I think about experience design all the time.
I also read-out my writings if you prefer to have a listen. Click here.
TLDR (too long; didn’t read):
Experiences Matter: Whether it’s the familiarity of a favorite coffee shop or the ambiance of a particular neighborhood, experiences play a crucial role in our preferences and choices.
Crafting Memorable Experiences: Designing experiences isn’t just reserved for innovative tech gadgets or immersive exhibitions. It’s a blend of understanding people’s needs, considering systemic factors, and adding sensory delight, all mixed together for a delightful outcome.
Reflect and Apply: Next time you’re basking in a joyful moment or scratching your head at a less-than-stellar experience, take a moment to ponder what elements are at play. Then, armed with this newfound awareness, why not sprinkle a bit of experience design magic into your next gathering or event?
Ever walk into a retreat space and the gentle floating essential oils smells immediately evokes the feeling of calm, even though technically the retreat hasn’t started yet?
Or what about when you walk into a movie or theatre show that’s designed to immerse you into a different world, and you forget about the world you left outside?
The common thread in the situations described above (and many others) is experiences. Knowingly or unknowingly, we seek experiences in everything we do and all the decisions we make. Interior designers, event designers, product designers and (sometimes)… city designers know this. The feelings we get in spaces are deliberately evoked — IF the organisers have understood the value.
Experience is why you’ll go back to that coffee shop every morning, or why you’ll want to hang out with that one person again or why you’ll decide to live in one part of town vs. another. Experience is why you’re thinking about sunglasses and outfit choices, playlists for long drives, or taking the car or the train in.
Those who understand the importance of experience often hire user-experience designers for their products and technology advancements but rarely have I seen the dialogue move to other industries. I can often feel something being “off” about what’s happening around me → could be a meeting, a walk in the park, an exchange with the cashier at a retail store. If this is a relatable feeling but you haven’t just yet figured out why, chances are it’s because the people who set up those physical spaces, gatherings or interactions forgot to think about “the experience”. This is where my mind often goes.. Why.. am I experiencing… xyz..?
After lots of reading and reflecting, I’ve landed on the following formula for how we get to experiences:
Experiences = Understanding what people need and feel + Ways of the world x Space + Aesthetics / Ambiance
What does that look like in practice?
This is how I’ve made sense of it and the lenses that I put on when I’m designing gatherings and roundtables that are memorable, playful and engaging.
Understanding what people need and feel:
Human-centred design (aka user-centred design): There are countless articles and resources on what this is, but what I’ve found is often missing is thinking about the people beyond the biophysical needs i.e., considerations for cultural protocols and accessibility, noting the multi-faceted identities, feelings and exploring our imagination from what we know to what’s possible. Imagine changing camera lens from a 50mm to a fish-eye lens. That.
Which is why it’s combined with → Ways of the world:
Systems design: I was first introduced to the world of systems thinking in 2015 and it was so good to find common language to explain what I always think about “why do some people have different experiences and hence outcomes to others but they walk the same Earth?” Systems, is why. And we’re so deeply indoctrinated into these systems that it can be hard to know that 1) different is possible and 2) what different could be. The whole unknown unknowns phenomena. Knowing about systems when creating experiences allows us to either uphold ones that we know enhance experiences or shift the ones we know diminish experiences. In other words, it allows us to think about the values we want to see in action when designing anything that leads to someone having an experience.
Service design: In all I’ve been reading about this, I find it easiest to think about it as the arrangement of infrastructure and people for customer experience. If you’re more visual, think of the front-end of your local supermarket: where you walk in from and what you see first on the shelves, how close the milk and bread are to each other (hint: often not very close so that you can walk through the whole store and be enticed to pick up other things) and also the back-end e.g. when the shelves are stocked and does it interrupt with customers shopping experience. This is all great because it’s thinking about the customer experience, but the challenge I want to pose to myself and my circles is can we take this thinking outside of just customer-supplier transactions into other spaces too? Can we build a mindset of “service design” in our meetings, events, coffee catch ups, during our alone time with the key aim to serve the people we’re interacting with (including ourselves)?
And then you multiply the above with:
Space:
Urban design and interior design: I’m not qualified in either of these fields but what I do know is trees are powerful, specific colours can evoke certain feelings and proximity of opportunities or people can make it or break it. Most of my reflections in this are from lived experience of how much my physical surroundings can influence decisions or force actions, from observing my built environment as I walk through outdoor and indoor spaces to whether or not opportunities are around the corner and so if not, why not… I also learn about this through listening to my fav podcasts (more on at another time). And so the question to myself and you is, how much do we think about the physical outdoor and indoor space in designing experiences?
Place-making: In my mind this is the 2.0 of urban design, which is.. Once I’ve thought about the infrastructure needed, how do I simultaneously consider the way in which people will interact with it and the community can own it as theirs? It’s collaborative — it sees residents of a space as the shareholders and invested in the physical space just as much as the designer. While this may not always be easy to implement in our everyday experiences, the principles can be learnt from (more on this too another time).
And finally add Aesthetics / Ambiance:
Sensory design: In the fast-paced, output driven world we live in — we can forget how diligently our five (maybe six?) senses are working to allow our navigation — sometimes all at once, and sometimes one or two being more enhanced to compensate for what the others can’t sense. I realised how critical this was when I participated in the Dialogue in the Dark immersive exhibition in 2018 and to this day, I can not shake off how much sensations impacted the way in which I could engage (or not). Growing up in a household with lots of spices used in the cooking and when you walk in the house and hear the Old is Gold playlist in the background, and smell the Nihari in the slow cooker, it feels like home. Sensory design for me is the light on entering a space and the softness of the carpet when you walk through the corridor. Immersive exhibitions do it best and again, I’m inspired to see how we can bring these learnings outside of just creative exhibitions — into everyday gatherings.
All of this is to say, next time you’re experiencing something, have a think about what are the things working in collaboration to create the sense of joy, the despair, the smile, the drain, or the nothingness. What contributes to the feelings that we remember when we move through our worlds.
If you resonate with all or parts of this, let me know. If you’re also always thinking about experience design too, let me know. If you want to put this into practice in a program, gathering or convening that you’re hosting or running soon, get in touch — I can walk alongside you on that journey!