Multiexperience replaces technology-literate people with people literate technology.
There is a new digital buzzword doing the rounds: Multiexperience. One way to appreciate the weight behind this term is to dive into a piece of demographic associated with user internet search habits. Search engines have revolutionised the way people use the internet. Everyone knows the drill, type in a search term, pepper it with boolean search expressions and hit that enter key. This mundane habit, however, is taking an exciting turn.
The infographic (source: GlobalWebIndex) shows the percentage of internet users in each generation who used an image search tool (instead of a text-based search) in a given month. Going by statistics, it would appear that the Millennials and Generation X prefer to use an image to search when they can, rather than type text using a miniature smartphone keyboard.
What is Multiexperience?
The data in the infographic above is a good segway into Gartner’s description of Multiexperience: Replacing technology-literate people with people-literate technology. In the example above, it is easier to point a smartphone at something and use the device’s camera as an input to a search engine. Most people are technology-literate when it comes to internet searches. Multiexperience turns that paradigm on its head and calls for the design of applications that are people-literate. Designing a user’s digital experience in tune with the device/touchpoint they use is the Multiexperience paradigm.
The CEO of Pinterest Ben Silbermann notes that “The future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords”. People know how to use a search engine (technology-literate people), but why not enhance that experience by making technology work for people (people-literate technology)? After all, the human brain is exceptionally visual and can identify images within 13 milliseconds. 90% of all information received by the brain is visual. The likes of Google, Amazon, Pinterest and Bing have already developed significant capabilities to enable people to search using images(visually search).
The multinational pizza restaurant chain Domino’s Pizza is among the forerunners of embracing the paradigm of Multiexperience. Customers can order their pizzas through a variety of touchpoints. The customer’s digital experience is fine-tuned to exploit the touchpoint that a customer chooses to use. A customer can use Google Home: By simply saying “Ok Google, talk to Domino’s”. The customer can use the Facebook Messenger bot, to place an order for their preferred pizza in seconds. Domino’s also leverages the text or messaging platforms where customers can trigger an order by simply sending a pizza emoji. The pizza chain has also tied up with car manufacturers to integrate the pizza ordering experience into the cars that their customers drive. Other touchpoints that the Domino’s their customers include Slack, Smart Watch, Smart TV, Zero Click. They are also working on getting CAA approvals for its pizza-delivery drones.
Multiexperience is not Omnichannel
It a common mistake to dismiss Multiexperience as another avatar of Omnichannel. Multiexperience is not Omnichannel. Omnichannel is all about technology, whereas Multiexperience is all about people. This difference underscores the shift from technology-literate to people-literate technology. In omnichannel, the use journey is preserved across channels. In multiexperience not only is the user journey maintained, but the journey changes gear depending on the channel of engagement and the touchpoint the channel offers. Multiexperience is not just about engaging users via multiple channels; it is about fine-tuning a user’s experience to embrace the capabilities of the channel used. Using the Domino’s example its Emoji’s when its text messages, natural language when its voice assistants, Slack when busy at work and Zero click when
People-literate applications
Interaction with technology has come a long way from single interactions with a computer. The mobile app goldrush caused businesses to dive headfirst into mobile app development. Apps were designed to leverage the smart phone’s native capabilities. However, the deluge of smart devices beyond smart phones calls for digital journeys to include touch, gesture, voice, multisensory and multi-touchpoint user interfaces—this call for application designers to think differently.
The Multiexperience paradigm helps drive the digital journeys towards building people-literate applications across the plethora of smart devices that users have at their disposal.
