Experience Design: The Best Methodology for Creating More Meaningful Work | Abraham Burickson
Oct 31, 2023
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Exploring the concept of work as an experience design problem, emphasizing the need for every manager to be an experience designer. Importance of aligning work with mission statements for meaningful outcomes and implementing creative methodologies in business. Delving into the disconnect between intellectual ideas and human experience in architecture design, with a focus on Brasilia and Carvassier's work.
Tailor-made experiences can deeply engage individuals and transform perspectives through immersive empathetic research.
Experience design emphasizes embracing unpredictability to create meaningful interactions and innovative applications in the realm of work.
Companies can serve as platforms for co-creating experiences, fostering collaboration, narrative structures, and shared experiential aims to impact the world positively.
Deep dives
Experience Design: Transforming Perspectives and Opening New Possibilities
Experience design involves creating tailor-made experiences for individuals to deeply engage with them and transform their perspectives. By focusing on designing for one person rather than a broad audience, artists at Odyssey Works have crafted highly customized experiences that deeply impact a single audience member. This approach challenges traditional notions of art production and encourages immersive empathetic research to see through the eyes of the recipient. The process involves studying the individual extensively, creating contexts for new experiential possibilities, and embracing the unknown to foster meaningful engagements.
Unleashing Liveness and Fluidity in Designing Experiences
Experience design emphasizes embracing liveness and unpredictability in interactions to create meaningful experiences. It contrasts traditional design processes that aim for total control and predictability by focusing on opening up new possibilities. The design of work is highlighted as an exciting and experimental realm rich with potential for innovative experience design applications. Through engaging with the core concepts of experience design, organizations can foster fluidity and interdisciplinary collaboration to align with experiential aims effectively.
Implementing Experience Design Principles in Practice and Collaborative Environments
Applying experience design principles involves clarifying experiential goals, structuring processes to align with these goals, and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations. The curriculum for experience design integrates tools for creating experiential narratives, building immersive worlds, and facilitating relationality in engagements. Students engage in experiential lived research to deepen their understanding and develop innovative projects aligned with experiential aims. This practical approach emphasizes the fluidity and diversity of teams to drive impactful and transformative experiential outcomes.
The Importance of Viewing Products as Experiences
The podcast discusses a shift in the economy towards viewing products as experiences. It emphasizes that even static products like pens can evoke experiences. The speaker points out that understanding products as experiences broadens the definition of experience, beyond immersive settings. The discussion highlights the importance of considering how products impact life, culture, work, and personal experiences.
Creating Experiences and Narrative Structures in Organizations
The episode delves into the concept of companies acting as platforms for co-creation of experiences. It suggests that organizations play a role in fostering ways of being for their employees and impacting the world. The conversation underscores the power of aligned collaboration, narrative structures, and shared experiential aims within organizations. It advocates for developing a world-building approach where leaders focus on designing experiences that invite people to contribute their best work and align with collective aims.
Many products are made by people but often don't consider human needs. The chair you're sitting on might not fit you well or suit your work habits and office setup. The same issue applies to how we approach work.
Can a manager act as an experience designer to improve productivity, satisfaction, and well-being in the workplace? Is it practical and possible? Abraham Burickson, a design expert with over 20 years of experience, thinks so. He wants to change the way we think about design to create new possibilities in the workplace and beyond.
Abraham Burickson is an author, speaker, and design expert with more than two decades of experience in exploring experience design. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Odyssey Works, where he plans immersive artistic experiences involving up to 100 artists in various locations across the U.S.
In this episode, Dart and Abraham discuss: - How to create a transformative experience for a single individual - Whether or not managers can be experience designers - Why experience is not designable - How to implement experience design at work - Baking experiences within static products - Companies as a platform for the co-creation of experience - The origin story and myths of organizations - And other topics…
Abraham Burickson has spent over two decades exploring experience design. As the co-founder and Artistic Director of Odyssey Works, he directs up to 100 artists at a time while designing experiences for one-person audiences across the U.S. With a background in architecture from Cornell University, he has also studied the transformative power of designed experience with the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and with countless artists, designers, and students over the years.
Abraham is the winner of the 2018 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, and his work has been profiled in the New York Times, Vulture, the Stanford Storytelling Project, the SF Bay Guardian, and other publications. He has lectured at the Brooklyn Museum, Cornell University, Fordham University, The GoGame, and Southern Exposure Gallery. He is also a current Lead Experience Design faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
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.
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