate to share more examples in the comments.

Recommended readings:

• Emotionally Intelligent Design by Pamela Pavliscak (O’Reilly)
• Gamification in Tourism by Bulencea and Egger