Experience Design is all around us, it’s just not widely recognised, and that might be because good experience design is invisible while the obvious attempts aren’t good experiences.

And so if someone hasn’t encountered the concept of the experience economy before they look at me like I’m completely nuts. “You can’t manufacture emotions in people on command, that’s not how feelings work”

Well that’s empirically false.

The music in the last film you watched, in any film you’ve watched, is designed to manufacture emotion in you. The patter that the stand up comic uses, it’s designed to evoke laughter in you. The misdirection that a magician uses, it’s designed to create awe in you.

Of course you can’t command people to have an emotion, the sceptics are right about that. The cinematographer, the musician, the comic, the magician, they don’t command us; they lead us on a journey of delight. They give us the stepping stones that allow us to get there all on our own. And if they’re good, we’ll get there, all of us, every time.

That’s what makes them professionals. It’s not luck, they can repeat it. Reliably. On command.

The experience economy is merely about taking the proven principles of repeatable experience design that are widely known and used in the arts and applying them to business where they are not widely known or used.

It’s not magic, it’s not a secret, it’s just not widely distributed. But that won’t be true forever. Now’s a good time to grab your surfboard.