Designing Time: The Future of Experience Design | Dave Norton

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Oct 28, 2025

Dave Norton, founder of Stone Mantel, shares his insights on the evolution of experience design. He emphasizes that effective design focuses on how people spend their time, revealing that context trumps personality in shaping experiences. Norton discusses his work with Royal Caribbean, illustrating how design can create meaningful moments. He introduces the concept of 'time value' and how AI might scale transformational designs. Plus, he highlights the need for discomfort in transformation and the power of modularity in supporting user agency.

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INSIGHT

Time Is The Core Unit Of Experience

Dave Norton frames offerings by how they use customers' time: services save time, experiences spend time, transformations invest time.
Design should target time value across engagements, not just features or channels.

INSIGHT

Context Often Beats Psychology

Norton argues context often shapes behavior more than studying psychology alone.
Environmental cues (what you smell, see, do) strongly influence customer actions.

ANECDOTE

Designing A Private Island By Observation

Norton recounts designing Royal Caribbean's private island by observing guests and creating private pockets of space.
He used participatory observation to shape cabana placement and circulation to deliver privacy.

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Most organizations think about the design of work in terms of products, services, or customer journeys. But Dave Norton has spent his career arguing that experience design goes much deeper. It is about shaping how people spend their time and, in some cases, their lives. In this episode, Dart talks to Dave about how experience design has evolved, why context matters more than personality, and how AI may finally make transformational design scalable.

Dave Norton is the founder of Stone Mantel, an insights consultancy focused on helping companies create meaningful experiences for their customers and employees. A pioneer in experience strategy, he helps organizations across industries rethink the meaning of time, transformation, and context in design.

In this episode, Dart and Dave discuss:
- The evolution of experience design
- Why context matters more than customer psychology
- How to design time that is well saved, well spent, and well invested
- Why transformation requires discomfort
- The power of modes and modularity in designing for focus
- How to design whole offerings that get the “whole job” done
- Why AI could help scale transformational design
- And other topics…

Dave Norton is the founder of Stone Mantel, the experience strategy firm built on the belief that meaningful work is less about what you sell and more about how people spend their time. He began working with Joe Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy, in the early 2000s and in 2005 launched Stone Mantel to help organizations design experiences that are “time well spent.” Over the years, he has guided clients across industries, including healthcare, banking, and hospitality, shifting the focus from features to whole offerings and from channels to moments.

Resources Mentioned:
Stone Mantle: https://www.stonemantel.co/
The Experience Strategist (Substack): https://theexperiencestrategist.substack.com/
The Experience Economy, by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-Competing-Customers-Service/dp/1422161978

Connect with Dave:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davenortonphd/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.