PASTE and CENTER
New Frameworks for Impactful Experience Design
PASTE and CENTER
Experience design frameworks, including the popular 5E framework, remain relevant to the work of experience design today. However, when talking to professionals in the field we heard again and again that experiences are much broader than what’s contained in the 5E framework. We heard that the structure is good, but obvious, and doesn’t really help move the needle once your team is versed in thinking in experiences.
Worst of all, even with the popularity of this framework, businesses can, and still do, fall short of crafting meaningful experiences.
To address these critiques, we created two new frameworks: PASTE and CENTER. With the lasting impact and adoption of both the Compelling Experiences and 5E frameworks, attempting to modify them was a non-starter, so instead these new frameworks are designed to augment them:
- PASTE seeks to help designers place (or paste) experiences into their broader context.
- CENTER seeks to focus (or center) elements that create meaning within specific experiences.
PASTE
Using PASTE and Understanding the Larger Experience Context
PASTE considers the context and systems an experience is part of, helping design teams frame their work more holistically. PASTE becomes useful when design teams work on a strategic, enterprise-wide level, and need to break free from a myopic approach to experiences. It is used in much the same way as the 5E framework (that is, as a typology to define an experience); however, it functions less like a tool to organize and more as a means to tie and coordinate experiences within broader strategic initiatives. The previously discussed Compelling Experiences and 5E frameworks lack this dimension for good reason: it would make the frameworks too cumbersome to use. They are meant to organize, not to frame, experiences. But that doesn’t mean those elements aren’t equally important.
PASTE is an acronym for:
People
Altitude
System
Time
Expectation
These five elements form the context that surrounds an experience. They become the strategic scaffold from which designers can frame their intentions. In other words: they build the context needed to provide meaning, like in the following example.
PASTE: The Coffeeshop Example
Imagine that you are the owner of a local coffeeshop considering how to improve the cafe experience. You start by clearly understanding your customers. Who is your target audience? The person who wants a consistent 99¢ cup will bring a vastly different context with them than someone seeking a Chemex pour-over of honey processed geisha beans from Ethiopia. Providing the best experience for the customer will depend on who you are trying to please.
Assuming you want to focus on the coffee connoisseur, the interplay between the details of communicating minutiae around bean origin and processing to the atmosphere of the where the coffee is consumed all need to be aligned. You will also need to decide what part of the café experience needs to improve. Is every element of your business on the table for reconsideration, or is it only the ordering process? All components of your coffeeshop experience affects all the others; a coffee brewed to perfection would be hard to enjoy in a smelly, loud, crowded, and unclean environment and vice-versa. Understanding this relationship is important as you define the scope of your efforts.
Consider also your business’s role in the larger community system. Coffeeshops often do much more than serve java. A coffeeshop located in an office building and focused on serving office workers operates in a very different community system than the neighborhood coffeeshop hosting live mic nights. What does your system look like?
Next let’s peek at the time—what is the time you have influence over? You could look from a customer’s entrance to exit of the café, or from entering the line to placing an order, first sip to last, etc. You will need to decide where to focus your efforts, and you will need to be clear about how long you expect your coffeeshop experience to last for customers.
Lastly, what expectations for your experience exist? If a customer arrives expecting a 99¢ coffee and is faced with a $7 bill, their expectations have not been met. Similarly, if they are promised a perfectly extracted cup, and receive a sour or overly bitter brew, they will leave displeased.
PASTE: The Framework
The five questions illustrated in the example above help us establish the context framing we need to better create the conditions for a more meaningful experience for customers to occur.
Let’s now speak to each of them in a little more detail:
Central to every experience are the People who actually experience it (sounds obvious, right?) They bring their own lived experience and contexts with them and will react differently based on this. Considering People is all about who you are designing for, and why. Proper consideration will result in better-tailored, higher-impact experiences.
Experiences happen at different levels of abstraction. We can broadly think about bucketing these into three groups: macro, meso, and micro. Or, consider the airplane analogy: are we talking about an experience at the level of 10,000 feet, 1,000 feet, or 10 feet? There is a complex interplay between the Altitudes of an experience. The overarching experience you are considering is composed of many smaller experiences. They inform and reinforce each other and their details are seldom viewed by the experiencer as discrete. As a design team, place your experience at one of these levels and develop with that focus in mind. In our coffeeshop example, we might choose to focus in only on the portion of the experience where the customer receives their drink. Success with Altitude looks like getting your team aligned on the project scope—on the boundaries of the experience that you’re committed to designing.
Myriad elements comprise the Systems that surround an experience. These elements all interact and influence each other. Understanding what they are and how they relate helps teams better assess their impact and ensures that decisions aren’t made in isolation. When examining Systems impacts, map the elements that will affect how your experience will be understood by participants. In our coffeeshop example, we might want to map community needs to surrounding locations and organizations to understand where a gap or a partnership opportunity exists. When done right, it will help you better understand how participants are likely to react to a design.
Every experience happens over Time. The duration of an experience, whether over seconds or over years, alters the longevity of its impact. Align your team to a defined timeframe to gain clarity on the work. Success looks like articulating exactly how long a participant should be “within” your experience and knowing what might extend or compress that timeframe.
Every experience has Expectations attached to it, and there is immense power in exceeding them positively. Listing audience Expectations and the rationale behind them will help your team anticipate outcomes of your proposed design. The goal here is both to set and respond to Expectations, with your experience exceeding them both in a positive fashion.
CENTER
Using CENTER to Create Richer Meaning With an Experience
While PASTE seeks to help designers place (or paste) experiences into their broader context, CENTER seeks to focus (or center) elements that create meaning within specific experiences.
CENTER can create meaning within an experience through tactically focusing on important experience details.
CENTER lays out a set of critical elements to achieve an impactful design for the experiences you hope to create. The framework is particularly helpful when design teams are struggling with focus or how to best tactically plan experience components. However, it does not provide technical guidance. Much like the attributes from the Compelling Experiences framework, CENTER gives teams a series of elements to consider in a design. CENTER goes a bit further, though, supporting higher-level outcomes that move beyond the immediate experience.
CENTER is an acronym for:
Connection
Emotion
Narrative
Transformation
Environment
Recursivity
A 5K race serves as a fitting example of this framework in action.
CENTER: The 5K Example
Imagine the experience of running your first 5K race. Whether you are competing or just out for some group exercise you will inevitably form connections with other racers. Perhaps they are the people you trained with or the group you stretch with before the race—a sense of community is formed with people moving through the same spaces for the same purpose.
As warms-ups end and you take your place at the starting line, tensions mount, with the energy of so many bodies ready to run becoming palpable. The anticipation of the race is felt in every part of your body and mind. The crowd falls quiet as your emotions reach a high point. The announcer steps to the microphone and prepares to mark the start of the race. Ready…GO!
A starting shot is fired and you’re off. As the race gets underway you follow your training, setting a pace and focusing on pushing yourself to the limit. As your breath gets short you repeat to yourself an inspirational internal narrative: you can do this, you are the kind of person that CAN run a 5K! This propels you forward.
As you hit the last 500 meters, you kick it into overdrive, leaving nothing on the field. You change physically and mentally, no longer considering what came before, but anticipating who you will be after you cross the finish line. As you finish you are transformed from someone who might someday run a race to someone who actually did run and complete a race.
You are handed a medal while the smell of damp grass and sweat permeate your nostrils. You take in the noise of the celebratory pop songs blasting from the speakers, as well as the announcer noting the race times. The sun beats down on your shoulders, and after exchanging hugs and high fives with your fellow runners you seek cool water from the hydration tent.
Every element of the racing environment combines to form this perception. You think to the future, now as an accomplished runner, and say to yourself: “Next time I’ll be faster, push harder, and beat my personal best.”
CENTER: The Framework
Assuming this is your first race it is likely a very memorable event because it provides for the different elements of CENTER.
To understand why that is the case, and what it means for experience design, let’s now take a closer look at each of these components:
Great experiences provide opportunities for Connection. When moments of authentic Connection are cultivated, experiences are more impactful and last longer in the minds of participants. To make your experience great, create opportunities for human-to-human Connection as well as Connection to the human spirit (supporting consideration of higher-level values, such as love, beauty, etc.). Success here looks like making space for Connections that can live beyond the scope of the experience.
A meaningful experience will make you feel something. Emotions and experiences are inextricably intertwined. Articulate with your team what Emotions you seek to have expressed, and what value they add. Not all Emotions need to be positive, but a good experience will have strong Emotions that help transform the participant for the better.
Narrative is the thematic through-line present in an experience; it’s the story that is being told. Narrative ties all the other elements together and ensures everything feels cohesive. Have your team storyboard out the Narrative at each step of the 5E framework, and ensure they form a relevant and understandable path. When done well, the Narrative element makes your experience make sense.
Everything we do changes us to some degree, we are constantly undergoing Transformations based on what we experience. The most impactful experiences are ones that transform the participant. Sketch out the desired before and after states of your participants, and ensure the designed interventions support this Transformation. In our inaugural 5K example the runner undergoes multiple levels of Transformations, including physically as they complete practice runs in the lead-up to the race. They are also transformed by finishing the race, accomplishing their goal and changing how they view themselves. Planning elements to help them celebrate the achievement of crossing the finish line accordingly makes the experience more meaningful. A great experience will change how your participants see and interact with the world and themselves.
Whether in the physical or digital world, or somewhere in between, your experiences must take place somewhere. Environmental factors affect the perception of and immersion in an experience for better or for worse. Map out the relevant senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, space, temperature, etc.) for your experience, and work to align them to your desired outcome. A great experience is understood at a multisensory level.
Recursion is when a concept depends on a previous version of itself—in the case of experiences this is when a past experience informs the way it is perceived the next time it is undergone. As discussed in PASTE Systems, nothing occurs in a vacuum—experiences build upon themselves. Identify desired outcomes for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. time participants engage with your experience. In our 5K example, the runner is already thinking about their next race. Their initial experience impacts expectations of their next race and this trend will continue as they run more races. However, Recursivity can go deeper than that; the organizers of the race can think about different experience paths for those who have run before vs new runners, for example, that plays out in how runners register for the event or even where they line up to start. Or, if the 5K is part a fun-run series, races can be set up to reward past experiences, with new medals unlocked by completing a certain number of events. Success with Recursivity looks like designing an experience to be repeatable in such a way that it doesn’t feel stale and actually rewards returning participants with deeper meaning, or new dimensions of the experience.
Through the use of PASTE and CENTER we find that experiences can be supported which better respond to their surrounding contexts and increase the effectiveness of their impact while matching the design intent. With these two new frameworks, which complement the 5E and Compelling Experiences frameworks, we hope you and your teams can elevate how your experiences work, and craft them to be more meaningful for your participants.
One last word of advice for experience design teams from ID faculty member and alum John Cain: “You do not design experiences. Experiences are things that people have. They’re not things that are delivered. You can create the conditions for experiences. That’s a very different kind of design endeavor.” We agree, and because of both the tremendous potential and need for better experiences in our world, we believe that is a design endeavor worth pursuing.
More About These Frameworks
Connect with ID alumni Michael George and Andrew Russell on Linkedin for more about experience design, especially applications and examples of these PASTE and CENTER frameworks.