Considering that the first edition of The Experience Economy was written in 1999, it’s interesting how prescient the author’s idea were. Based on past observations, I feel there’s been an emerging “sixth” principle for creating experiences which is making them sharable on social media. This has become particularly important for physical experiences that are difficult to access and/ or ephemeral. The methods that Pine and Gilmore present seem to be heavily curated compared to Simon’s ides in the “Participatory Museum”, in which the experience partly emerges from community engagement.

This reading also brought to mind how, for me, an experience can sometimes be degraded when the bottom-line becomes visible or felt, usually when a corporation or institution tries to sell a product or service at the very end. One example is when museums make you “exit through the gift shop”— If the transition is too abrupt I feel more like a consumer than a visitor.

I thought What Makes a Satisfying Museum Experience? addressed some key questions I had while reading The Experience Economy, particularly what metrics are used to measure the satisfaction of an experience and how the visitor’s experience changes after multiple visits. It found it interesting that repeat visitors tended to rate the “entertainment”, “fun”, and “excitement” aspects of the museum higher than first-time visitors. One question that I had after finishing both readings was how do you design an experience that rewards the curiosity (and support) of repeat visitors.