It’s true that great experiences can be truly serendipitous, that they can happen entirely by chance. But chance doesn’t scale. You don’t have a great experience at Disneyland by chance, you have a great experience at Disneyland by design.

We seem to value serendipity though, the feeling of discovery, of stumbling upon something great. And a generous designer understands that. A generous designer might think about where and when the perfect moment for a photograph at Disneyland might be, and then they might curate the environment with a few clues to reward the curious. A few half-hidden stepping stones off the beaten track that open out onto a vista. “I wonder where these go?”… and then your curiosity is rewarded. It feels like you stumbled upon the moment, but it was generously designed, designed for you.

And the secondary fact that a photograph of Disneyland spreads, that you show it to your friends and talk about it; that’s the reward for the generous designer, that’s her prize for creating a great experience.

You could just put up a big sign that says, “Great Photo Opportunity Here”, but that would be crass and it would debase the experience of the person you’re seeking to delight. Adding a touch of friction makes the discovery feel serendipitous to the person who experiences it. Adding a touch of friction can be generous. Giving your audience 2 + 2 and letting them have the ah-ha moment can be a better experience than merely putting up a big sign that says “The answer is 4”.

But context matters. Some experiences are about the absence of friction. Sometimes the magic is that the answer somehow appears at precisely the right moment.

And so the questions; Who’s it for? What’s it for? Is it coherent?