If you’ve emailed me this week, you likely saw my OOO, telling you I threw my computer out the window and am deep in the woods.
I am writing this before leaving for two weeks of fam time. What my away message did not say is that this is what a typical day is about to be:
Wake up, crack a book of poetry on the porch with a strong cup of coffee, sunscreen, run through the trees before the humidity climbs to 98%, get suckered into doing exercises from a 2000s workout DVD, ocean plunge in all my sweaty clothes, sprint back to the tennis court to get my ass handed to me by my father, long swim, bake three blueberry pies, pick all the leafs from the garden, quick go to the fish market to buy many fishes before they run out, another swim to the big rock with the aunties, circle back to accompany my 94-year-old grandfather on his daily water constitutional while Nana does the “nana swim” with her head above water like an actress from the 60’s, try not to get eaten by a shark, trash talk the cousins in the family tennis grudge match, skip back through the woods for a sunset wave dunk, outdoor shower in the trees in a hurry because you are late for dinner, bug spray, make individual whisky sours by hand for 18 relatives, feast on all the fish, remember to reheat the pies, eat a whole watermelon, assign tomorrow’s family tennis face-offs, walk up the hill, go to bed. Wake up. Repeat.
I would refer to this as a high energy day.
Experience design, for me, is all about designing for emotions. AND it’s also about designing for energy.
Energy and emotions are related, yes. But they are not the same thing (though when we are loose with our language we tend to use them synonymously). Emotions can have an energy to them, high or low. Elation, for example, is higher energy, while awe resonates lower. Anxiety is higher energy, while dread is lower. And, energies can have an emotion, too. Or at least you can certainly have an emotion about an energy. For example, the hyper anxious energy of your colleague can be a real bad time.
But, they’re different. In the world of experience design, this is how I would define the two:
Emotions = feelings. And feelings can have all different textures and vibes. They can be good and bad and lots of things in between.
Energy = the frequency and vibration of interactions. It’s highly relational. Energy is all about what is happening between. It’s interactions with your own thoughts, with other humans, with the environment, with ideas. High energy can feel buzzy, hyper, electric, activated, rushed, up. Low energy can feel mellow, slow, soft, chill, unhurried, disconnected, sluggish, down.
And it’s important to remember that..
High energy ≠ good, and low energy ≠ bad. High frequency could be the dance monitor at the bar mitzvah yelling enthusiastically at you to dance harder when you are NOT vibing. Meanwhile, you could be having the most lovely low energy hang with a friend where you silently read romantasy novels side-by-side whilst floating quietly in the pool.
So when I design experiences, I ask myself this:
‘How do I want people to feel?’
and
‘What type of energy does this experience require?’
Different work (work in the loosest sense of the word) requires different energy. Generative work — creating options, building on others’ ideas, coming up with unexpected possibilities, wild expression, often requires high energy, and spikes of it. Convergence, on the other hand — making choices, narrowing options, zooming in, killing your darlings, may necessitate lower energy. Execution work — making, maintaining, repetition, staying in something, might want medium and steady energy.
So as you are thinking about what your experiences and your people need, I have made you a nifty little diagram, organizing feels into energetic quadrants:
Sending you whatever frequency and feeling your day might be needing.
Yours, Olivia
oh hello, just popping in to your substack for the first time, what a treasure! i love this post so hard! it's so useful to have frameworks like this one. thank you.
it's so wonderful to consider how this static map might flex over time over the course of an experience, and designing with that journey in mind: from a low-energy good vibes teaser at the beginning which tickles curiosity, to even intentionally introducing some bad vibes moments of frustration, tension or disappointment, which could resolve into discovery/surprise, build to a frisky ecstasy at an experience's peak, then dissipate to waves of low energy, good-vibes calm in the afterglow.
Very timely read for me, really appreciated the perspective I gained in reading this, I’ve never had someone frame intensity and energy in this way with regard to participatory experiences. In general I am finding what you are sharing to be incredibly insightful/affirming with regard to designing experiences and am loving the emails!