The Theory

Experience Value

Experience is a quasi-commodity that can be contextualised into a value system - in much the same way as morality or pleasure. It can therefore be used in the same way to gauge the worth of an object, event or interaction.

Accordingly, Experience-Value is a system of evaluation that can be used to help us make decisions and also engage in new areas of design potential. In some respects this makes experience-value a somewhat post-modern evaluative system, in that it challenges long-held modernist, progressive attitudes towards protection, safety and security.

Experience as a Process of Consciousness

Experience might be thought of as the means by which we rationalise our existence. This process of consciousness is initialized by an event:

We rationalise our surroundings through our senses as we perceive and interpret incoming sensory data. This data informs our emotional and sensational status.

Experience Value: the qualitative system, and it's relationship with Experience: the process

The Value of experience can be loosely categorised into three divisions: Sensation, Emotion and Knowledge, then further sub-divided. The sum of these experiences help inform our personality, which affects our attitude, our behaviours and ultimately our actions. Hence, we make use of the process of experience to interact with our environment.

Other Systems of Value, and their relationship with Experience Value

Classically, there are considered to be two fundamental evaluative systems: morality and pleasure (sometimes pleasure is referred to as "natural value"). Objects, people, events, interactions and contexts can all be evaluated independently through both systems.

Lets consider two examples: 1) a chocolate cake is an object that possesses an intrinsic pleasurable worth - that it is tasty; 2) the organisation UNICEF has a high moral value - it provides aid and support to children. Now conversely, these values are, to all intents and purposes, irrelevant when alternated - the taste of chocolate cake is not determined by it's moral worth, if any; UNICEF workers most likely volunteer through a sense of moral obligation, rather than for enjoyment (there are technicalities, but I hope for the most part you will agree that this is true).

Experience Value is a third, wholly independent system of value, and transforms this dialogue into a trialogue. Being an evaluative system in its own right, it cannot be evaluated by the other two systems of value, nor can it evaluate them. It is not good, it is not bad: it's another way of describing good or bad. Acquiring sensational, emotional or informative feedback is equally possible both morally and immorally; in a pleasurable way as easily as an unpleasurable way. The "goods" and "bads" of these systems, as we see them, are as unrelated to one another as they both are to experience value. What's more, an immoral or unpleasant experience is potentially as relevant and important as a moral or pleasurable experience.

Bad things, as good things, have an effect on us and experience value is all about this effect - this all-round unbiased acquisition of knowledge, sensation and emotion. Accordingly, an experiential system of value would qualify an amount of time spent inactive and unstimulated (for example, in a coma) as "worse" than an equal amount of time spent enduring an unpleasant experience. As cold and counter-intuitive as this may seem, the assumption is that said displeasure would have a more significant effect on the individual - it would imbue them with knowledge: emotionally, sensationally, informatively. It's true that said experience might be so unpleasurable as to "scar" the individual emotionally, but experience value MAKES NO MORAL, NOR PLEASURABLE DISTINCTION. Guilt, embarrassment, discomfort and pain are all equally relevant in experience terms - they are all significant in our development as individuals.

The anti-goal of experience value - the equivalent of evil for a moral value system, or pain for a pleasure value system - is merely forgetting; the loss of input; the failure to recall. "Good" and "bad" according to an experience-value system would translate as "much experience" and "loss of experience" respectively.

Quantifying Experience & Experience Value

The graphs above show how experience value is claimed. These images are based upon a metaphorical premise - that experience is tangible and that it's intensity could be measured at any given time. Experience Value is the amount of experience harnessed during an event, i.e. between two points in time. By analogy, if the pursuit of experience were to be considered a journey (a common, admittedly clichéd analogy) then intensity of experience would be similar to the speed travelled at a given moment; experience value would be the equivalent of distance travelled.

Experience Value is the integral of Experience Intensity when expressed as a function:

'Experience-yielding events' can be anything and everything. The contexts that derive a greater-than-average spike in experience intensity might include hearing a piece of music, eating a cake, having an argument or watching the news.

But not all sources are equal. Risks yield a remarkably strong subset of contexts for delivering experience value. They are actions that trigger discreet event-windows of heightened experience potential. A discourse on experience needs to include some serious considerations on the value of risks.

The Value of Risks

Risks are the transaction (or sacrifice) of a commodity - something solid and real, for an experience and a probability. They are the trade of concrete for abstract, tangible for intangible, the present for the future, order for chaos. They are acknowledged gambles and the deliberate exchange of value.

Of course, risks are exemplary cases of experience value being yielded regardless of the outcome being "good" or "bad" - there is as much potential for learning from a risk that doesn't pay-off as from a risk that does. We learn from our mistakes. The only exceptions are risks that result in death, or more broadly the loss of capacity to experience.

Risk Taxonomy

Risks can be broken down into three essential categories, based on the commodity that is placed in greatest jeopardy. Often a particular risk will have a cause and effect variously relevant to all categories. These are: physiological risk, risks of possession and socio-cultural risk:

Physiological Risks are risks that might have some negative impact on the body or the mind: e.g. extreme sports, thrill seeking, unprotected sex and drug abuse. The outcomes include breaking bones, brain damage, pain, emotional anguish, STI's, blindness, paralysis etc.

Risks of Possession are risks that might potentially lead to the loss of a commodity or property. They include gambling, investment, the choice to not insure or even to commit crime. The outcomes might include loss of money, loss of objects, loss of land, imprisonment (loss of freedom), loss of opportunity or potential.

Socio-Cultural Risks are risks that might have an effect between relationships, such as those between friends, partners, peers, colleagues or members of the general public. These risks are especially interesting because there can be a massive difference between what the perceived and actual potential loss might be. Such risks include telling a joke, instigating negotiations, expressing an opinion or making an argument, making demands, flirting, confessing, requesting, acting against moral sensibilities etc.

The Value of Exposure

Exposures are related to, but separate from risks. Whereas risks are actions that trigger events, exposures involve removing or undermining protective and preventative paradigms to recontextualise events that are happening anyway.

The Numbness of Prevention

Experience through risk can be dampened through protective systems or denied through preventative systems.

Protective systems occur within a context; they provide a layer of security - reducing the chance of a negative outcome but likely by sacrificing elements of a positive outcome. They include bullet-proof armour, skin, firewalls, barriers, bicycle helmets, travel insurance, back-up systems, shark cages, safety nets etc.

Preventative systems prohibit the context altogether. They disallow the opportunity to experience anything contextually, positive or negative. They include curfews, bans, censorship, suppressants, locks, confiscations and imprisonment.

Exploiting the Values of Risks and Exposures

Risks and exposures can be utilised to increase experience-capture. In the short-term, taking risks can yield sharp spikes of experience, and in the long-term exposures can reveal greater sensation, emotional and informational insight. These two concepts were the foundation for the following stage in this investigation - Experiments.

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