Manifesto · Version 1.0
Experience as a Software
Experience as a Software (EaaS) is the creation, by software, of unique, interactive emotional experiences from real stories — generated for one person and delivered through a link.
The thesis
In 1998, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore described a ladder the economy had been climbing for centuries. First we sold commodities; then goods; then services. The next rung would be experiences: something that happens inside the person living it, and stays in memory. Above those, transformations — experiences that change whoever goes through them. They called it The Experience Economy.
There was a limit no one needed to say out loud: a personal experience, made for a single person, required people. A writer to find the story, a filmmaker to give it shape, a designer to put it in someone’s hands. So whatever was truly personal was rare and expensive, and whatever was affordable was generic.
That limit is gone. Artificial intelligence can listen to a real story, understand what matters in it, and turn it into a whole experience — narrative, image, sound and gesture — made for one person. What used to be a weeks-long project becomes software: generated, personalized, repeatable at scale, and delivered through a link.
Software ate the world. Now it will learn to move people.
Experience as a Software is the name for that rung. It is not a customer’s experience with a brand, nor a product with a name printed on it. It is the experience itself, built as software, for someone.
Seven principles
An experience is EaaS when it keeps these seven principles. They hold for any platform that wants to use the term.
- Born from a real story. It starts from a fact, not a template: a place, a phrase, an object, a day. The details only those people know are the raw material, not the decoration.
- Lived, not watched. The person who receives it takes part. A simple gesture — holding, crossing, reaching — lets the body understand before the mind does. Interaction is not play for its own sake; it is how the story is felt from the inside.
- Unique and signed. Each experience is made for one person and never repeats. It carries a name, a date and an author, like a one-of-a-kind edition.
- Dignified. Real pain becomes metaphor, never a scene. No real person is ever cast as the villain. What gets overcome is time, distance, the rain — never a person.
- Winnable by whoever receives it. A child, a grandmother, someone who has never played anything. Difficulty serves the emotion; no one is left out of the ending.
- Private by default. The story belongs to whoever tells it. None of it becomes an example, a showcase or training data without explicit permission.
- Delivered by a link. No app and no sign-up for the person receiving it. It opens on the phone already in their pocket.
What EaaS is not
The term is new; the words around it are not. It is worth drawing the lines.
- Not “Experience as a Service.”
- That phrase circulates in the market for customer-experience (CX) platforms and consulting: measuring satisfaction, mapping journeys, optimizing support. It is about how companies treat customers. EaaS is something else: the experience is the product, and the one receiving it is a person — not a segment.
- Not a personalized product.
- The mug with a photo, the book with a child’s name, the T-shirt with a date. They are ready-made objects with one variable swapped. In EaaS the story is not printed onto something that already existed; it decides the entire shape of the experience.
- Not generic AI content.
- A beautiful text, an image or a song generated from a prompt could be for anyone — and so they touch no one in particular. EaaS starts from the opposite: from what is true only for those people.
In one sentence: EaaS is the experience itself, generated as software, for one person.
Where it applies
- Between people. The gift that says why someone matters: a birthday, an apology, a tribute to someone who is gone.
- Invitations. The wedding that begins with the couple’s story; the invitation to be godparents that only reveals itself at the end.
- Companies. Recognizing someone who made a difference, the first day of someone new, thanking a client of many years — with the real story, not an HR template.
- Brands. Campaigns in which each person lives their own version, instead of watching the same piece as everyone else.
- Schools. Graduations, farewells, a class reunited inside a story only they lived.
The first case
A son told a story from his own family: the day his mother walked out into the rain with her two small children. The experience generated from it did not show the scene. It put an umbrella in the player’s hands — and the gesture was to keep it over the children while she stayed in the rain.
The person who received it wrote, one minute after finishing:
“It’s like a film playing in your head.”
No comment about the game, none about the technology. A memory came back whole. That is what EaaS exists to do.
Personal details have been omitted.
The first platform
ifGifts began as a gift you have to win: a short game made for someone, which only opens at the end. Over time it became clear that the game was the vehicle and the story was the gift. ifGifts is the first platform built for Experience as a Software: it listens to a real story, generates the experience for one person and delivers it through a link.
Our mission is to bring unforgettable memories back to life as the most beautiful of gifts.