Chronos vs Kairos: Do We Plan for the Right Concept of Time?

The ancient Greeks got some things very right. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, reintroduced the Greek muse into our modern concept of creativity during a brilliant TED talk. Something else the Greeks got right is time. They had not one, but two, words for it: chronos and kairos.

Chronos

It’s what we know as chronological time. Morning, noon, night. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Beginning, middle, end. You get the idea.

In the interactive world, we know how to craft for chronos. We know how to do step 1-2-3 wizards. We’re getting much better at landing pages with clear next steps. We’re thinking through the user experience from search results to checkout.

Kairos

It depends less on order than on readiness. The Greeks meant the right moment to say or do the right thing. Kairos relies on context, or making sure all circumstances are right. You have to align the stars—or realize when they’re aligned. When the stars align, you have to come up with the right action or words. For examples, see my recent article in A List Apart, Words that Zing.

Crafting for Both

To take our interactive experiences from usable and forgettable to influential, we’ll need to craft experiences for chronos AND kairos. This need will be hard to meet. Why? Because technologies, developers, and even many designers focus on chronos. It’s pretty clear how to develop and design 1-2-3 wizards, for example. Kairos, however, depends on sustained human judgment about how content affects people. No matter how many personalization features your website has, they’ll be impotent without people creating content that resonates with other people. No matter how well-organized or attractive your website is, it will not get results without the right messages. Technology and design alone will never meet the needs of kairos.

Despite this challenge, I’m hopeful we can overcome it with the rise of content strategy. Content strategy aligns the stars and owns the opportune moment. Here are just a few examples.

Align the Stars (Set the Context)

• Editorial strategy
  There’s a lot to editorial strategy. One way it helps kairos is creating variations on topics, themes, and messages over time with a diversity of useful content. This content does not necessarily cause people to decide or act immediately, but it primes people for an opportune moment to decide or act later.
• Voice
  Part of content or editorial strategy, voice establishes the right personality and perspective for the content. Voice helps make the content trustworthy and distinct. It also sets a proper tone for social content (user generated content and social media).
• Content strategy
  Among other things, content strategy plans how to coalesce data-driven, editorial, and social content into an influential mix.

Own the Opportune Moment

• Editorial judgment
  Editors or content strategists monitor the circumstances and recognize when the time is appropriate for a topic, theme, or message.
• Web writing
  Writers know how to craft words in a suitable voice to tailor a specific message to specific users.
• Social or community management
  Content strategists or community managers monitor social channels and forums and respond to complaints, praise, questions, and more with a befitting tone and relevant content.

So, let’s take a cue from the Greeks. When we craft interactive experiences, let’s think about chronos AND kairos.