warped reality on mobile monday

This week, at the Mobile Monday in Amsterdam, Joseph Pine provided a fascinating, if slightly mind bending overview of his work on 'multiverses' in the experience economy.

In his book "Technology and Media in the Experience Economy", Joseph Pine argues that just as goods have become commodities in the past, so by now have services. Thus increasingly companies do not only have to compete on availability, cost, and quality, but by staging experiences - memorable personal events - where authenticity (i.e. how real / genuine it appears) is the primary distinguishing criteria. Examples of this are the trend for natural foods, corporate social responsibility, and products such as handmade soaps. But the same criteria can also apply to virtual products.

Joseph Pine suggests in his book "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage" that this can be achieved through use of dramatic structure: Plan the user's experience along the lines of a theater play, where initially the scene is set, then increasing action and complication lead to a climax, after which the action subdues and sees the visitor off gently. He illustrated this with an amusing anecdote of a visit to see Rembrand's night watch at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The challenge for modern companies, according to Jospeh Pine, is how to successfully apply this principle across the entire range of media, from real life to virtual worlds. For this purpose he introduced the context of a three dimensioal matrix he calls 'multiverse' (= multiple universes).

Inspired by Franklin's book "Future Perfect", introducing the concept of fiction as an intangible reality shifting consciousness across time, Joseph Pine reasoned that the axis time, matter and space can also have negative dimensions. Thus in his matrix he opposes matter (atoms, real objects) with no-matter (bits, virtual objects), time (linear) with no-time (non-linear), and space (physical, geographic location) with no-space (virtual). Within this framework, he defines eight 'universes':

1. Reality, the physical world
2. Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life
3. Augmented Reality, digital enhancement of the real world (e.g. military use of overlay on glasses, TomTom location based services)
4. Augmented Virtuality, adding physical aspects to virtual experiences in real time (e.g. Startrek hologram transmitter, Nintendo's Wii)
5. Warped Reality (e.g. teleportation, interruption of experience by for example entering the alternate world of subways during a sightseeing trip of NY)
6. Mirror Worlds, virtual worlds mirroring reality in real time (e.g. life projection of sport events or weather maps in Second Life, projecting mobile user's current location on Google Earth)
7. Alternate Reality (e.g. telepathy)
8. Physical Virtuality (e.g. Startrek replicator, Lego Factory allowing users to order real instances of virtual models)

Using this multiverse framework to think about different ways of adding value to a business proposition, Joseph Pine argues that a rich user experience should reach across multiple dimensions, leading to "transversal storytelling" (i.e. across multiverse, not just multiple media).

In general, the Mobile Monday session was very much aimed at marketing and overall I found it rather disappointing. Some interesting initiatives were presented, such as the Roomware Project, an open-source framework for interactive spaces. Authenticity as important criteria for (virtual) services and overall user experience emphasizes once again the general move towards design for emotion. However, the concept of multiverse in particular was quite mind expensive and could be a great tool to stimulate innovative user experience concepts. Certainly a line of thought worth while following!