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.

Resources mentioned:
Experience Design, by Abraham Burickson: https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Design-Participatory-Abraham-Burickson/dp/0300269471
Odyssey Works, by Abraham Burickson: https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Works-Transformative-Experiences-Audience/dp/1616895152
The Anatomy of Genres, by John Truby: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Genres-Story-Forms-Explain/dp/0374539227

Connect with Abraham:
www.OWprograms.com
www.AbrahamBurickson.com

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.

S4-05: Reading as Liberation: Sue Pimentel