Transformative Experiences: Superpowers make Transformations Real
For most experience strategists who want to do aspirational jobs for their customers, one of the biggest challenges is understanding their goals. Goal definition is complicated. Sometimes people don’t want to open up. Sometimes they don’t really know what they want. And other times they may not have really thought things through. Then, of course, people’s goals change--or better yet--evolve, as they progress through an experience. Goals can be hard to capture and utilize.
For people, the challenge is just as real. When you ask someone what they want to accomplish, they often assume that you want to support their functional needs. And that’s mostly because they think that’s about all you can really do for them. Help them, functionally, to get healthy, wealthy, or wise. That’s about as far as they assume you can go.
When you reframe the nature of the need that they have, you can get amazing results. And one way to reframe their needs is by focusing on ‘superpowers.’
Why Superpowers
A superpower is just what we think it is: an incredible ability or skill that a person develops, grows into, or is transformed into becoming. We see them in the movies. We play video games. We wish for them and tell our friends of our wishes. Here’s why superpowers make transformations real.
When you ask people to describe themselves using superpowers, they can more easily describe their aspirations. It feels imaginative to them.
When they describe their superpowers, you see a bit into their souls. People only talk about superpowers that really matter to them. You can hear their concerns.
By framing their goals as superpowers, you are automatically enabling them to think about their own responsibilities to accomplish their goals. People want to control their superpowers. They will want to control their transformation as well.
There are a vast number of superpowers out there for people to choose from, giving the customer and the company a wide range of ways to differentiate themselves. Suddenly it's not just about generalized goal attainment.
The process of talking about a superpower is therapeutic for the individual. It’s a form of positivity and positive self-talk.
Technology can be understood as superpowers. So can skills. And personality attributes. Just think what you could build if you focused on the Venn diagram between technology, skills, personality attributes!
Superpowers help people articulate the job to be done better.
Superpowers help companies articulate the job to be done better, internally.
Superpowers are Genius
We at Stone Mantel have been studying the impact of superpowers, as a technique for eliciting deeper understanding of customer needs for seven years. We got interested in the topic when we were doing experience strategy work on highly evolved artificial intelligence experiences. We wanted to understand consumer expectations for AI and we looked for ways to discuss the topic with them. Most of the techniques we used didn’t really help them to think about the future in a way that was significant and creative. Then, we started asking them about superpowers they wished they had. And the creativity lit up.
People’s expectations of genius technology look and feel like superpowers, frankly. And that’s why we titled this article: Superpowers make transformations real. We are fast moving into a world where regular people have incredible access to knowledge, skill, feelings, and motivators. It’s time experience strategists upped their expectations of solutioning as well.