Designing Profundity
Trying to squeeze community and profundity into and out of an experience
Hearing the word ‘experience’ conjures a range of ideas; for some, it may involve something as monumental as going to Disneyland and for others, an event as discrete as making a cup of coffee. However, despite these varieties in scale, what is the red thread that draws them together? And how do we design each one accordingly when everything could be regarded as experience?
It was difficult to avoid viewing this initially from my own context; coming from a fine art background, there was a demonstrated control in curating work within an exhibitions setting. However, in contrast to design’s common aim of solving problems, it was instead to allow for possibilities, for the artists and the audience. In creating an experience that was deliberately curated to deliver an easily navigational experience, the audience could instead focus on the art they were viewing, and the narrative it was telling through this particular order.
Similar to Jesper Jensen’s proposals in ‘Designing for Profound Experiences’, approaching the design of experience with consideration of possibility over problem solving promotes profundity in an experience. (Jensen, 2014). In actively seeking possibilities, the experience is pushed outside of it’s constraints as an answer to a question. This allows it, instead, to ask questions, especially when using experience design as a means of finding answers from an audience. In releasing control over the audience, as promoted by Stan Ruecker and Jennifer Roberts-Smith, the interpretation of each viewer aids them in navigating an experience, taking into consideration personal contexts, interests and histories that would be involved in an experience regardless of whether a designer made considerations for this (Ruecker, Roberts-Smith, 2017).
By contrast to this interpretation, Ruecker and Roberts-Smith align commercial experience design reliance’s on consistent design and manufactured image with Disneyland; one element that emphasises this consistent control over the experience is the idea that you would never see Cinderella taking a smoke break (Ruecker, Roberts-Smith, 2017). Though this rigorous control exists within this experience, it does not make it’s content any more real for it’s audience. However, whilst this may be true for some, the nature of Disneyland and other forms of fictional experiences, such as films and TV shows, is the use of theatricality and fiction to create authenticity, not through it’s content, but through the emotions it provokes within it’s viewers. As a result, it is through the authenticity of emotions that experience comes to life and allows us to connect with particular experiences, similar to the way people describe their connection with art.
It is important here to understand the importance of narrative and storytelling within anything one experiences, even down to the way one talks about their day to their partner. Considering the Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT), human communities are formed around the creation of narratives, acting as rituals to build collective identity (Bormann, 1985). Experiences like Disneyland foster this as a means to harness commercial value within a instinctual human attribute.
This use of experience, could in part, be aligned within a cultural shift that both Steven Bell and Scott Lieberman. Following the 2008 recession, Bell considers not only the championing of experiences over material objects but the importance of community building within this (Bell, 2009). In contrast to the material economy’s isolation of the individual through material worth, the shift to a more experiential economy conceals a shift into a more community, or as Bell proposes, more ‘tribe’ like attitude (Bell, 2009), that continues into the present following the Covid pandemic (Lieberman, 2021).
Whilst companies may present themselves as champions of community, it could be considered that commercial experiences, similar to Disneyland, create a manufactured community based upon consumer habits commonly found through the implementation of models such as Brand Archetypes (Maidment, 2021). Similar to Guy Debord in the ‘Society of the Spectacle’, it is difficult to avoid the idea that communities within the current consumer market are bound by a core of commodity interest, distracted from more humane values that may drive communities to form. (Debord, 1967).
The task of dismantling such a system is near impossible, and in viewing the design of experiences on a spectrum of ‘unethical’ or ‘ethical’, it may be more helpful to view them as polarities. As a result, one can hope that in designing an experience, experimentation, as I found in my fine art background and now in Humanistic Experience Design’s invitation of the individual interpretation of each user, could move towards a more authentic and anti-hierarchal view on experience and designing experience.
References
Debord, G. (2004) The Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press
Jensen, Jesper L. (2014) “Designing for Profound Experiences.” Design Issues, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 39–52.
Wylant, Barry. (2008) “Design Thinking and the Experience of Innovation.” Design Issues, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 3–14.
Bell, Steven. (2009) “From Gatekeepers to Gate-Openers.” American Libraries, vol. 40, no. 8/9, pp. 50–53.
RUECKER, STAN, and JENNIFER ROBERTS-SMITH. (2017) “Experience Design for the Humanities: Activating Multiple Interpretations.” Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities, edited by Jentery Sayers, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 259–70.
Lieberman, Scott. (2021) “Commentary: Managing Human Experience as a Core Marketing Capability.” Journal of Marketing, vol. 85, no. 1, pp. 219–22.
Kohler, Thomas, et al. (2011) “Co-Creation in Virtual Worlds: The Design of the User Experience.” MIS Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 773–88.
Bormann, Ernest G. (1985) “Symbolic Convergence Theory: A Communication Formulation.” Journal of Communication, vol. 35, no. 4, 1 Dec., pp. 128–138,
Maidment, Adam. (2021) “What Are Brand Archetypes and Why Are They Important?” March Branding. Available at: marchbranding.com/design-insight/brand-archetypes. Accessed: 1st February 2025
List of Figures
Figure 1. go.com (2025) Mickey and Minnie Mouse Experience at Disneyland [Digital Image] Available at: disneyland.disney.go.com/events-tours/mickey-and-minnie/.