Experience Field

The use of LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude is changing the product landscape. How and where people interact with information is rapidly changing. People can now solve their own problems with a simple automation script or a vibe-coded product. More products are showing up as “apps” within those same LLMs. You can search for a house on Zillow, rent an Airbnb, or purchase online products, all from a single AI chat. And with tools like OpenClaw, you can even let AI agents run in the background, performing tasks on your behalf. In that world, it’s possible that someone will use your product without even seeing it themselves.

A typical product flow looks like this:

1. Adoption → people try it
2. Activation → people use it
3. Retention → people keep using it

The goal of product work is to get as many people as you can to try, use, and keep using the product. Successful products bring more people in than they lose. It’s important to understand how, where, and why people are engaging with your product. The product experience is largely the same no matter where you come from, which is counter to what’s happening now. Product introductions are increasingly more diverse, making it more difficult to capture attention, let alone engage someone to pay for and keeping paying for the value your product provides. Solving a problem well is not enough anymore.

When people show up, consider where they’re coming from and why they’re there. The context matters. It forms a story about their intentions. A good product matches someone’s intention to the value the product provides.

In a world of exponential growth through AI execution, it’s those human things—understanding intent, emotions, needs—that will help your product stand out. Because, more than anything, human nature is to want to be seen, acknowledged, understood. And when it comes to creating software, imbuing a digital experience with such human emotions requires humans at the helm, designing environments that can deliver real value.

If AI collapses the complexity and time of execution, then humans should have the time to simplify, reduce, and improve the experience of the products we build.

This idea is called the Experience Field, which lives in the Clarity Climate of the Claritorium and Value Creation of Equilio.

The three pillars are:

1. Entry Context for understanding where a person is coming from and where they show up when using your product.
2. User Disposition for understanding how a person feels and what their intention is to map their problem to your solution.
3. Value Pursuit for creating aligned value that’s felt and understood when someone experiences your product for the first time.

Entry Context

People don’t follow the same linear path when they use your product. Users arrive from somewhere, into somewhere.

There are two forces: Origin and Orientation.

Origin tells you where they came from.

Orientation tells you where they end up.

Each force provides context to direct the best experience with your product. This extends beyond knowing if they’re a new user or an existing user; a free user or a paying user; an individual account or a B2B account. Those details matter, but the Origin and Orientation tells a richer story about your users.

Entry Context is understanding both forces, and using that understanding to deliver an experience catered to someone’s expectations.

Origin

Everyone coming to your product has an intention. They could be exploring or looking to accomplish a specific task.

Origin sets expectations. And it also carries momentum. Momentum, as a force, needs special attention to carry forward.

Origin tells you:

• What triggered the visit.
• How much context they already have.
• What expectations were formed upstream.

Did they come from a search? Ad? Social post?

A search user is seeking a solution, but you are must connect the dots. Someone who comes from an ad was attracted to the language and/or visuals. Someone coming from a social post has more context, so you just need to follow through.

Context matters.

Orientation

Once someone makes it to your product, they have to land somewhere: homepage, signup, in-product experience. It’s doubtful they’re always hitting the same place. And if they are, it just makes your job even easier.

Orientation defines what they see first. It’s the first impression of your product.

Orientation tells you:

• What part of the product.
• What surface area is visible.
• What actions are immediately available.

A homepage can handle a broader entry than a signup page. Our experience has a prompt on the homepage, surrounded by a lot of context explaining the product. But if you land in the core experience, we rely on existing conventions to guide the user.

Common patterns established by tools like ChatGPT and Claude matter. That’s why the “hamburger menu” (the one with the three lines) became so commonplace: Facebook popularized it in their app, which formed a mental model others could borrow.

Standardize where you can; customize where it matters—where your value is differentiated.

Tension

Origin and Orientation don’t operate independently. They combine to create the tension within Entry Context. Each force works together to create a picture of what the experience should look like.

Take organic traffic, for example. Someone searches in a search engine using specific keywords and lands on your product. But depending on where they land, your results can change drastically. Someone landing on a page with explanations versus one where they’re dropped in without the right context can change the outcomes.

You can’t treat Orientation as static. It must consider the Origin and adapt to it. Only then can you intelligently convert new users. You can’t interrupt the momentum someone brings with them. They overcame inertia and made a conscious decision to seek out your solution. But then it’s your job to follow through and let them know where they are, adapt to their context, and align with their expectations.

When Entry Context is misaligned, you see:

• Immediate drop-offs.
• Shallow engagement.
• Low progression to value.

This can occur in three ways:

1. Context Loss: You drop them into a generic experience without leveraging their unique context.
2. Over-Explanation: You share too much information and not enough value.
3. Under-Orientation: You land them in a complex environment with no guidance.

Entry Context doesn’t create value. It sets the stage for value to be realized.

The job of Entry Context is to:

• Set the stage for realizing value.
• Reduce friction to getting to value.
• Create engagement and keep them there.

There’s another layer that adds nuance and complexity to the situation: emotions.

User Disposition

Two users can take the same path through your product and experience it differently.

Why?

They’re different people, of course, but they also have different states of mind.

User Disposition is the internal lens through which value is judged. You can’t predict everyone’s state of mind, but you can design for the most common scenarios.

There are two components:

1. Persona → who they are generally
2. State → who they are right now

Persona

Personas are stable identities. They’re representations of the most common types of people who show up to try and use your product. They tell you about their domain knowledge, mental models, and expectations about products like yours.

A good Persona defines what “good” looks like for your most common users.

For our product, a “researcher” is a Persona. They care about precision, depth, and credibility. The product needs to reflect those qualities in the experience.

State

State is the dynamic condition. It tells you why they’re here right now, how much patience they have, and what emotional tone they carry.

Knowing the State of each Persona establishes how much it takes to convince them.

If they’re curious, then they are open and exploratory. They’ll have more patience to sort through information and try multiple ways.

If they’re frustrated, then they are seeking relief with a low tolerance. You won’t have much time to convince them.

There are countless emotional states. You can’t predict them all, but you can learn from the data to optimize for the most common scenarios. Build for the ideal.

Disposition

Like the two forces of Entry Context, Persona and State combine to define a clear tension.

The Persona is what they can understand.

The State is what they’re willing to accept.

Together, it creates:

Disposition = Persona × State

Some examples:

• The Curious Expert: Expert + Curious → high tolerance, high exploration
• The Skeptical Expert: Expert + Skeptical → high bar for proof
• The Urgent Novice: Novice + Urgent → needs simplicity, fast answers

The same feature, depending on the user’s disposition, creates different outcomes.

If you ignore the Disposition, you see:

1. Over-Complexity: Novices are overwhelmed by expert explanations.
2. Under-Conviction: Experts are unconvinced by shallow explanations.
3. Misaligned Proof: Skeptical users are shown claims instead of evidence.

User Disposition is a deep understanding of the dynamics and complexities of the humans trying your product. Knowing this, you can design an experience aligned with their expectations, helping them commit.

Value Pursuit

Every user arrives with a question:

• Is this product trustworthy?
• Can this product help me get an answer?
• Is this better than what I use today?

The question is an intention, but it also forms an expectation. In order to prove value, you need to match the expectation:

• You build trust.
• You provide an answer.
• You contrast against the current state.

Value Pursuit defines the demand. It’s made up of two key elements:

1. Intent → what they’re trying to do
2. Value → what they’re able to do

Intent

Intent establishes what a user is trying to do.

It tells you:

• What outcome they want.
• What problem they’re trying to resolve.
• What success looks like in this moment.

The Intent is what you must prove so they can move forward. If I’m using Airbnb, my intent is to find a place to rent. There are a wide range of factors I’ll use to filter the places, which is what Airbnb provides. It knows finding the right place for me requires filtering based on preferences. The product experience is designed around that idea.

Value

Value should match Intent. In a product experience, I call this the Visible Value Moment (VVM), the exact moment in the process where a user’s intent is met.

The Intent is the question.

The VVM is the answer to that question.

This isn’t about showing features. Features are a representation of capability, but value is met through clear outcomes. I want a quarter-inch hole to hang my guitar on the wall, not worry about the features of a drill. The VVM for a drill is when it answers “can I hang my guitar on the wall?”—the intention I started with.

Value is revealed and realized. It comes through the shape of the user’s Intent.

Tension

It’s easy to overcompensate and share too much information. The more information, the better the coverage, right? But too much information can drown out the signal, like hearing competing sounds. Focus is lost.

The product landscape is changing. When you visit ChatGPT, you have a prompt. The user’s intent is a question, so the experience aligns with what someone is expecting.

Intent and Value match, which delivers the Visible Value Moment.

The balance to strike is between comprehensiveness and relevance. Highlight the value without burying it with too much information. Clarity matched to intent.

When Value Pursuit is misaligned, you get:

1. Scattered Value: Too many signals and no clear takeaways.
2. Missed Value: Important value exists, but shows up too late.
3. Missed Proof: The user needs evidence, but gets an explanation.

Value Pursuit aligns intent someone is seeking with the value your product provides.

The Practice

Each part of the Experience Field builds on itself:

• Entry Context paints a rich picture and sets the stage.
• User Disposition enriches your understanding.
• Value Pursuit delivers on the promise.

Defined as a process, the practice of Experience Field looks like:

Define → Identify → Reveal → Reduce → Refine

Define the Dimensions

Everything we’ve discussed so far are the dimensions of the Experience Field:

1. Origins define where people come from.
2. Orientations define where people show up in your product.
3. Personas define the type of people who show up.
4. States define how they show up.
5. Intents define what they’re trying to do.

Go through each dimension and define it for your product. It creates a rich taxonomy of inputs to create experiences mapped to real-world use-cases.

Formula: Origin + Orientation + Persona + State + Intent

Example: Organic + Homepage + Researcher + Urgent + Get Answer

Identify Dominant Vectors

If you build a product for everyone, you create a product for no one. Common product advice in the startup world is to focus your energy on solving a specific problem for a specific group of people. Why? You increase your chances of solving their problem, develop a deeper understanding of who you’re building for, and you begin to develop broader principles to serve larger groups. It’s like moving out in concentric circles as you expand your focus in the market.

This step is to focus on defining the dominant vectors:

Vector = Entry Context × User Disposition × Value Pursuit

You can define a generic experience, or you can define an experience for a curious expert looking to answer a research question in a hurry following a quick search.

Pick 3-5 vectors based off of usage data, customer interviews, and internal intuition.

Reveal the Visible Value Moment

For each of the dominant vectors you wrote down, ask yourself:

• What is the user trying to resolve?
• What is the Visible Value Moment?
• How long does it take to reach?

Let’s take the example from earlier:

Organic + Homepage + Researcher + Urgent + Get Answer

We’ll call this vector the Rapid Researcher.

With this framing, we can determine what their Visible Value Moment is. Starting with the intent—getting an answer—is the best way to start. Then use the other dimensions to add additional fidelity to the experience, mapped specifically to the intent. The Rapid Researcher doesn’t just need an answer; they need a fast, valid answer.

Said another way:

Give me a credible answer I can trust immediately.

For the Rapid Researcher, the Visible Value Moment is the instant they receive a credible answer with clear evidence they can trust.

We can express this another way:

A credible, well-supported answer appears instantly, with clear evidence showing why it can be trusted.

Reduce Friction

Knowing the VVM, everything in the experience should be designed with this in mind. Anything that gets in the way—any product friction—lowers the likelihood of success.

But here’s the thing: not all friction is bad. Sometimes you need to intentionally introduce friction in an effort to force behavior and understanding. However, the specific VVM of the Rapid Researcher requires special attention. They’re trying to get a well-supported answer with speed so they can move forward and make progress. Everything in the product experience should support that effort.

Consider the possible types of friction for the Rapid Researcher:

1. Delay Friction slows time to answer.
2. Proof Friction weakens credibility.
3. Cognitive Friction makes the answer harder to understand.

Different types of friction affect each vector differently. Once you surface the 3-5 dominant vectors, outline the types of friction that can hinder their progress in your product. Keep those in mind as you consider the Origin and Orientation combinations.

Refine the Surface

With the friction removed, define the surface—what the user sees, clicks, and how they move through the product. Reshape the experience to maximize the Visible Value Moment.

• Simplify the messaging.
• Reduce the number of screens.
• Make each call-to-action intentional.

Refine, refine, refine. Product quality lives in iteration.

The Throughline

Products are experiences. When you make something, you open yourself up to interpretation. And not everyone is going to love what you do. It’s a vulnerable position, but that’s part of making art.

As Edgar Degas says:

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

The Experience Field is made of three core components:

1. Entry Context
2. User Disposition
3. Value Pursuit

Entry Context defines the environment of the experience.

User Disposition defines the emotional state of the experience.

Value Pursuit defines the connection point that delivers a real impact.

Together, they build a coherent picture of why people show up, what they expect, and what you can do to meet their expectations. The people using your product are real humans in need of a solution. They’re trying to achieve a goal. Only when you stop, map the experience, and build a clear pathway to success can you understand what works and what doesn’t.

You build the Experience Field.