Engineering Emotions & Experience - Part 1

As engineers, we're taught that engineering is about building things.

Bridges.

Buildings.

Engines.

Machines.

Things that can be measured, tested, and touched.

At least that's what most of us grow up believing.

But somewhere along the way, the definition started expanding.

Today we have software engineering.

Language engineering.

Reverse engineering.

Customer engineering.

Suddenly, engineering is no longer limited to physical objects.

It's about designing systems that create outcomes.

And that got me thinking.

If engineers can design a machine to behave in a certain way, can we design experiences that make people feel a certain way?

Can we engineer emotions?

Can we engineer customer success?

Can we engineer experiences?

The more I studied customer experience and service design, the more I became convinced that the answer is yes.

Not perfectly.

Not predictably.

But certainly better than most organizations do today.

We Focus On The Experience, But Ignore The Story Before It

Think about the last time you had a bad experience at a restaurant.

Was it really because the food was bad?

Maybe.

But maybe not.

Maybe you had a terrible day at work.

Maybe you got stuck in traffic.

Maybe somebody ruined your mood before you arrived.

Maybe the rain soaked your clothes.

Maybe you were simply tired.

Now imagine walking into a restaurant carrying all of that emotional baggage.

Suddenly you start noticing things.

The table isn't perfectly clean.

The waiter looks distracted.

The lighting feels irritating.

The food takes slightly longer than expected.

Things that would've been insignificant on a good day suddenly become important.

The experience hasn't changed.

You have.

And that's what many companies fail to understand.

When we design experiences, we usually focus on the interaction itself.

We optimize the transaction.

We improve the interface.

We digitalize the process.

We reduce waiting times.

But what about everything that happened before the customer arrived?

What about the emotional state they're bringing into the experience?

Why Luxury Hotels Ask, "How Was Your Journey?"

There is a reason luxury hotels and premium airlines often begin with a simple question:

"How was your journey?"

It's not small talk.

It's intelligence gathering.

They're trying to understand the customer's emotional starting point.

Was the customer stressed?

Relaxed?

Frustrated?

Tired?

Anxious?

Every answer provides context.

That context helps shape the experience that follows.

No, companies can't follow customers around all day trying to understand every event leading up to an interaction.

That would be impossible.

But they can identify patterns.

If road construction is causing traffic delays near a restaurant, customers may arrive irritated.

If flight delays are common during a certain period, passengers may arrive frustrated.

If a vehicle service center is located in a congested area, customers may arrive stressed before they've even interacted with a service advisor.

These aren't process failures.

They're narrative failures.

And if you don't understand the narrative, you'll probably end up fixing the wrong problem.

Customers Don't Buy Products.

Customers Hire Them To Achieve Something.

Let's take a service center.

Why does a customer visit?

The obvious answer is vehicle servicing.

The real answer is far more complicated.

One customer wants the vehicle cleaned.

Another wants a strange noise fixed.

Another wants confidence before a long road trip.

Someone else simply wants peace of mind.

Many organizations confuse what they sell with what customers are trying to achieve.

Those two things are rarely the same.

Businesses sell products.

Customers purchase outcomes.

That's a very important distinction.

Because the moment we start focusing on outcomes instead of products, experience design changes completely.

The question is no longer:

"How do I improve my process?"

It becomes:

"Can my experience accommodate the variety of outcomes customers are seeking?"

And that's where many digital transformations fail.

The Technology Trap

A few years ago, many banks aggressively pushed customers towards self-service.

Online banking.

Self-service kiosks.

Automated transactions.

Less staff.

More technology.

The business case looked brilliant.

Lower costs.

Higher efficiency.

Faster service.

But an important question was often ignored.

What happens to customers who don't fit the digital model?

What happens to elderly customers?

What happens to customers with low digital literacy?

What happens to customers who actually enjoy walking into a branch and interacting with a person?

Technology wasn't the problem.

Ignoring customer outcomes was.

Technology succeeds when it helps customers achieve their goals.

Technology fails when customers are forced to adapt their goals to suit the technology.

That's a very different thing.

The Missing Link: Emotions

Now let's talk about the really interesting part.

Emotions.

Humans make decisions far more emotionally than we'd like to admit.

We buy emotionally.

We judge emotionally.

We remember emotionally.

Yet surprisingly few businesses explicitly design experiences around customer emotions.

Most organizations focus on process efficiency.

Operational metrics.

Cycle times.

Transaction speed.

Cost reduction.

But very few ask:

"How do we want customers to feel?"

Interestingly, LEGO has been doing this successfully for decades.

LEGO doesn't just sell plastic bricks.

They sell imagination.

Achievement.

Creativity.

Nostalgia.

Pride.

The product is simply the delivery mechanism.

The emotions are the actual value.

What Colin Shaw Taught Me

While exploring this topic, I came across the work of Colin Shaw and his research into emotional signatures.

The idea is fascinating.

Customers experience groups of emotions throughout a journey.

Those emotions determine how they remember the experience and whether they return.

Among the various emotional clusters he identifies, two are particularly relevant when discussing technology and experience design.

Let's start with the most dangerous one.

The Destroying Cluster

This is exactly what it sounds like.

The emotions that quietly destroy experiences.

They include:

• Stressed

• Neglected

• Frustrated

• Unsatisfied

• Disappointed

• Irritated

• Hurried

• Unhappy

Many organizations immediately jump into adding new features, new technologies, and new touchpoints.

But if customers consistently feel these emotions, nothing else matters.

You can have the most advanced mobile application in the market.

The most beautiful website.

The most sophisticated AI.

But if customers feel neglected and frustrated, the experience has already failed.

In fact, I suspect many failed technology deployments have less to do with the technology itself and more to do with the emotions they unintentionally create.

The Attention Cluster

Now comes the exciting part.

The Attention Cluster consists of emotions such as:

• Stimulated

• Interested

• Exploratory

• Energetic

• Indulgent

These emotions drive curiosity.

They attract customers.

They encourage spending.

They create buzz.

This explains why new technologies generate excitement when first launched.

A new VR experience.

A new AI tool.

A new gaming platform.

A new gadget.

The novelty creates attention.

The problem is that attention has a shelf life.

Eventually, customers get used to it.

The excitement starts fading.

The novelty disappears.

And that's when many businesses panic.

What they experienced wasn't loyalty.

It was curiosity.

LEGO understands this brilliantly.

Every few months there's a new set.

A new theme.

A new challenge.

The experience constantly evolves, keeping the attention cluster alive.

The lesson here is simple.

Technology creates interest.

Continuous evolution sustains interest.

Without the second part, every innovation eventually becomes ordinary.

So What Does This Mean For Experience Design?

The more I study customer experience, the more I believe we design processes backwards.

We start with technology.

Then we build processes.

Then we think about customers.

Maybe we should reverse the sequence.

Start with the customer's narrative.

Understand the outcome they're trying to achieve.

Identify the emotions they're likely to bring into the journey.

Then design the process.

And only then decide where technology fits.

Technology should not be the center of an experience.

The customer should.

Technology is merely one of the tools we use to help customers achieve what they came for.

What's Next?

In this article, I've covered two emotional clusters:

• Destroying

• Attention

These explain why experiences fail and why some experiences initially succeed.

But they don't explain loyalty.

They don't explain advocacy.

They don't explain

why customers keep returning even when competitors offer similar products.

That's where the Recommendation and Advocacy clusters come in.

And that's exactly what I'll explore in Part 2.

Because getting a customer's attention is easy.

Keeping it is where the real engineering begins.