Why human experience is becoming more valuable, not less

We can do almost everything without leaving the house now. We can order dinner without speaking to a restaurant, buy a new outfit without stepping inside a shop, check into a hotel without visiting reception and have almost anything we need delivered to our door within hours.

And, for the most part, I love it. I’m a huge fan of anything that makes life easier. I certainly don’t want to queue for twenty minutes to do something an app could have sorted in thirty seconds.  But lately I’ve found myself thinking about the other side of all this convenience.

Because while technology is becoming incredibly good at making things quicker, easier and more efficient, I wonder whether it is also making the genuinely human experiences in our lives feel more valuable.

There’s something rather lovely about wandering into a small independent bookshop and asking the person behind the counter what they’ve been reading. Finding the perfect little present and having someone wrap it beautifully for you. Buying flowers from a florist who knows exactly what is in season. Picking up a loaf of fresh bread on a Saturday morning and walking home with it tucked under your arm.  None of these things is particularly groundbreaking. In fact, they’re quite ordinary. But perhaps that’s exactly the point.

There is a pleasure in these small, physical interactions that simply doesn’t exist when something arrives anonymously in a cardboard box. The conversation. The recommendation. The beautiful wrapping. The smell of the flowers or the bread. The chance discovery of something you weren’t actually looking for.

A reason to go somewhere - for anyone creating a physical space, whether that’s a shop, café, restaurant, hotel, studio or something entirely new, I think this presents a really interesting opportunity. Because if we no longer need to go somewhere to buy something, perhaps the question becomes: what makes us want to go?

I’m interested in the places that seem to understand this. The independent shop where you want to browse rather than simply buy. The café that becomes part of your Saturday morning. The garden centre where you meet a friend for lunch. The Pilates studio where people stay for a coffee after class. The hotel lobby that locals use as much as guests. The wine bar that becomes your wine bar.  They give us something a screen can’t. 

They give us atmosphere, discovery, conversation, touch, taste, smell and a sense of connection with other people. And this is where the physical space becomes so important.

It isn’t simply a backdrop. It can change how long we stay, how comfortable we feel, whether we explore, whether we talk to somebody, whether we return and whether we tell someone else about it.  Good design can create the conditions for all of those things to happen.

The human bits

 Of course, AI and technology will increasingly become part of how these businesses operate and how their spaces are conceived. I already find AI incredibly useful myself, and we are clearly only at the beginning of what it will be able to do.  But perhaps technology doesn’t have to make physical experiences less important. Perhaps it does the opposite.

The more automated the transactional parts of our lives become, the more noticeable it feels when somebody remembers our name. When a shopkeeper makes a brilliant recommendation. When something has been wrapped beautifully by hand. When we're welcomed warmly into a restaurant. When someone has clearly thought about how a place should make us feel rather than simply how efficiently it should operate.  Taste. Judgement. Generosity. Conversation. Hospitality. Curiosity. Connection.  They’re difficult things to automate.  And I suspect we may start valuing them more, not less.

The opportunity therefore for our shops, restaurants, hotels, studios and other physical spaces isn't to try to compete with technology at being faster. It's to concentrate on being more human.  Because if we can increasingly do everything from our sofas, the places we choose to visit need to give us a reason to get up and go.