Why the Word “Experience” Came to be So Abused
There are some words in the English language that just don’t deserve the treatment they get. Like “that/then/than”, “their/there/they’re”, “irregardless”, the word “So” at the beginning of a response, the sudden misappropriation of the word “meme” by the Youtube generation, the beleaguered apostrophe, the hyphen, and of course words that the rest of the English speaking world persist in Frenchifying (yes, it’s actually a word, which in the spirit of abusing language, I take to mean the addition of unnecessary vowels) of honoUr, laboUr, patroniSe, unioniSe, and so on. (Ok, who’s gonna be the first to point out that S is not a vowel?) Of course this is all tongue in cheek. Where would we be without the diversification of spelling conventions? And with the French finally finding that they do have a pair of pants in that closet hidden behind the skirts, stepping up to the plate in Mali, it’s hard to criticiSe them much today.
Not that I’m a model citizen in this respect. I am after all an engineer more comfortable with numbers than letters, numbers not falling victim to misspelling, translation, or misinterpretation. I do my fair share of making up stuff, more out of laziness or ignorance than necessity. You can judge my level of language skills from my favorite quote in the entire English language, which of course comes from Austin Powers, that Anglicized American playing an Americanized Anglo, who once said “You may be a master debater, but I’m a cunning linguist“, which takes on an entirely different meaning when said by an oversexed international man of mystery. Of course my second favorite quote came from Michael Caine in the same movie, “There’s (sic) only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.” Might as well not let anyone feel left out.
Which brings me to why I’ve called all of you here today.
What I’m concerned with today is a different class of professional linguistic felon that has evolved over the last century or two. The rise of middle class buying power, and the corporate greed machine have produced a brand of idiomatic criminal called the “marketer”. “Marketing“, or at least one branch of it as I understand the practice, is a means to convince people through the use of some form of media and psychological contrivance to buy a certain product. If selling is face to face, marketing is more considered, but aimed at the masses.
As an engineer, I believe that the product itself should be all the marketing you need, i.e., the product should sell itself. Unfortunately, most business people don’t seem to believe this. Regardless of the qualities of the product, marketers aim to create the perception for you. This is what happens at the intersection of “business” and technical reality. I saw this when I worked in software sales for 8 years or so. The business people don’t understand and can’t control the technical reality, so they invent a reality than can control, and it is called marketing. It has little or nothing to do with the real product. When you are selling a technical product to technical people, I want to believe that “marketing” done by business people is all counter productive. This may or may not be true, but it is what I choose to believe.
As a person who buys things, it is your job to try to decipher the reality of the situation, and separate it from the marketing dream land. Sometimes this is hard because salesmen actively try to steer you away from the actual product, and back to the marketing vision. I know this is true. As a technical guy, the salesman I was assigned to would very frequently withhold technical information that the customer felt he needed to make a good decision. Salesmen don’t want a good decision, they want the “right” decision. Marketing and sales are more than anything about manipulation.
Part of the invention that marketing people use to undermine real products is a word to describe not just the hardware, software, user interface, or purchase/support process, but the whole ball of wax. If you can’t be objective about any one aspect, then there is a lot more left to your imagination. The more imagination, the better. Marketing is generally opposed to specific technical details. They want you to imagine owning the product. “Marketers are responsible for a 360-degree experience.” They are selling the “experience” because it is easier to manipulate.
The unfortunate part about this is that the “experience” that they are selling is a fictional thing that often has little if anything to do with the actual product. The “experience” is much like going to a 3D movie, or a day at Disney World where everything is contrived and fictionalized. Like the scene in Minority Report where the hacker sells “experiences” implanted in your brain.[pullquote]So, what’s a 3DEXPERIENCE?
The term 3DEXPERIENCE is not descriptive of Dassault Systemes software—it’s suggestive of what users may be able create using Dassault Systemes software.
– Evan Yares[/pullquote]
The first use of the word “experience” in this way that I’m aware of was the “Jimi Hendrix Experience“, which of course was the name of the band, and the “experience” part was arguably primarily about drugs. Not to take anything away from Hendrix, he is a permanent icon of the psychedelic rock ‘n roll era, but drugs were certainly part of the “experience”.
I’m sure I’ve missed something, but the next place I see this pop up, it’s not just the singular inventive use of a word, but a systematic abuse within the cell phone industry. But it’s not just marketers using the word in that way, suddenly bloggers and even blog commenting civilians are using phrases like “I prefer the pure Google experience” with a straight face. If you read Android fanboy blogs, you hear this drivel regularly. It’s like a pubescent J0n B@nquer, who can only speak in phrases regurgitated from marketing slicks.
Of course now Dassault Systemmes, always the innovator, has copied the co-opters and looks to monopolize the word EXPERIENCE (yes, it has to be all caps). CAD is no longer CAD, it is PLM. And PLM is no longer PLM, it is 3DEXPERIENCE. In this previous link, Yares hypothesizes that the 3DEXPERIENCE is what users create, but I don’t think that’s the intention of Dassault Systemmes. I think the 3DEXPERIENCE is for the users. Dassault seems to be pushing a retail “experience” of technical tools on professional users.
A couple of decades ago, the word “solution” was the business word du jour. But now we have something new, which is an “experience”. In both cases, marketing people ignored the actual context of the words, and just invented new meanings. “Solution” in most cases never meant that anyone had solved any problems, just that they had software to sell which allegedly allows you to perform certain tasks. In the new paradigm, engineers are supposed to be interested in having an “experience” with their CAD tools. And then, as if on cue, Dassault comes out with a press release that uses both buzzwords right next to one another in the same headline:
This is not about content, context, or actual meaning. It’s entirely about manipulated perception. Dassault is careful not to allow any actual information about products into press releases. This is why we have gone so long without any actual information about the next gen solidworks. The only thing we are given is what Dassault thinks our perception of it should be.
@ralphg
Isn’t it a shame that you need 2 monitors because Solidworks
can’t handle high resolution monitors and can’t change the
text size? It’s a bug that Solidworks doesn’t change the fonts
when Windows fonts are made bigger.
You need to turn your head all the time which
isn’t a real solution. The thing that worries me the most is
that Solidworks is end of life and that certain bugs/regressions
will never be fixed. I have had several occasions where I was
told to submit an enhance request for regressions and things
that used to work in older releases. Being an end of life product
it is getting very hard to fix bugs/regressions.
With Solidworks 2010 I could work with a scaling of 200% and
there were no menus messed up, this isn’t possible anymore with 2013.
I regret updating to 2013, I don’t use Solidworks 2013 anymore
because of the font problems.
@Richard
The solution I used is to have two monitors, with the second one of lower resolution to handle UI elements, like toolbars and palettes, as well as for running apps that benefit from the lower resolution (= larger text).
I’ve frequently had a similar tension with marketing folks with my designs. A long time ago I designed a jump rope with spiffy handles. The time constraint was crazy, and the team I was working with had a long series of concepts to deliver. Rather than developing “dumb” line drawings, I modeled my concepts as “Hollywoods”, and rendered the concepts for the various views needed to express the concepts. As it turned out, one of my jump rope concepts was requested for immediate turn-around as a prototype to show later that week. Since I’d modeled the geometry already, this was easy to provide—on time. It ended up jumping from prototype to production nearly instantly, landing in Target stores.
So—I find a sample at Target and then see this on the packaging: “Comfortable, form-fitting handles with cooling vents”. HA! Cooling vents? Really? (You can see the design here: http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com/PDF/Ultralight-Jump-Rope.pdf )
“…solution experience…” Well, I guess that doesn’t surprise me too much. Tough to put performance metrics on claims like those.
What a nice article, I have a bad “3D experience” with Solidworks 2013.
The fonts on a modern 2560×1440 27″ monitor are far too small to read and
there is no way to adjust this like it was several years ago. Changing windows
fonts does not change the Solidworks fonts in edit boxes, property managers, dimension editors etc. and the pop up icons are far too small. Dot pitch of monitors get smaller every year and Solidworks has done nothing to improve the visability and usability with modern monitors and high resolution laptops.
Scaling at 170% makes a mess of the dimension edit menu, this has always worked in older releases. If you scale at 170% you only see a parameter name
but no dimension any more. Many times I have unintended changed a parameter name instead of the dimension while editing dimensions.
The whole cadindustry is looking at direct modeling with less parametrics and Solidworks puts parameter names on top of the edit dimension menu. This is the biggest regressions I have ever seen in Solidworks.
When using a mondern monitor or laptop with a dotpitch of .15 to .22 mm
it is easy to get eyestrain problems when using too small fonts. If you
don’t have problems yet then it’s not too late to increase the fonts to
prevent your eyes from damage.
According to computer vision syndrome expert Dr. James Sheedy, it
should be three times the smallest size that you can read from your
normal viewing position. But what if I can’t read it and I also can’t make
the font bigger?
I have been working since 1995 with Solidworks and this is the worst
“3D experience” I had in years.
I have eyestrain and fatigue since upgrading to Solidworks 2013 and
Dassault wants me to buy “3D experience”.
A couple of years back Solidworks colors were the same as the Windows colors
so you could adjust it to your personal preference.
Till 2006 you could have a tree color the same as the model backgound.
All these usefull things to have a better “CAD experience” are gone and it gets worse every release.
All this talking about 3D experience and usability is just marketing and they have lost the important details.
There are new modules about durability which is good but at this time I am more worried about my eyes which hurt while using Solidworks 2013 and a modern monitor.
@Al Dean
Al,
As opposed to “drive by” comment tactics, I just wanted to make sure that you know you have the option of contributing to the discussion.
@Kevin Quigley I find it curious that in an article that concludes with the sentences, “This is not about content, context, or actual meaning. It’s entirely about manipulated perception” that the author is guilty of the exact same thing.
There’s more than a touch of hypocrisy there Matt.
Many people don’t know the history of the most epic French taunt ever to be foisted upon history. While the primary victim was Poland, the results echo about the rest of the globe (and will continue to do so), perhaps into eternity. Long ago—certainly before any of us were reading—amidst a particularly rancorous conflict of guile and wit representing a great rift between the two nations, there eventually came a point wherein the two parties desired an end of said tedious conflict. But because the French held the momentum in this conflict, the Poles were willing to cede some leverage in an effort to reach a truce. The French, taking full advantage of this opportunity, simply stated the terms of the agreement would be written only in French—the final version of which was signed by the Poles’ Grand Duchy himself. What wasn’t known—at least until later—was that hidden among all the finely-scripted words of the agreement was a short provision that the Poles would cede all rights of the use of their vowels to the French henceforth, spawning one of the most regrettable and humiliating contractual arrangements ever to be witnessed upon the face of the earth—on full display to the entirety of the Western world, no less! The results are obvious to any who watch hockey, and have also, unfortunately, spilled over into some of the works of literature by even the English! The French, with their plethora of vowel-usage rights, have ever since taunted Poland with their absurdly long, vowel-filled words, ever lengthening printed instruction manuals with said conspicuous vowel-laden strings of honks and other utterly unpronounceable non-pronounced vowels (and even consonants!) ever into the ages—leaving poor Poland to muck about with long strings of similarly unpronounceable consonants (and the oft-inserted use of the letter “Y” to act as a substitutionary vowel when necessary, in gross violation of the spirit of the truce agreement), thus producing one of the most epic of French taunts the world has ever known.
@matt
The problem with Mr Quigley’s tweet is that he should have said “vector” instead of “linear.” Vectors encompass direction and magnitude (speed, in this case).
Thanks for the lessons in social media Matt. I bow to your obvious expertise in manipulating comments. You should be in politics.
@Kevin Quigley
Welcome to Twitter, Kev. Thought you might have learned before with the drinking comment. Maybe you should focus on managing your public conversations better.
Matt I would appreciate it if you removed my name, picture and quote from this post. That comment was made in a comic manner as part of a long extended twitter conversation with others.
All of this “Experience” hype makes me think about Apple….
I have to say most of the sales critters I deal with are pretty good (but I’m buying automation components, not MCAD).
This post takes me back a long time. A time when I sold high capital engineered products, managed young sales engineers who sold engineered product to older (and in some cases really old) engineers. A time before I had to design my own products…..
We didn’t sell “EXPERIENCE” back then. We became very sucessful by listening to our customers, by letting our customers describe their project and their needs. And then after we fully came to understand our client’s requirements, we described our product as best we could in “our customer’s own terms” This type of customer oriented selling seems to have given way to a mass marketing scheme where the product is introduced at a national media event by professional cheerleaders. While it all sounds wonderful when described in their own perspective, after all they have been working on it for years, does it really help you do your job better, or is just giong to cost you mor for the stuff you use every day?
Marketing used to be customer oriented once upon a time………….
Yeah. With all of the cloud stuff and its retro tech implications, I’m just waiting for someone to announce CAD specific dedicated hardware, a la 1978.
Matt, understanding the tongue in cheek context but picking up on your point about a products benefits being the only marketing required. This is especially true of CAD as software of this nature is (as is often said) a tool. Marketing played a minimal role in CAD sales in the early eighties; sales via demonstrated functionality was the norm.
Marketing is also a tool: often deployed for the purposes of convincing people, with no real need for something, to use or posses that something.
Marketing became an important tool for CAD vendors at the point functionality, productivity and ROI gains started to plateau.
In a twist, you and I and, those who comment on this and other (CAD) blogs are indulging in marketing: you may not be intending too but the effects are there.
Your abilities, skills and views are very much on display to a wide audience. Could I be wrong in assuming, as a result of you blog, you have been contacted to do some work? At which point you become a salespersons and when the order is signed you revert to being a project leader, designer or draughtsperson for the purposes of fulfilling what the salesperson has promised.
The combination, and use/application, of those skills is not always considered, or obvious (it’s just what we do) but it is the exercising of those skills which also make us very wary/skeptical of marketing when we see it deployed (by vendors) in the manner in which you have highlighted in this post.
When you think about it, as an existing Solidworks user, Dassault had/has no need to market to you. The message(s) they “need” to deliver to you should be done at the product application level: it’s not even a sales job. I believe this is an area CAD vendors have dropped the ball: in particular in relation to migration to the cloud; they have chosen to try and convince existing users (using marketing) in preference to using the more influential approach of demonstrating actual working, secure and profitable functionality.
Interesting post and comments Matt.
My wife & I currently own 4 businesses and look to add a 5th soon. When it comes to purchasing business stuff, we use the same criteria; We either need it or we don’t. We can either afford to buy it or we can’t.
Sometimes, you have to take a risk when purchasing business stuff, then we add more criteria; Return On Investment. We estimate as closely as possible how stuff can pay for itself and how it can improve productivity.
Nowhere in our criteria is there a provision for being “sold” on stuff. Who’s the most qualified to investigate features & benefits of stuff? We are.
Finally in my experiences I’ve found that most(but not all) salesmen will put their needs(making money) before your needs(improving your business). It sounds crass, but that’s what I’ve seen.
Cheers, Devon
I have found that marketing seems to promote the weakest point of a product. Maybe the Solidworks EWORD means that they are really working on the technical geometry issues and bugs.
I found a bug in the Geometry works add in conic surface that would sometimes generate a poor shape around a singular point. I found a work around but sent them a model with the problem. About a week later they sent me a software update with the bug fixed. Wow.
Well, I have read the Lean Construction announcement and is was sincerely a bad EXPERIENCE
I think you might have your model flipped around. I think that DS is attempting to sell professional and technical tools to the general population not the reatil experience to the technical. That would never work. The technical are too smart for that.
General population…not so much.
“I believe that the product itself should be all the marketing you need, i.e., the product should sell itself.”
No one can “sell” me anything. I either need it or I don’t. I can either afford to buy it or I can’t.
My wife uses the same criteria. We’re teaching our daughter about this. She seems to understand this concept at 10 years old, that’s a good thing.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite John Wooden quotes, “Make more than you spend”.
Cheers, Devon Sowell
Matt,
From your “marketing” link above.
“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” ~ David Packard”
3DEXPERIENCE, Autodesk Experience, Cloud and Velocity are marketing buzzwords familiar to many here. They all have one source and that is unsupervised PR departments run amok. CAD users generally are pretty logical individuals and while you have to get the software out there in front of them initially with publicity and promotions the quality of what you offer should do the rest.
Erm, the u was removed from honour, colour, etc in the 1800s, not added.