During a recent trip to Chicago, I stopped by Oak Park to tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. Built in 1889, this estate set the tone for Wright’s long and successful career. Wright started working as an independent architect here and it was here that he began developing his famous prairie style.

I always knew that Frank Lloyd Wright was a great architect; what I realized on the tour was that he was also a savvy experience designer, even if that term wasn’t around in the late 19th century. Every aspect of the buildings he designed was part of an integrated vision intended to impart his values and convey a particular experience.

As an unconventional architect, Wright was looking to cultivate clients that would be receptive to his work. And he communicated his values to the potential clients before they ever entered his work space.  He designed for people who were curious, so he made his studio entrance hard to find.  If they were tenacious enough to explore the façade and find the door, they were a step closer to becoming Wright’s client. If they gave up looking, they didn’t have a high enough tolerance for uncertainty to be the right clients for him.

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Marie from HMS is nice.

Driving up the Garden State Parkway, enduring brutal summer beach traffic, we were forced to pull into a rest stop.  This is a rant-free blog column, so I won’t get started on the condition of the bathrooms or the gall of able-bodied people galavanting out of cars that were plated for and parked in handicap spots.  But I would like to put out a commendation to Marie, a uniformed employee of HMS Host Corporation which runs the rest stop, including the gift shop.  We collect snow globes, even on beach trips.  When my daughter brought her preferred snow globe (and a keychain) to the counter, Marie said, “You picked a great one.  That’s my favorite snow globe in the store.”  Then she offered a very kid-savvy option, “I’ll wrap up the snow globe so it’s safe, but would you like to hang on to the keychain yourself?”  Of course.  Walking out of the store, into the hot and crowded rest stop, destined for hours of crawling up the Parkway, my daughter was bouyed by the extra attention and glowed, “She’s really nice.”

Rule #4 of great service: Be nice to the kids.

My wife recently gave birth to our second baby. Because I was not a basket case about the imminent arrival of this child, as I was with baby number 1, I had the clarity of mind to take it all in. So, instead of going into the experience as a new dad, to the chagrin of my wife, I went into it as an observer. My biggest takeaway was how the delivery room changed modes over the course of the delivery and how this can minimize levels of anxiety.

When you enter the delivery room for the first time, it almost feels like a hotel room. As the the delivery begins, doors and slots start to open to reveal the apparatus of delivery. One cabinet slides open to offer all of the anesthesiologist tools, the other opens up to show a heart rate monitor. A seemingly ambiguous cart opens up to reveal the tools of the obstetrician trade, and then the bed transforms and lights drop from recessed panels on the ceiling. The transformation is impressive, and if we had walked into the room in this mode, I don’t think my wife could have gone through with it.

Overall, the design of the room was a great way to use modal transformation as an anxiety reducing tool.

Sohrab Vossoughi’s latest article on Businessweek.com talks about innovation not delivering anymore. He goes onto examine Experience Design as the next potential differentiator.

In the article he mentions one our clients, American Express. I was very happy to see them singled out in such a positive article about the next evolution of what I do for a living. But I was even happier to see Apple Computer NOT mentioned.

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So I’ve been tracking a little company called Clover, based up in Seattle, that was working hard to re-think what good drip coffee could and should be. From their point of view, the industry was focusing too much on espresso-based drinks and not enough on the classic cup of black magic.

What was their hook? They took the french press brewing process (seen by many coffee snobs as a superior brewing process to the classic, drip coffee makers) and built a machine to replicate it on a larger scale. Coffee drinkers benefited from this ‘artisinal,’ small batch approach to coffee making while independent coffee shops benefited from a new, premium priced, retail theater experience for their customers. This was going to be their way to compete against the green apron army.

http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/about/press/01-23-2008

http://blog.richardsprague.com/2007/11/clover-coffee.html

Then something very interesting happened this week.

http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=850

While Starbucks has been focused on growing their business with breakfast, music and Mitch Albom, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and the rest have been climbing directly inside their sandbox. We can assume that the move to purchase Clover is a solid indication that Starbucks realizes it needs to focus on the core of its brand – making really good coffee.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention – drip coffee perfection has its price. Clover takes about 4 minutes per cup.

Be sure to pick up The Five People you Meet in Heaven as you wait in line…