State of Awe Digest #22 | The Big Boundary Blur
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
January 17, 2021
Our aphorism to help with the times: A rich experience triggers an endorphin release so powerful that its biological purpose fails. The cortisol-free, catatonic bliss becomes memorable.
State of Awe is a regular trend briefing from experience designer, Jordan Kallman and event brand curator, Tyson Villeneuve at The Social Concierge. This periodic letter covers the latest wonders, most influential psychological movements, emerging ideas, tactile designs and hottest patterns keeping attendees, producers, designers, operators, sponsors, organizers and leaders engaged in the experience economy.
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For curious subscribers, you can find all previous digests here (certain ideas are timeless). A catalogue of current and future topic areas can be found here.
Insight Map 🔮 The Digest Summary
Your table of contents:
Theatre of Long-Term Thinking: entertainment formats are collapsing together. What are the opportunities?
Neurochemistry of Gatherings: why virtual events need to focus on oxytocin rewards to advance adoption.
Fads and Crazes: we believe randomness design will unlock big virtual successes in the near future.
Arena of Safety and Security: a summary of studies on live event virus transmission, all very positive.
Experience Economy Stories: three long read tales for a lazy Sunday.
Thinkers and Philosophers: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow and what it means for design.
As always, six beautiful instas, eight hot morsels and one request to share this digest with someone who would appreciate it.
Theatre of Long-Term Thinking 📍 The Big Boundary Blur
It’s not quite a video game, not really a television show, not exclusively a social event. But it is fun, and it definitely tells a story of the future.
We’re talking about Rival Peak (more on this later in the digest). But in case you’re short on time and you don’t want to dive in, it is quintessential virtual fusion. New York Times called 2020 “the year of the blur”, and we agree in more ways than one. Tasty fusion requires cloudy combinations.
As the Metaverse expands, AI becomes increasingly powerful and consumer expectations transform, a boundary blurring like we have never seen is coming. Where previously clear entertainment business categories existed, the space between them is disappearing. Video game theory collapses into social events, storytelling breaks the festival mold, consumers become producers and yes, the line between our physical selves and the digital realm totally fades (great read).
The insight: it is a time of pure innovation for live entertainment. The category guardrails have disappeared, reducing clarity, removing certainty and opening unchartered territory. When IRL events come back, what boundary blurring invention will make these experiences more enjoyable?
Neurochemistry of Gatherings 🧠 Virtual Event Challenges
This is a complex topic, but here’s a short investigation. It is a topic we are very interested in, so with brevity in mind, we ask the question: “within our brains, how do virtual gatherings differ from being together in-person”?
🫂 In the past few years, research has confirmed that evolution made a bet with our minds. The default mode of our brain in any spare moment is to think about others, connect relationships and prepare for the next social moment. Knowing that our brains are constantly seeking the next chemical social signal, how do we, as designers, optimize for the autonomic desire?
🍸 Simply speaking, our enjoyment in life is driven by a cocktail of four “happy hormones”: serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins.
💊 Serotonin drives our mood and the status centre of feeling important. Endorphins are the internal painkilling opioid that dazes us, and dopamine is the motivation molecule, driving risk-reward behaviours (source). But recent studies suggest that oxytocin is the magic making stimuli with the most potent social reward.
🤒 Zoom fatigue? Your dopamine receptors are fried and you never received an oxytocin dose to counterbalance it. How do we improve this equation?
👁️ Deliberately drive an oxytocin release. We know there are responsive activities that are a long way off for virtual events: feeling loved, touching, and hugging. But we also know there are simple things that stack up a good dose: positive conversations, eye contact, singing together and good storytelling (all specific links on how to design for oxytocin). See the human experience pattern?
The insight: Virtual event design is currently focused on improving dopamine rewards. But a good designer will note the gaps and ask “what if?” We are what we repeatably do, and oxytocin is the repeating signal we actually desire. Map the how to’s: build a community, tell a good story, solve the eye contact video call problem or provide a safe space where activity can be co-created.
Designer Data Drop 🧮 Chart of the Month
Translate your event to be accessible, diverse and scalable to all. Think like a TV producer while you do it. Bullet points for 2021:
Fads and Crazes 📱 Meaningful Virtual Experiences
Your quick hits of virtual, thicker than usual. A summary of cool things, interesting developments and learnable models:
🎉 Wins. Rival Peak, the blended Facebook reality show/game experience has a big, growing user base. It’s weird, but very interesting. And while we didn’t attend, it seems like the virtual CES went off really well (if maybe a bit simplistic).
📜 Principles. Please become more random (must read). The Ratatouille TikTok musical showed that exclusivity equals ephemeral. Hypercasual gaming is going to bleed into hypercasual virtual gatherings (spontaneous and unplanned).
🕳️ Immersive tech. Unai, a new VR headset launches, promising social facial cues like eyebrow movement, eye contact and expressions. Insights for deploying extended reality platforms. Cue the AR touchdown slime cannons.
🏫 Online university. How to plan a virtual sales meeting, three lessons on event communications, and six really smart virtual event mistakes you don’t want to make. Finally, skim through the 100 event trends for 2021 from Event Manager Blog.
🏟️ Digital concerts. The virtual live music market is going to grow in unique ways. Performing without an audience is hard, yet artists are learning how to be alone with the microphone.
🤖 Meet DALL·E, the online AI that can create images from whatever text you type. Here’s the case study (with examples).
The insight: what is your virtual event randomness plan? How do you monetize spontaneity? Is there a way to use temporariness to drive exclusivity and fear of missing out? These are the questions we are currently working hard on, and we think you should be too.
Arena of Safety and Security 🦠 COVID Edition
It has been a humongous two weeks for the return of in-real-life events. Vaccines are rolling (we would argue, not fast enough) and the timeline for a jubilee of hugs, high fives and celebration is becoming more clear. And quite possibly, accelerating.
A few really promising developments from the sphere of event safety:
The Barcelona concert study hosted on December 12 returned really promising results, showing that “managed live music venues” are safe. The precautions included a rapid antigen test for all participants, face masks and hand sanitizer. Social distancing not required.
A German study, conducted in November over three days, also concluded that venue ventilation and mask use reduced transmission to near zero. Well-aired theatres and live music arenas that are also managed effectively have a shot to return sooner than expected.
The Netherland live event studies are happening this month, and the newly launched Danish industry studies will focus on measuring rapid testing as a preventative measure.
The insight: positive news is nice, but we’re not sure anyone is coming to save us. There is also a growing chorus that safety concerns are not the only variable. After so much loss, there is an ethical question, “when are big event celebrations appropriate?” Many in our network believe this answer only arrives after vaccines take hold. It is really complex and you can follow the tug-o-war through the lens of the producers and performers trying to save the iconic Glastonbury Festival.
Experience Economy Stories 📖
Speaking of a good story, back in digest #16 we experimented with a short section highlighting a set of great reads. We’ve brought it back with a few interesting narratives, in case you need a Sunday long read:
The story of Haçienda, one of history's most notorious nightclubs (and how they returned original performers for a New Year’s Eve experience two weeks ago).
The year of no gigs. Stories from six different performers and how they have navigated a year without live entertainment venues.
A story by Dave Grohl from back in May, on the experience of the live concert returning in force.
Thinkers and Philosophers 🕵 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American social thinker, has been called the leading living mind working on positive psychology. His work, very relevant to the design of experiences, has focused exclusively on the optimization of the human experience.
Mihaly is the architect of “flow state”. A concept that has been co-opted by certain niche groups (looking at you, biohackers), but has really important roots in understanding both motivation to experience something, and immersion within that experience.
We have all felt it, and it is an amazing state of mind: exiting from a creative pursuit to find that hours have passed, time slowed in a moment of peak physical exertion, the rush of completing an all-consuming challenge. Yet in a recent follow-up study, finding flow with an interdependent group of others actually amplifies those feelings and outcome.
Summing up the designer challenge in one of Mihaly’s most important and oft-cited observations: “The best moments in life usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” (repeat notes: difficult and worthwhile).
Wired Magazine, back in 1996, featured an article on how to integrate flow into the design of an experience (in their case, technology). The transplant of the principles into an experience is important: do not design for comfort, but struggle; and empower choice, combining those decisions with a big payoff.
The insight: Mihaly’s concept of flow is the exact opposite of rest, relaxation, and the more extreme intent of “letting go” (that moment at a festival, as the music washes over your outstretched arms). Flow is an active state, based on one’s perceived control. These two very different states of mind are best summarized as the difference between pleasure and gratification. The former is fleeting, the latter persistent. Design your engagement to be controlled, difficult and overcome. It will produce a long-lasting effect.
Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project
😷 Think your mask is cool? Try this one. One of eight insane pandemic mask designs by Freyja Sewell. Each one represents a different frontline worker.
🎭 Simply the most incredible stage designs in the world, by the floating theatrical Bregenz Festival.
🌂 There is umbrella art, and then there is real umbrella art by Masaru Suzuki.
🫖 Storm in a teacup at Sketch London by Figa & Co.
🔮 Floating orbs of colour by Elsa Tomkowiak.
🛋️ A sci-fi living room fit for a cyberspace king by Invisible North.
Hot morsels to ace your next conversation while you wait for the vaccine
🗽 Imagine you are planning inauguration. What would you do? Nine pros weigh in with their pandemic dream visions.
🏈 Super Bowl will be different this year, but host city Tampa Bay is still spending big.
🕹️ Video games? Officially cool. And they have moved into the central position with youth culture, overtaking music argues the Guardian.
🪟 Need a break? Glimpse the world through someone else’s window.
🙅♀️ As the lull of travel continues, Hawaii residents push back on returning to mass tourism norms after the pandemic.
🎥 Hopin, the conference technology platform that promises to totally invent the category of “hybrid events” had a big few weeks. The company acquired the leading live streaming platform, Streamyard. And also picked up Topi to specialize further in hybrid formats.
🤳 Community organizing got more fragmented this week. Big Tech backlash pushed millions of users to alternative encrypted messaging apps, Signal and Telegram. Keeping up on where to rally the troops is a continually moving target.
📺 CES was a subdued affair this year, but Sony unveiled Crystal LED displays that are intended for production studios and backdrops of virtual sets.
End note
This was the twenty-second edition of the State of Awe digest, and we are approaching our one year mark. We are formulating plans for signature essays and deeper dives into particular topics important to experience designers, outside of the digest format. Do you have a topic you would like to see covered? Reply to this email to share directly with us, we would be so excited to hear from you personally.
As previously mentioned, we want to triple the audience of State of Awe this year. We would deeply appreciate your recommendations to other readers. Direct them here.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson