Learning music changes music. Learning about winechanges wine. Learning about Buddhism changes Buddhism. And learningExcel changes Excel. If we want passionate users, we might not have tochange our products--we have to change how our users experience them. And that change does not necessarily come from product design, development, and especially marketing. It comes from helping users learn.
Learning adds resolution to what you offer. And the changehappens not within the product, but between the user‘s ears. The moreyou help your users learn and improve, the greater the chance thatthey‘ll become passionate.
What does it mean to say that someone is passionate aboutsomething? It‘s a lot like discussing porn--there‘s no cleardefinition, but you know it when you see it. Nobody refers to the guywho knows just two types of wine--red or white--as "passionate aboutwine." But the movie Sideways was about people who were passionate about wine. The point was not that they drank a lot of wine (although in the movie, they definitely did), but that they knew so much about it. They knew enough to appreciate and enjoy subtleties that are virtually inaccessible to everyone else.
It‘s the same way with classical or jazz music--learning about the music changesthe music. What the music expert hears has more notes, moreinstruments, more syncopation... than what I hear when I listen to thesame piece. Of course I don‘t mean the music technically changes, butif the way we experience it shifts, it is AS IF the music itself shifts.
And it‘s not just for hobbies. Think about a spreadsheet, forexample. Joe Excel User can do the basics--calculations, pie charts,bar graphs, some reports. To Joe Excel User, the software is a tool fordoing spreadsheets. But imagine Joe were to learn the deeperpower and subtleties of not just the app itself, but the way in whichthe app could be used as, say, a modeling and simulation tool.For Joe, now, the software itself has transformed from a spreadsheettool to a modeling and simulation tool. More importantly, the way Joe thinks as he uses the software also changes.Rather than approaching a session with Excel as a way to crunch somenumbers, he sees it as a way to do predictions, forecasts, and systemsthinking.
People are not passionate about things they know nothing about. They may be interested. They may spend money.But without the enhanced skill and knowledge that adds resolution,there is no real passion. At least not the kind we talk about (and aimfor) here--the kind of passion we talk about when we say, "He ispassionate about photography" or "She is passionate about animalrights" or even, "He is passionate about his Mac."
And a passion for one thing can spill over into a passion forlife itself. And for many people, the loss of passion/desire foronce-loved things is a clear symptom of clinical depression. For writerLarry McMurtry,the loss of passion for books (he‘s an antiquarian book collector whenhe isn‘t writing novels and screenplays) was one of the worst parts ofthe post-heart-surgery depression he experienced a decade ago. Hesimply stopped feeling that feeling. Books changed back--back to that state the non-book-passionate experience--and were simply old books. Fortunately, McMurtry recovered and regained his passion for books.
So, what can you change for people? Or rather, what can youhelp others change for themselves? How can you increase the resolutionof the products and services you offer--without touching the products?That doesn‘t mean you can take any old piece of crap and by teachingpeople to become expert, magically transform it into a work of art. Butif there‘s potential for a richer experience--an experience thenon-passionate don‘t see, taste, hear, feel, smell, touch, or everrecognize...why not see if there‘s a way to help more people experiencethat?
And since I believe that passion requires learning, and that meanswe all have to become better "learning experience designers", I‘mworking on a big "crash course in the latest learning theory" post thatsummarizes most of the key principles, in one place (with pictures : )
2005 may be the year HD finally arrived for TV and video, I hope2006 is the year of HD User Experiences. And it‘s up to us to make thathappen.
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