State of Awe Digest #23 | Good vibes and why they matter

The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings

Jan 31, 2021

January 31, 2021

Our aphorism to help with the times: Organize events that are admired, not envied.

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.

New to the digest? Understand OUR BELIEF and dial in OUR INTENTION.

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:

House of Focus: The whispered messages that come from a good vibe are worth listening to.
Arena of Design Thinking: Mapping your guest’s hearts and minds.
Data Drop: A collection of intelligence trends for the year.
Fads and Crazes: Be the first to see it?
Arena of Safety and Security: When is the ethical moment to host IRL?
Creators and Builders Coliseum: The for-profit immersive art museum expansion.
Experience Design Strategy: Designing for escapism.
As always, five beautiful instas, five hot morsels and one request to share this digest with someone who would appreciate it.

House of Focus 🎯 Feature Article Thinking

Great cities attract ambitious people, much like great experiences attract dedicated guests. What is the driving force behind this gravity? In our feature article, we highlight an essay from the brilliant thinker Paul Graham, who argues that great places (and we argue great experiences) send subtle messages to you. And these whispers both tell you a story and cement your loyalty. Boston subtly asks you to be smarter, New York more powerful. Burning Man drives you to be more creative, the TED Conference more curious.

For experiences, these imperceptible whispers can only be described as a “good vibe”. Or in non-Millennial terms, that intangible yet distinct feeling that a powerful experience leaves you with; an almost magical aura. We can almost guarantee that everyone reading this has at some point in their lives, walked away from a collection of moments and thought, “what a good vibe”. And as Paul Graham’s article explains, and that we argue, there are encoded signals within that vibration that we all intuitively understand.

But first, what is a good vibe? Science actually has quite a bit to say on the topic. From the synchronicity of vibrations between living things, to olfactory chemosignals, or the emotional residue phenomenon. Good vibes, while a seemingly magical contagion, actually do exist. And your pandemic Zoom fatigue has likely proven it.

The insight: shared experiences have a collective vibe. And that vibe communicates a very critical set of ideas that builds internal commitment and external hype. Yes, vibe transmits and leaves behind a spectrum of emotional leftovers, but it also sends very real signals that align our ego, our identity, our purpose and our culture. Messages of not only how it feels to us, but what it means to you. Take the blockbuster new Apple+ show, Ted Lasso. As this article states, it is not a show, it is a vibe. And that vibe promises to materialize a future reality we all want to be part of (note: foolishly positive) .

Arena of Design Thinking 🔎 Mapping Hearts and Minds

By now, the practical and applied among us may be 🙄. We get it, so let’s transition to more tactile space. Whether you believe good vibes transmit informed messages or not, we can all agree that great experiences are a collection of moments that trigger a cascading set of reactions. And designing experiential outcomes is a matter of sequencing and stacking reactions.

Enter design thinking models for experiences (creative read). More specifically, the process of visually mapping the entirety of the guest’s journey.

A “how to” primer on mapping moments that matter:

This comprehensive summary is a good starting point (and includes many linear journey examples). Or read an assessment of the benefits in spending the time on the exercise. And finally, Harvard Business Review outlines how customer journeys can be used for both vast and quite minute interaction maps.

This technique is usually applied to understand how a customer moves through a sales funnel. Or how an audience moves through a story. But why don’t we see this used more frequently to sequence an experience? As the renowned filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock stated, “filming a movie is boring.” Simply because all of the interesting work had been precisely mapped. Producing an experience should also result in a similar grasp on certainty, whenever possible.

Before mapping begins, the hero of the journey (i.e. your guests) should be clearly defined. What are their expectations, motivations and ultimate desires?

Journeys are often non-linear and infinitely random. But emotional states are stackable. Focus on what you can control, the interactions you can force and the resulting state of mind.

Channel matters. Particularly as we watch the digital and physical worlds blend together. Hybrid events will require even more detailed touch point channel mapping.

The Event Canvas (previously covered in digest #4) is one of the best gathering-specific mapping tools we have found. The reason? It asks you to describe the difference between the “entering behaviour” and “exiting behaviour” as the key outcome of any event. Event design can transform behaviour, now we are talking.

The insight: compelling experiences are not just wildly creative or spectacular. “Design operations”, a concept that focuses on eliminating complexity, inconsistencies and perceived rigidity in the logistical delivery, can create magical guest experiences (our TED Conference experience in 2014 was operationally perfect). Never disregard operations as “just logistics.” Capturing hearts and minds requires a clear plan of touch points that exist across digital and physical space. These touch points need to trigger emotions and change behaviour in your intended ways. Plan those intentions. Be like Walt (and his 1957 map of genius).

Designer Data Drop 🧮 Trends for the Year

As we unpack the beginnings of 2021, futurist reports for the next twelve months are abundant. We have rounded up a selection of data drops for you to consider, as you navigate the year that was supposed to be normal 🤷.

A nicely creative report from Shutterstock on the visual trends in photography, video and music. One of the most important: the dominant rise of non-binary, inclusive and diverse content. Inclusive design is a mega-trend that will permeate every experience.

Other notables:

The Future 100 from Wunderman Thompson Intelligence (read here) is a relevant report, especially as it covers 30 pages on events and culture. Gaming is no longer just for gameplay, fandoms over customers, the forces of nostalgia, and escapist retail are a few of the highlights.

Endless Events 2021 report breaks down two scenarios: with and without working vaccines. Smart approach, uncertainty abounds.

The Skift Mega Trend 2025 Report on tourism, travel and the nomadic economy.

The Forrester Report 2021 (read here), which includes the leading trend of escapism. More on this in a dedicated section below.

Fads and Crazes 📱 Meaningful Virtual Experiences

Your quick hits from virtual venue land:

🪐 The Metaverse. It is coming and it is a big deal. The Roblox CEO believes his users will create it. Either way, the hundreds of replies to the question “what fictional world would you visit?” is obviously compelling. Virtual worlds are hot.

💃 Virtual poster models. Reflections from CES, the CES after parties, a sneak peak at Contact Festival being filmed from the roof of a stadium, and of course anything audio-only (Clubhouse included).

✍️ School’s in. A really deep set of principles of what’s working in the virtual space. Accessibility for all forms of human difference continues to top the charts. Virtual speaking checklist (reminder: double check your bookshelf). Exhibitor trade show booth research insights.

🖥️ “How close can a video chat come to taking you into a new place or culture? As it turns out, very close”. The story of cramming a weekend full of AirBnB Experiences.

The insight: be the very first person to ever see an item in a museum. Caught your attention, didn’t it? Dopamine reward loops work.

Creators and Builders Coliseum 🏛️ New Age Art Galleries

Inspired by the scarcity of available tickets for the world-touring immersive Van Gogh art exhibition in our city, we ask ourselves “what is behind the popularity” of this new wave of museums?

💧 Traditional museums are hurting, but the for-profit experiential gallery seems to be growing. From the long waiting lines of MoMA’s Rain Room to the growing hype of Miami’s soon-to-open Superblue, upstarts are overtaking the originators.

🇯🇵 Yet, the immersive avant-garde have been building this space for some time. Here’s a feature on teamLabs, creator of Tokyo and Shanghai’s Borderless, who have been in the game since 2001. Or the first digital fine art museum in Paris that started in 2018.

🌞 The NY Times summarizes the optimism of the various players in this feature piece.

The insight: immersive museums are safe spaces whereby anyone can experiment with an altered mental state (interesting psychological insight). And we are seeking altered states that we can share with others, yes for entertainment, but also more broadly speaking, so we can practice understanding someone else’s perspective. How can your experiences transport your guests so completely and safely, that their entire perspective gets a shift? Practicing empathy is in demand.

Experience Design Strategy 🏔️ Expressive Escapism

In comparing cultural trend reports from across the spectrum, one of the most obvious predicted consumer desires? Escapism. And this altered state is going to be hot, and not just with immersive art museums. A collection of thoughts for consideration:

There is healthy escapism and there is avoidance. Norwegian psychologist Frode Stenseng created a dualistic model (interesting study) that clearly defined the positive as self-expression and the negative as self-suppression. We are obviously aiming to empower those passionate self-expression escapists among us.

Consumers agree. The leading indicator statistic from the Forrester trend report is the projected growth in VR headset sales. But more broadly speaking, the hyper growth of digital theme park users is unlocking Walt Disney’s vision of “inside a living story”. And if you’re following, virtual fictional worlds are going transmedia really fast. The search term “whimsical” shot up 13,572% in 2020.

There is an art to escapism. Both in designing it but also in experiencing it. It is a tense balance between safety and indulgence, imaginary and believable, channelled and free, fake yet authentic. Hobbies, pastimes, spectator sports daydreams, and fantasies are interest-expressing. Violent video games, gangster movies, Trump rallies, punk and metal shows are anxiety-venting.

The insight: once realized, fantasies are invincible. Mix together worldbuilding (covered in digest #18), deliberately not real design, magical characters (digest #20), and co-created interaction. Forged in the fire it is consumer steel.

Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project

💍 Ring falling from the sky, an elaborate engagement moment by GRŌ designs.

🎨 Anne Vieux’s light wave murals.

⬜ The Washington DC COVID-19 Memorial by Tribe Inc.

🧊 Etherea structure installation by Edoardo Tresoldi.

💫 Starry and magical long table dinner lighting by Paloma Cruz.

Hot morsels to ace your next conversation while you wait for the vaccine

🎧 Tomorrowland New Year’s Eve was impressive. Do yourself a favour and watch the highlight reel.

🥾 Zoom extensions. The Hike, a choose your own adventure game is up for Product Hunt of the Year. Need to fake a bad connection? Check out Buffer. Tired of Zoom? A new spatial chat virtual world platform launches, Pluto.

🫂 Lonely? Rent a person, open now.

➖ Saudi Arabia’s master planned net zero city, NEOM will be designed in a single connected line. Watch the highlight trailer.

✨ The 100,000 year-old story?

What did you think?

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End note

This was the twenty-third edition of the State of Awe digest. We are hanging in line at the vaccine club, waving at the bouncer.

While we wait, recommend this digest to two friends in the experience economy for us, would you? Direct them here.

As Ever,

Jordan + Tyson

State of Awe