Layering Experiences
Combos that increase the intensity of an experience and its value to the experiencer
There is a concept in the art of wearing perfumes where one “layers” different perfumes atop of each other to create a new heightened or compound experience. The same can be done when creating strategies for your community to improve their experiences, and it works because of something I like to call the ginjahed framework or as it is popularly called the Psych'd framework, and it was developed by Darius Contractor a seasoned growth and product expert.
Basically, it says that every interaction within a system increases or decreases the interactee’s Psych (or ginjah), which can be used as a unit of measurement for motivation required to complete an action. It is like when we say
Omo, I no get ginjah to comot do work today oo
Or,
I am feeling down today, I need to ginjah (or psych) myself up!
Ginjah there is used as a way to show how motivated we are to complete an action like work or living our lives the way we want. And so the more we are ginjahed about an action or an experience caused by an action, the more we are willing to complete said action.
I coined the word ginjah from the phrase Terry G the Nigerian musician made popular, “ginjah my swagger”.
A good example would be looking an one’s experience meeting another person for the first time. In completely new experiences we are neutral, so we start 0 ginjah and the more we enjoy what we are experiencing, the more we are ginjahed to continue.
The person we are meeting smells nice +5 ginjah, they enjoy similar interests like we do, +20 ginjah. And in a product or community, the same applies.
The community (or product) is beautifully designed +5 ginjah, they are very nice and friendly to me when I join +10 ginjah, and so on. But when something we don’t like happens, we lose ginjah.
Since we can’t make everyone happy or ginjahed all the time, how can we leverage this to our advantage in designing beautiful experiences for our community?
By always leaving the members of our community with enough positive (+ve) ginjah that the -ve ginjah is outnumbered. But how would we do this? By layering +ve experiences to compound the +ve ginjah one gets at each interaction with the community and preventively removing the -ve experiences as well.
How layered experiences increases ginjah
Imagine you like rice, you also like beans and you love plantain. If you eat either of these on their own, say rice and stew, or beans and stew or plantain and stew, they are the normal tastes and experiences you are used to, the taste is just there, the ginjah to eat them is neutral or small like say +2 ginjah. But when you combine all 3 in a spoon and you eat it, the taste compounds and your ginjah to eat this new layered experience or meal increases by +8 ginjah (which is 2 ginjah raised exponentially to the power of 3). This increase shows the compounding nature of layered experiences, where the individual ginjah is increased in exponents.
2 x 2 x 2 = 8
So taking an experience you are used to and like and combining or layering it with other normal experiences increases the ginjah exponentially. It is that simple (but a little complex), combine experiences like rice, beans and plantain plus stew.
For your community of friends or friend, when you want to create an experience to celebrate them, it could be instead of taking them to watch a movie, you take them bowling + take them to lunch /dinner + watch a movie + play card, video or other games back at your place.
For your product or brand community, when you want to reward their loyalty to your brand, instead of giving single swag items to reward their loyalty, you can combine multiple swag items + allow them pick the swag combo they want + add a personal hand written thank you note + give them a shout-out in the community. Product or brand communities use these individually as reward mechanisms in their communities. The personalisation adds another layer, one that satisfies an emotional need to be seen and given freedom of choice.
You can look at your different communities and think of the individual things you would usually do to improve or give an experience, then combine them like rice, beans, plantain and stew or like a 4-ingredient pancake or like a burger. 😉