Modes, Life Systems, and Superpowers

Generative AI Needs Experience Strategy Too

As I have mentioned before, we’ve been studying the impact of AI on customers’ expectation for about 10 years now. There’s even an HBR article that Joe Pine and I wrote about one our key frameworks.

Today I thought I would share a brief blog post that Aransas Savas and I posted about a year ago. In it we describe three things that I think all experience strategists should be paying attention to: modes, life systems, and superpowers.

Artificial Intelligence Needs Experience Strategy Too 

If you look at most of the writings about artificial intelligence today, you will find that the focus is primarily on the impact that AI will have on companies and employees. Clearly how we do our work will change as these very impressive platforms roll out. Companies will employ AI to help them increase productivity, simplify processes, move complex tasks from workers to robots, and on and on. Lots of empowerment. Lots of disruption.  

And, customers will get new powers as well. People jump onto ChatGPT to help them with a wide variety of activities: planning trips, recommending recipes, doing math, and much more. We can anticipate that AI will allow people to feel more productive over time.  

What I don’t hear people talking about nearly so much is the impact that these new tools will have on customer expectations of companies. It’s one thing if AI were the exclusive domain of a few. But it won’t be. Most consumers will benefit from AI. Most customers' expectations will shift. And most companies won’t be able to differentiate their offerings for long based on AI alone.  

As experience strategists, you need to have a point of view for your company on where your customers will land. You need to know what people are going to do. Few consultancies have done more research with people on the topic of intelligent experiences than we have at Stone Mantel. Here are three things you can expect to happen.  

Three Things That Will Change Because of Intelligent Experiences 

1. People will spend more time in modes 

The more intelligent tools become, the more time people spend getting into modes. A mode is a mindset and set of behaviors that people get into temporarily. When people surround themselves with intelligent tools, they are more likely to experience time as a series of modes that they get into. 

They expect their technology to support their modes. Think about the most advanced environments that most people experience today: automobiles. Full of sensors and software, the new car experiences represent the future of most intelligent solutions. They don’t just adjust to your preferences; they provide predesigned modes for you to drive in.  

What this means for your experience strategy: Modes will increasingly be a powerful way to engage your customer temporarily.  

2. Their life systems will become more sophisticated. 

People today use technology to help them set up personal systems for different parts of their lives. They have systems for family time, work, spending, wellbeing, beliefs, and personal time. These systems are unique to them. They create their own personal data ecospheres to support their life systems.  

What this means for your experience strategy: Your customers will increasingly expect you to use AI to make their life systems run better.  

And while efficiency and productivity are obvious requirements, what most people want goes well beyond speed and convenience. They want AI to help them remember things, anticipate needs that will arise, and recognize situations that might be challenging before they happen. They want a virtual assistant/copilot who doesn’t necessarily do everything for them but could if asked.  

3. They will expect superpowers.  

ChatGPT amazed people in November of 2022. By July of 2023, most people just kind of expect it to work for them. That’s how fast expectations change. Consumers have been preconditioned by movies to expect AI to create superpowers for them.  

What this means for your experience strategy: As an experience strategist, you need to find ways to temper expectations while at the same time making customers feel tremendously empowered.  

In summary, companies need experience strategies that help them navigate and capitalize on changing customer expectations. By understanding key expectation shifts, your experience strategy will become more resilient and more valuable.