Physical Experience

At their core, physical experiences are about elevating spaces into places. Spaces are defined by their edges (think walls or boundaries). Places are defined by the activities and engagements happening within them. This evolution affords tremendous opportunity to transform real-world spaces to create meaningful experiences. Places that communicate feeling, create impressions and impart a sense of ‘wow’ to build memorable connections with their visitors. Physical Experience Design (PXD) combines and leverages an array of traditional design disciplines (such as UX/UI, industrial design, architecture, interior design, behavioural design and more) to build places in new, unique, innovative, and impactful ways.

Nothing Exists in a Vacuum Meet People Where They Are experience’s site (location) is its context: where it is, what was there before, and what else is around it. People interpret the world based on their context, a physical experience is no different. It’s important to take into account the spaces and environments that bookend an experience. What you perceive immediately before or after affects how you view that experience. That context informs what a visitor brings to an experience, be it expectations, frame of mind, behaviours, etc. A project’s site also includes the naturally occurring behaviours people exhibit within that space (e.g. movement patterns across a lobby or sitting patterns in a waiting room). An experience can take advantage of this by incorporating natural behaviours into an experience. This allows visitors to casually engage and interact with an experience effortlessly. Additionally, visitors enjoy a moment of discovery when they realize they’re already part of an experience. Feel Engage All The Senses I mean, “physical” is the first word in Physical Experience Design… literally. People are physical beings with multiple senses, and this is sadly often overlooked in our digital-first world. This creates opportunities for a physical experience to engage people in multiple ways. Experience can engage any or all of our senses, and the more senses engaged the more memorable an experience. When most people describe a space, they do so in terms of how it “feels.” For example, a space might feel crowded, open, quiet, or welcoming. These characteristics affect how someone experiences that space. Even if only subconscious, these characteristics influence the perception of that space. Crafting and calibrating the “feel” of a space will make the experience more environmental and immersive, and the easier it is for a visitor to buy into the experience.

Build a Community Enable Connection A sense of community is the most unique and powerful attribute of a physical experience, especially when compared to web and mobile apps. Every physical experience I’ve appreciated was in large part due to the people I shared it with. The power of a physical experience lies in its ability to instantaneously create community through their shared experiences Think of it this way; if you see a group of people having a good time, you naturally want to find out what’s going on and join in. The most effective way to encourage visitors to engage in an experience is to show them people engaging in the experience. This communicates both that you can interact and it is socially acceptable for you to do so. Give & Take Reward the Relationship I like to correlate an interactive experience to a contract with each visitor. If a visitor provides something to an experience—even something as simple as their attention—the experience needs to give something back in return. This return can take many forms, from material takeaways to beautiful animations. However, if there is no proportional reward in exchange for the effort contributed, the experience will inevitably feel like a let down or a waste of time. The reward for participation must outpace the request in order to hold someone’s attention. Many successful experiences magnify a participant’s actions to the level of superpowers. This empowers visitors to customize and control their environment.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs Think Near, Far and In-between People don’t magically teleport from one place to the next; they move continuously walking from one place to the next place. This means people don’t magically appear in an experience, they have to make a choice—even if it’s subconscious—to engage. By curating a path (both literally and figuratively) to follow, you can lead a visitor into the experience. People perceive different levels of detail at various distances. An experience can take advantage of the levels of detail to communicate specific information at each distance.

K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid It is in this four-second window that a physical experience must compete against the rest of the world to grab a visitor’s attention. It must then sustain that attention to engage people in a more in-depth experience. Think of it this way; you have to ask someone out on a date before you can start a relationship. Physical experiences build relationships by targeting multiple levels of engagement from first a foursecond pick-up line while someone is walking by. Many great experiences deliver a quick hit and are done. They acknowledge it might be all they have time for. Equally important, don’t expect everyone to give a shit; not every visitor wants to engage in the full depth of an experience. A great experience can create a memorable impression even in four seconds if it’s concise and compelling.

Choose Your Own Adventure Create a Platform They create environments or frameworks that you can explore. Physical experiences build narrative through discoveries, feelings and snapshots. The affordance is made so that a visitor can learn, discover, wander, interpret and reinterpret an experience at their own pace and choosing. A well-designed experience will provide clues and encouragement to help guide a visitor through the experience, but these should be thought of more as suggestions. Failure is not an Option End on a High Note To prevent perceived failure, experiences need to be flexible, responsive, and forgiving in their interactions. They should be designed for edge cases and be able to accommodate the unexpected and unpredictable. Just because a user doesn’t follow the journey or interaction intended, it doesn’t mean the experience is a failure. This applies across all layers that make up an overall experience. It is critical that all layers provide the opportunity for a visitor to succeed since that may be the only part they experience.

Find the ‘!’ Elicit an “AH HA!” It is the magic moment where an experience clicks and the visitor gets the big idea. There are few things more disappointing than experiences that fizzle out instead of ending on a high note — you want people walking away thinking the experience was amazing. Experiences should build as the visitor engages more and more until they arrive at that ‘!’ moment. For an experience to connect and make a lasting impression, it needs that ‘!’ moment. Think big… no… bigger Made to #Share To be a truly successful physical experience it must consider how it will reach this larger audience. The ability for a visitor to photograph and share their experience will easily increase its audience by a multiplier of 100 and I’ve never met a designer who wanted less people to see their work. How else would you tell the story of an experience? The ability to document and share an experience entirely depends on how well it photographs, whether through social media, design blogs, whatever. It is through these images that an experience can scale creating an impact beyond its physical footprint. Photography is the only real record of these experiences, therefore the better the photographs the more impactful the experience will be.