One tool we believe in strongly is the concept of combining user experiences, or using the collective perception of the brand as a social tool. Facebook is as social as it gets, with a huge user base, so it’s an intuitive tool for integrating user experiences and forming a shared user experience.

Straightforward, yes? Well, not really. The concept of tapping into a shared user experience isn’t black and white. It’s not tangible like a product or service, and thus it’s different to package and market. That all said, how do you package a user experience? We’ve had the privilege to work with two different campaigns in recent months in which we were able to socialize each brand’s shared user experience. Here’s a brief description of both projects.

Disney Memories

It’s safe to say that most people have a Disney memory, whether it’s visiting a park as a child or taking their own children to experience the magic. With this in mind, the Walt Disney World Facebook page wanted to bring its fans together to share each of their Disney memories and create a collective pool of Disney memories as a marketing tool that all fans could relate to.

The “Share Memories” Facebook tab does that. It allows users to share special Disney memories by uploading their favorite Disney vacation photos, along with captions that describe each memory. Users can share their virtual Disney memory with the Facebook community, and photo memories become part of the rotating Disney collage, where fans can browse or search through Disney memories by location, emotion or theme.

In addition, users can share their favorite Disney memories through the Photobook app. This online tool allows users to customize the album templates to match the Disney resort they’ve visited, and then upload photos to fill the virtual album. Once it’s created, the albums can be shared with friends and family.

Kodak Social Photo Album Creator

Kodak Picture Kiosks can be found in most malls and Target stores. They allow users to edit and print photos, as well as create greeting cards, announcements, calendars and invitations. The Kiosks are a user-friendly option for just about anybody who takes pictures but doesn’t have design software or the technical know-how to use it.

Kodak wanted to promote the Facebook integration with their Picture Kiosks in a way that would allow users to create and share albums with friends socially, while ultimately marketing the Kiosks. To that end, Dachis Group developed the Social Photo Album Creator app.

Housed on the tab, the Social Photo Album Creator gives users the ability to collaborate with their friends to turn Facebook photos into various photo creations at Kodak Picture Kiosks. The Album Creator draws from each user’s existing Facebook photo albums and allows users to create new photo albums and slideshows, something Facebook albums can’t do on their own. And like the name implies, users can invite friends to collaborate by adding their photos to the album as well, creating a unique shared photo experience that Facebook users weren’t offered outside of the app.

Once the album is complete, users can connect to their Facebook account at Kodak Picture Kiosks to edit, customize and print their photos directly.

These are just a couple of the ways Dachis Group approaches the challenge of a shared experience in social. Not all shared user experiences are made equal. But with the right brand-appropriate strategy, it’s possible to bring fans together to share an experience, and ultimately help promote the brand itself.

Karen McGrane has spent the past 15 years working with clients to help them see their customers as users of their digital products. She is Senior Partner at Bond Art + Science, and will be speaking at the Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010 to explain how UX Will Make Or Break Social Business.

How can a great user experience (UX) can make a big difference in a business?

Every company is now in the digital product design business. Banks, retailers, publishers — they’re all creating interactive products and services that people have to use. Many customers, partners, or employees now interact with the business extensively (or even exclusively) through digital interfaces. Which means that in the user’s mind, the experience of using the product IS the business.

It’s shocking how long it has taken for many businesses to catch on to the fact that they’re now digital product designers. Most companies don’t have the talent, the processes, and the insight about user behavior they need to design great user experiences. Successful businesses treat the user experience like their biggest competitive advantage, and it is!

What stops businesses from investing in UX when there are clear business benefits (and expensive failures)?

I think there are three big stumbling blocks. The first, fundamentally, is a lack of empathy, an inability to imagine the experience from the user’s perspective. Companies can be self-centered, highly attuned to their business goals and internal values systems, but have trouble seeing themselves through their customers’ eyes. So when a UX designer points out that users have difficulty understanding how to use a digital product, businesses respond with self-serving justifications about why it “needs” to be that way.

The second reason is that too many companies still think their digital products and services are “technology” and they equate the user experience with “features.” Without a solid understanding of user expectations, needs, and behaviors, it’s hard to make informed decisions about how to design a product. Instead, businesses fall prey to “Shiny Object Syndrome” and think that if they bolt the latest gizmo onto their website, it will magically make for a better experience.

And finally — and most problematically — most businesses do not have organizational structures, processes, and cultures that support good product design. Really, in many projects, the design is the easy part. For a designer to sit down at a desk and craft a better experience than what most businesses provide today is not that hard. What’s hard is getting a large, decentralized organization with many competing business units to review, critique, approve, and launch a better product. Show me a digital product that’s hard to navigate, and I’ll show you a business with an equally convoluted organizational structure.

How does the social nature of business make these issues even more important?

Social business could make matters worse. You see it all the time: a company decides it can achieve business value through being more social, and equates that to adding new social features to its products. Those features might be hard to use, or they might not fit with the user’s mindset and workflow. By adding new social tools without understanding user goals and expectations, companies run the risk of making the user’s experience even more complicated and confusing.

For social business to succeed, it will require a change in behavior. Customers, partners, and employees will all have to change the way they engage with a company (and with each other.) Design can help make that behavior change happen, but only if companies see social business initiatives as user experience initiatives.