State of Awe Digest #24 | The Four Spirits of Enjoyment
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
February 14, 2021
Our aphorism to help with the times: A warm welcome is an invincible gesture.
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:
House of Focus: uncovering the mysterious precursor to loneliness.
Arena of Design Thinking: how to find the most direct path to joy.
Designer Data Drop: the visualized mindset and the required skill set for experience design.
Fads and Crazes: Clubhouse as a meaningful virtual experience.
Arena of Economics: The AMEX Effect and your decision to charge, or not, for virtual experiences.
Thinkers and Philosophers: Akbar the Great, and the insights behind the design of inclusive empires.
As always, six beautiful instas, eight hot morsels and one request to share this digest with someone who would appreciate it.
House of Focus 🎯 Feature Article Thinking
“We are all human together, yet alone in the lonely kingdom of ourselves.” - Atticus
Are we lonely? Yes, many of us. Yet the inner citadel at the centre of our kingdom has many floors. And many rulers don’t often visit the cellar.
What we are more likely feeling, what is making that regular noise from the lower reaches, is a herald to acute loneliness. Listening closely we hear the hymn of “saudade”. Our feature piece (from long before the pandemic began), covers this Portuguese word, one that has no direct translation into the English language, yet has an undeniable potency in describing an aspect of our human experience. Particularly in this moment.
What is saudade? As a Portuguese poet framed it, this word represents a constant feeling of absence, the sadness of something that's missing, wistful longing for completeness or wholeness and the yearning for the return of what is now gone. It is a desire for presence as opposed to absence.
The insight: for us, the scale, depth and complexity of loneliness seems like an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube. While overcoming saudade? Much more achievable. If we can simply increase our presence, we begin to melt the icy puzzle of loneliness. Of course, for those brave stoics among us the alternate translation of saudade as, "a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy," might even drive you to new heights of enjoyment. Next time you enter a conversation about overcoming loneliness, remember that saudade is a more beautiful, relatable and achievable challenge.
Arena of Design Thinking 🔎 The Four Spirits of Enjoyment
So you’ve caught a case of saudadian vibes? Let’s talk solutions and the return of present moment enjoyment. But a quick reminder: everyone finds joy differently. We’ve compiled a model for you to consider when designing good times:
In this sharp summary (designer must read), the two forces of enjoyment are outlined. It is a story of our inner Epicurus coming toe-to-toe with our soulful Epictetus. This is hedonia versus eudaimonia. On the one side, we have a mind attracted to a four-part cure to bring in abundant positive affect while banishing negative thoughts. And on the other side, an inner belief that enjoyment arises from living a full and deeply satisfying way, “a life devoted to our greatest potential in service of our highest ideals”.
Simply put, this is a nice way to categorize a model of personal preference for enjoyment. Some of us value experiences that bring pleasure over virtue, while the other half want more painful transformation over living extra.
But it is slightly more complex than choosing one enjoyment preference over the other. As designers, we must account for our guest’s agency to find that enjoyment. What level of participation are we asking of each guest from moment-to-moment? Enter the spectrum of active versus passive engagement.
What emerges is what we call the four spirits of enjoyment, each one being a combination between an activity level and the preferred enjoyment position. It results in four simplified emotional outcomes: relaxed (passively pleasured), indulged (activity pleasured), entertained (passively gratified) and evolved (actively gratified).
The insight: Each of us embodies one of the dominant preferences. It can tell you a lot about yourself—including your happiness weak points. It can also inform who you like to share experiences with. But of course, our inner party psychology is a shapeshifting monologue, and while we have a dominant preference, cycling between enjoyment types gives us a deeper life, well-lived. As designers, you have a choice. Stake your flag deeply into one quadrant, or cycle experiences to fluctuate between pleasure and virtue, participation and passiveness. Understanding that everyone enjoys differently is important to build good time outcomes.
Designer Data Drop 🧮 Chart of the Month
In this intelligent visualization (partial graphic below) from The XM Institute, the art of experience design, otherwise described as “a repeatable, human-centric approach for creating emotionally resonant interactions” is unpacked. See anything that familiar?
In case you were looking for a dataset that was more tangible, Event Manager Blog released 100 event-related statistics (must read) that are pretty revealing about the state of the industry and where trends are headed. Highlights include:
The pandemic has resulted in over $500 billion in cumulative losses for the U.S. travel economy. Alternatively, the global virtual events market is pegged at $77.98 billion with an expected annual growth of 23.2% through 2027.
In one single quarter last year, the exhibition and events industry lost 16.5 billion USD. Close to one third of event management companies lost 75 to 90 percent of their business in 2020.
Almost three quarters of planners plan to continue to employ a digital strategy to maintain their virtual audience once they return to physical events.
57% of attendees believe that they can conduct the majority of their event objectives online.
Fads and Crazes 📱 Clubhouse as a Meaningful Virtual Experience
The audio-only chat application, Clubhouse is likely the first revolutionary new software platform to answer the question: is live entertainment having its Napster moment? Enter Exhibit A:
We agree. That insight reveals a lot about how fast an entire genre of experience can be devalued by the digital world once the ball begins to roll (less than 9 months). In response, we have collected a few thoughts on Clubhouse, what it means for virtual and finding a meaningful experience with it. We argue this is more than the next buzzy new social app:
📈 First, it is important to note just how fast this online community is growing. The numbers are parabolic. And this was measured weeks ago, before Elon Musk joined for his first conversation (uniquely, Black creators, not Elon, are the core reason for its growth).
🏹 As we featured in digest #15, aside from watching the digital world eat entertainment genres alive in real-time, legacy intermediaries are also in real trouble. This includes media organizations as creators go direct. This includes legacy ways of thinking. And unfortunately, this may also include certain legacy gathering types (looking at you speaker panels). It will take time, and the weaker players will suffer the most. Think local community newspaper failures versus New York Times subscriber model outcome.
⛹ There has already been gossipy controversy, and not everyone is a fan of the format. We also agree that it might be the noisiest social landscape ever created. But just like IRL, the choice curators and highly skilled moderators are attracting the world’s most curious minds. Most urgent upgrade? A shot clock for everyone on stage.
🐱 You can see the copycats preparing, and Twitter’s Spaces is getting good reviews in closed beta. This live format will continue to expand in popularity.
🤑 And, this virtual experience is much more than sages on stages. Artists are preparing to release music, game shows are frequent, and hilarious dating rooms abound (like shoot your shot).
The insight: As we have championed throughout our virtual gathering insights, we are finding interesting and impactful experiences on Clubhouse. It is so spontaneous, breaks the fourth wall allowing for real-time interaction, embraces live persistence, and drives “this is only available now” FOMO. The principles are perfectly aligned for virtual community building. But before you jump in to moderate a room, please read this essential guide on how to run a meeting. Structure and intention wins.
Arena of Economics 💰 The AMEX Effect for Virtual Experiences
We always appreciate practical insights that can be easily applied. And one of the most pressing practical knowledge gaps right now? How virtual experience economies actually make money.
We understand how valuable experiences are to business, and to our well-being. Yet traditional transaction value propositions are hard to find in the virtual spheres.
The AMEX effect (great read), is the point at which your customer is more than willing to swipe their credit card without much decision-making effort. Put more simply—it's the price point at which your target customer won't resist the purchase. The insights are market-income driven, but there are obvious objection ceilings for consumers at $20, $50 and $100 purchase levels.
Virtual AirBnB Experiences average $22 per person, Eventbrite provides ranges for digital consumer experiences between $17 and $34 on average, with more online corporate events between $75 and $100. Some creators are winning big, others see the economic model as merely mediocre.
Freemium and low-priced subscription models are the likely winners long-term, as they follow the power distribution laws of previous content forms being consumed by digital. In this big ideas report from ARK Invest (insight packed), revenue from virtual worlds will compound 17% annually through 2025. But the vast majority of that revenue will come from in-game, “community transactions”. It is important to note that these economies are driven by consumers after the experience becomes a nice habit.
The insight: there are two dominant decision-making strategies for virtual events. To charge or not to charge. If you are confident in scaling a ticketed virtual experience, you might become one of the digital winner-take-all players. For most others, a freemium model will emerge as the leading narrative. Finding ways to monetize community engagement after the point of commitment, through repeated activity loops, identity tools, collectibles and in-experience purchases should be explored in detail. The AMEX Effect study shows that desire will overcome price resistance only after you have captured their spirit.
Thinkers and Philosophers 🕵 Akbar the Great
Akbar the Great, or originally known as Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (1542 - 1605), was the third Mughal emperor. While he lived, he was responsible for uniting the Indian subcontinent in mutual service and significantly influencing the course of Indian history. He was a patron of the arts, a founder of culture and espoused learning through the realm (notably creating a library exclusively for women in Fatehpur Sikri). But ultimately, he might have been the most tolerant and inclusive leader the world had ever seen to that point in human history:
In this detailed portrait (must read), Akbar’s architecture of cultural pluralism is on full display. In a religiously fragmented population, Akbar the Great was likely the first ruler to not only allow complete religious freedom, but enthusiastically support it. He courted competing views. He welcomed debate. And was likely the first leader to single-handedly battle the rise of a monoculture.
He valued decentralized rule, allowing for not only economic autonomy but massive cultural liberty in the vast regions of the empire. With the rise of “decentralized everything” in today’s culture, his ideas of allowing rulers to grow their own domain was very prescient.
Culturally, he was a master of fusion.
The insight: the explosion of inclusivity is the practice of designing like Akbar the Great. In this decolonizing design piece (wonderful insights within) the principles of allowing every human-centric experience to contribute to the wider ecosystem unlocks the conditions for possibility. Your insight map? Invite the right people, welcome contrarian views, fuse together new elements and decentralize your rule. This work is challenging, but can unite empires.
Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project
🌼 Painted florals! By Sophie Parker.
🍹 A raspberry rose cocktail for Valentine’s Day by one of the world’s best bars, Dante.
🌈 From the artist who takes joy seriously, really colourful street decor by Camille Walala.
🌪️ Shapeshifting runway room by AMO.
🎓 The “most expensive art piece in the world” (made from real diplomas) by Time and Space.
🪳 A golden cockroach army, with one lucky winner taking home 14K solid gold. By the incredibly talented typeface and visual artist, kissmiklos.
Hot morsels to ace your next conversation while moderating on Clubhouse
💥 Our friends just launched a fresh, spatial audio escape room platform. Incredible fun for remote teams. Check it out.
👁️ Seems like Apple’s new visor product due this year is actually a niche VR headset, and a precursor for their augmented reality foray. The details are pretty wild, 8k resolution for each eye, spatial audio and interchangeable “goggle headbands” (also a very premium price).
💭 The Flaming Lips did the bubble thing again.
🎤 New York announces spontaneous pop-up performances and SXSW announces their virtual lineup (Willie Nelson keynote?!).
📰 A unique take on consuming social. Once per week, Sundays only.
🗣️ A conversation with a synthetic crowd sound creator.
🏠 The 10 most liked AirBnB properties, as voted on during quarantine.
📿 Mardi Gras isn’t happening. The decor still is.
What did you think?
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End note
This was the twenty fourth edition of the State of Awe digest. We hope you found at least one lightbulb moment within the insights you’ve just read. Good ideas are like pure truths. Here’s one for you.
Why doesn’t that exist?! Lightbulb.
The crowd is growing, thank you for your referrals. For those who haven’t yet recommended this to one close colleague, please do! Direct them here.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson