Feels before formulas
Why save the good stuff for later?
Craving a container in which to put space and time through the play doh machine that turns it into spaghettified hair? Well have I got the thing for you.
I host a live, public event called 🌀 Designing for Spacetime 🌀. It feels a little like putting your marshmallow brain in the microwave such that it becomes taffy-sticky with twice its normal stretch.
Our next gathering is Wednesday, May 21st @ 9 am PT. Get added to the calendar event (and the ongoing series) below!
My wife is writing a smutty, queer, time-traveling, fantasy novel.
In her writing workshop last Tuesday, this woman named Pam offered up some hand-me-down advice: “Readers will wait to be informed, but they won’t wait to be interested.”
These, it seems to me, are equally good instructions for us experience designers as they are for the room full of novel-hopefuls.
So often we overload folks with information up front. Summaries of what’s already happened. Logistics. Where everything is. Who we are and why we are important. What’s going to happen next. All the instructions and the hazard warnings.
And it comes from a good place. A belief, not misplaced, that clarity is care. Wanting people to be equipped and prepared and contextualized.
And yet…
Maybe we should, per Pam’s friend’s instructions, hold our horses…just a bit.
Because too much of a slow burn at the start — exposition and explanation, background and becauses, all of this means we lose the people.
And regaining their attention and their energy is not easy.
Paul Bennet, a past colleague of mine, said this: “Lead with the beauty, follow with the math.”
It’s not no math ever.
But it asks us to start with some wows. Vibes. The good stuff. A moment to immerse before we get to the tacticals.
This is what I mean:
Right now I’m helping an organization launch their own Substack. And they asked whether they should start with a summary of the stuff they’ve done to date, or an article about a conversation they just had that feels emergent and spicy.
The latter.
Hook people with the juicy stuff — a story, a moment, a single paradigm-changing insight, before you run them through the background.
My own version of Paul’s recommendation?
Drop them into the feels before the formulas.
This looks like Disney building an Indiana Jones ride line that plops you into the jungle atmosphere, builds anticipation, delivers on the emotional buzz building, before they do the story context, safety checks, put your seatbelts on, how this works yadda yadda.
Or perhaps this means opening a talk with a warm-up, an experiential threshold, a mesmerizing anecdote, before you do the “Hi, I’m Olivia, here’s my professional background…”
Give your people something tasty at the jump. Because keeping them hungry for too long means they’ll just wander off elsewhere to find a snack.
In the giant experience design project that is our life?
My wife and I quote George Clooney and Julia Roberts in this somewhat corny but also delightful romcom on the regular:
“Why save the good stuff for later?”
More joy, earlier please. The nice wine? It’s for tonight. The “holy shit what?” moment? Put it at the start. The froyo? Yup, 10:30 am is an appropriate time.
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
What are you making? A talk? A block party? A celebratory reminder that libraries should be funded because they are amazing?
How can you move the good stuff earlier? What could it look like to start with the buzzy magic, the champagne pop, the literal and emotional fireworks?
Feels before formulas.
Yours, Olivia
Speaking of opening moments…
Want some hands-on time and tactical tools for making pizzazz-y starts?
Great news! I’m running another round of How to Design a Warm-Up that Doesn’t Suck on Friday May 30th @ 9 am PT.
It’s free! It will be a party! You will leave with more ways to design beginnings that are great and not terrible!
Bring friends. Bring your coworkers who run shitty warm-ups. Bring the celebrity you meet at the coffee shop.
In college, I wrote a column called “Eat Dessert First” based on similar principles! Good advice for any kind of relationship building, with readers, partners, clients alike.