Experience & Co-Creation

Tell me, I forget.
Show me, I remember.
Involve me, I understand.
- Confusius

The term 'experience' is a relatively new, but nonetheless widespread concept in the exhibition- and event sector. The quote above illustrates the effect that an 'experience' has on visitors of an exhibition or event. Less known, but equally interesting is the concept of co-creation. Co-creation means, that the organiser is not single-handedly creating the experience, rather the visitors make a significant contribution to the creation of the experience at an exhibition or event.

Co-creation has some important advantages: 1) the organiser is not solely responsible for creating the experience, 2) an experience created by visitors is more valuable or 'real' than an experience constructed by the organisers of an exhibition or an event, etcetera. However, co-creation has some important implications: 1) the visitors' experience is not necessarily equal to the organisers' intended experience, 2) the visitor is influenced by more factors than just the exhibition or event he or she is visiting – but all factors influence the experience of the visitor at your event. In short: co-creation can be an interesting way to construct and amplify the visitors' experience, but the organiser is more dependent on the whims of the visitors.

For this reason, a common expression applies: 'look before you leap'. In advance, do research to determine whether or not your event or exhibition is suitable for co-creation, determine the strategies for co-creation, and facilitate them as much as you can. Also, make plans to handle as many divergent scenarios as you can think of: what do we do when visitors have a different experience than the one we intended? What do we do when co-creation does not work the way we envisioned? How do we adjust?

Since co-creation is a powerful way to determine the experience of an event or exhibition, it is very important to think about this beforehand. If necessary, you can have focus group meetings with people from your target group to test your concept. This way, you can align the organiser's vision for an event or exhibition with the interpretation of the target group, to ensure you get maximum results from your co-creation efforts.

NB: There are several tools out there for enabling co-creation. I will write about a selection of these tools in a next blogpost. If you have a special interest for certain tools, please leave them in the comments!

Wikipedia

10 January 2011 22:42