We, the people, are not only people. We might be customers, partners, employees or the product being sold, but we definitely are human beings. Since we are talking about (digital) products and services, HX is how a human being experiences your company, organisation, product or service. Clearly, HX provides a more holistic, human-centric perspective than EX (employee-experience), PX (partner experience) or CX (customer-experience).
HX is more about purpose than about a job(employee), usage(partner) or consumption (customer). We work with organisations or consume products for a purpose. What’s more, “purpose is what gives life a meaning,” as American social reformer Charles Henry Parkhurst famously put it. Almighty Google also knows this.
By the way, the second quote – “purpose is what creates true happiness” – stems from Mark Zuckerberg’s May 2017 commencement address at Harvard University. The corollary of these two statements would be that what gives life a meaning is what creates true happiness. We are talking about a lot more than employment, products or services here. After all, we are human beings 24 hours a day, while our existence as employees, partners or consumers is only a part-time endeavour.
In an undated by insightful essay, Paul Campillo writes:
Make no mistake. This is the great opportunity that stands before makers—the understanding that products exist to enhance someone’s life. The human experience trumps everything, and a product or service that’s designed with a contextual view of someone’s life will dominate the marketplace.
He defines the human experience as the exact opposite of what he calls the sucky experience (SX), on a continuum that is the UX spectrum.
The ultimate UX of a product is HX. It’s the highest experience of what a product, company or organization, or brand can bring to its users. The HX hooks every user because, in the end, there’s one thing most humans want more than anything: To feel more alive.
We can see a pattern here. HX is more or less strongly correlated with Digital Humanism – “the notion that people are the central focus in the manifestation of digital businesses and digital workplaces” (Gartner). To get from EX, PX and CX to true HX, we first and foremost must stop reducing human beings to their roles as employees, partners or consumers, or to an entity that can be replaced and superseded by technology.
Secondly, we need to break the world domination scheme of technology and restore technology to its proper place as a means to an end, and not an end in itself. What is the proper purpose of technology? Start with why, as Simon Sinek would say. There is no easy answer. Quite the contrary, we need a movement like the Renaissance. Sheer Romanticism would not suffice.
Credit to Motisha
