The Art of The Experience

Like millions of people around the world, I visited Disneyland for the first time as an impressionable 9-year old and fell head over Minnie Mouse ears in love. The Enchanted Tiki room and the mysterious jungles of Adventureland captivated me just as much as the tiny houses of Fantasyland and the beyond belief fireworks shows every.single.night. Let’s not even mention Tom Sawyer Island and my ability to go feral and hide from my parents, even if it was just for 10 minutes. I’ve been back countless times and as an adult, all it takes is a glimpse of the castle and the smell of the popcorn wafting through the air and I’m thoroughly transported again.

Created by Disney Imagineers, Disneyland is a foundational case study for the art of the experience. As an all-grown-up experience designer, I am deeply invested in creating something just as magical — albeit, usually on a slightly smaller scale — for my own clients.

How do they do it? What can we learn? Is experience design anything like theme park design? When I dug deep into Disney documentaries and books by legendary Imagineers like John Hench, Rolly Crump and Bob Gurr, I realized that…wait for it…good design is just…good design. And the principles of designing an experience will hold, whether you’re designing a kickass learning experience for 10 adults on the beach or designing a magical experience for millions of visitors each day. Let me show you what I mean.

John Hench, artist, designer and creative director at Walt Disney said “Story is the essential organizing principle behind the design of Disney theme parks.” Every single detail of a land or attraction is driven by its story, which is why you don’t see Darth Vader patrolling Fantasyland. It confuses people when you confuse your stories.

Experience Design is also form of storytelling. When you participate in a training or workshop created by an experience designer, from the moment you enter the room until the completion of the workshop, your experience has been designed like a story, but one that you get to live out. Experience design is the antidote to lecture-based learning. We follow the dramatic arc template to make sure there is rhythm, action and momentum in every workshop and — most crucially — that rhythm, action and emotional momentum are felt and experienced by every participant.

Without uninhibited brainstorming and concepting, we wouldn’t have any Disney parks at all. As an experience designer, I also believe deeply that uninhibited, blue sky brainstorming is an essential part of every project. There are no bad ideas at the outset and good ideas will win the day and make everyone better. Especially in a custom build, client collaboration and big thinking are an essential part of the process of getting from nothing to the experience of your dreams. Blue sky thinking will help us dream big and see where we want to go before we narrow down our parameters and constraints.

Remember that popcorn smell? Former Disney employee Jody Jean Dreyer wrote in her Disney memoir that the Imagineers understood that scent is a strong trigger for memory, which can help us associate Disneyland with childhood nostalgia, just by getting a whiff of popcorn. There’s a reason that Main Street smells like popcorn and baked goods while The Haunted Mansion smells musty and old. The Show is everything a guest will come into contact with through their senses. When they say everything, they mean ev.er.y.thing, right down to pumping in certain smells to create and enhance your experience.

While I don’t pump smells into my workshops (maybe I should?!) everything from music, snacks, the agenda for the experience, to the way people are broken into groups, structure during breaks and lunch is considered and thoughtfully planned for, down to the last detail. After all, it’s the little touches and tiny details that make Disneyland so awe-inspiring and it’s that same care and attention to detail that takes a workshop or training from good to “dang, I’d take that class again tomorrow and I want to! Sign me up!”

Almost nothing is stagnant in a Disney attraction. The audio animatronics move and talk, the honey bees in Splash Mountain fly and buzz, and in a still-gasp-inducing moment, Mr. Lincoln stands allll the way up to have his great moments with the audience. What would a Disney attraction be without motion?

Since I design not with robotics and technology but with actual humans, I always remind myself that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. AKA, people slumped in chairs watching a hundred slides will not likely take action or be in motion, they’ll be asleep! Kinetic movement, physical touch and play are cornerstones of a well-designed experience that will engage people body, mind and heart. For learning to stay with someone, it’s not enough to engage their minds for a few fleeting minutes…you have to get them allll the way up — and all the way bought in!

We believe in iteration. If it doesn’t work this time, we’ll file it away for when the time is right. Walt Disney first had the idea for a haunted attraction in 1957, yet The Haunted Mansion didn’t open until 1969, after Walt’s passing. Even after it was built, it sat empty for six years, while waiting for the iteration process to go from walk-through experience, themed around a doomed sea captain and his bride, to the ghostly attraction we know and love today. Walt knew a haunted mansion was a great idea, but it took iteration and the determination of imagineers to finally make it happen.

For experience designers, good ideas can stand the test of time AND are malleable, so we’re always looking at what we already know and getting curious about what we don’t in order to see our ideas from concept to execution in an actual experience with real people. I come up with lots of activities, games and ways to engage learners. Some of them don’t work! And it’s usually because I need to refine the idea rather than eliminate it altogether, or because it doesn’t work for that experience, but works elsewhere. It’s a process of constant iteration and patience with the process.

The creative intent of a design project is just another way of asking…what do you want to accomplish? What is the experience the designer hopes to create for their audience?

One adorable Disney example is the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, where little girls go to get their hair and makeup done, princess-style. The creative intent around this shop is that it’s designed in a way that little girls should feel (and hope!) that Cinderella herself could show up at any moment. It’s also a place just for little girls, so people identifying as male will probably find this environment uncomfortable and not for them, which is, again, by design. To paraphrase what Priya Parker says in her brilliant book The Art of Gathering, knowing who you are designing for is as important as knowing who you are not designing for, just like knowing who to exclude from your events is as important and knowing who to include. It all serves the greater purpose of intent.

In the world of experience design, our experiences are also always created to fulfill a specific need. A great learning experience is one that gives people the chance to dig into and experience something specific, something they really to learn or shift. The creative intent of a project defines the experience we want people to have and articulates the promise the event aims to fulfill. An experience designed for former military in LA is going to look and feel different than an experience for a corporate sales team in NY. If it didn’t feel different, I’m not doing my job.

Walt Disney said “Disneyland will never be done so long as there is imagination left in the world” and called the process of continuous improvement “plussing” the parks.

An experience designer believes our experiences can always be “plussed” too! For me, that means that even after a project completion, I’ll revisit our workshops at strategic intervals to see if they need updating, editing, or plussing to ensure they are still meeting the current needs of the client and are standing the test of time. It might also mean throwing in a new activity or pivoting on the fly to plus it up right there in the moment.

The principles of making magic extend from a magical day at Disney to a magical workshop or training — and yes, a training can indeed feel magical, I promise! But it takes so much more than just content and a powerpoint deck. By engaging the principles of imagineering and a design mindset, you can turn any learning experience into something that people will remember, feel and love. Churro and popcorn smell (unfortunately) not included.

If you liked this article or want to learn more about what an experience designer can do for your workshops and trainings, reach out and say hey!

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