By exploring other media, one discovers that building experiences is not about doing complex things. It is about doing simple things that will impact the eventual experience.Experience is the point of emotional engagement with the consumer. Today, experience drives consumption of both products and services. Products and services--irrespective of what segment they operate in--sell experiences rather than features. To achieve this, the scope of design has to extend beyond functionality, to satisfy the experiential need.

Every time we use a product or a service, we essentially consume the experience it enables. The product is not a thing. The service is not an act. They are vehicles for the experience that their designer intends to bring about. Thus, when a designer creates a sharp, safe, and well balanced cutting knife, she is not only putting metal, plastic and rubber together, but also setting the stage for an experience of pleasure of using a good tool effectively, and a feeling of skilled accomplishment, on the part of the user. In an Internet forum, an impressed guest recalls checking into Four Seasons Hotel to find TV Guide on the bed, with a bookmark placed on the current date. What appears to be an easily attainable minor detail has resulted in a disproportionately large measure of good experience and goodwill. Likewise, compelling elearning is not about navigating content, but about staging experience.

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source: elearningpost