Repetition, Routine, and Ritual

Do not design in straight lines

Buckle up, buttercups. This is a hefty/thick/extraajuuicy one. Let’s begin here:

Context: to me, experience design is an architectural craft. It is the art of building containers of different shapes and sizes and textures, and joining those containers together with thresholds and portals. Then, you layer on the dimension of time. An experience is not an experience until someone moves through those spaces (In what order? At what pace? Are some of the spaces themselves *times*?) 

And we, the hosts and the guides, are the ones escorting them between. Building the path and leaving the signs and holding their hands. 

Experiences that are straight lines are rarely interesting nor are they particularly powerful. We are built to return. To come back. And to set out again. We are not built to never look back. To never come home. To move only forward. 

Returning can be an act of remembering. An act of being in relationship with history and past and legacy. An act of power.

(More on the BIG experiential loop – the initial setting out and the final return, in a future post).

Today is all about little loops™ (cereal of experience design champions). The plural version of the small. And three of their distinctly different flavors (coming soon to a bodega near you).

Repetition. Routine. And Ritual. 

Repetition

Repetition, in experiential structure, is the repeating of an element. 

It is asking people to do something, or say something, or see something (the same thing) over and over. The power of repetition is learning the thing that is repeated through returning.  

It is helping people make muscle memory. We use the structure of repetition to help them REMEMBER. But this type of memory is a means to less thinking. To making something innate memory. Rather than needing to think when we call upon it, we have used repetition to be able to just know it. Automatically.

Let me give you some examples: 

Repetition is…

• saying your garage code over and over to yourself until you have memorized it

• asking people to repeat after you

• the band practicing their song eight dozen times so that they don’t need lyrics and notes

• old timey punishments of forcing someone to write lines

The quantity of repetition can also be a method of experiential underlining. A way to say “This is important. Pay attention.”

Loops are a fundamental structure of experiential architecture. 

(Here! We’re doing it here! This is repetition helping you remember. And telling you that this thing is super important). 

Routine

Routine, in experiential structure, is returning your people to the same architectures.

It is inviting people to go through the same steps, the same pattern, over and over. The power of routine is helping people tune OUT what is the same, so that they can tune IN to what is different, or what ELSE needs their attention. 

(Here! We’re doing it here! This is routine helping you identify what is different in this section, from the section above. The structure is the same. But the content is different.)

Setting up a routine helps people know what is coming. It gives them the comfort of a familiar structure and predictability. This way their brains can stop spending energy on figuring out where they are, what’s happening, what will happen next. And can focus on what content is new or something else that deserves their focus. 

Let me give you some examples (Here! Doing routine again!):

Routine is…

• using a repeating structure for all the synthesis slides in your presentation, so that people’s brains are like “Okay, I know what is happening here”

• always brushing your teeth the same way, so you don’t have to think about it and can instead start to mellow your noggin before bed

• instituting a uniform for yourself so that you spend no time deliberating your fashion in the morning

• the doctor asking you the same questions at every appointment so that they can more easily identify what has changed in your health

**A quick caveat on the danger of routine: Routine is all about decreasing the use of your brain-RAM (operating memory). But there can be a downside. It can lead to your brain being like “Oh we’ve done this a thousand times, I don’t need to make a memory of this!” And then you find yourself three blocks away from home needing to flip a U-ey to double check that you closed your garage. Because you don’t know if your memory of closing it is from two minutes ago or last week because the actions were exactly the same. 

So here’s a trick for when routine is doing [you/your people] dirty: attach something different every time. Now when I close the garage door I sing a little one line improv-ed song, always new, so I am creating an altered memory to attach to each instance. “Oh yes, I DID close it today because I rhymed close with pantyhose!”

Remember…

Ritual

Summer ritual. Morning coffee and poetry overlooking the ocean.

Ritual, in experiential structure, is using routine and repetition as ways of making something sacred. 

It is doing something again and again as a means of giving meaning. The power of ritual is tuning IN to the repeated structure as an act of honoring and care. 

Ritual is devotion through repetition. It is making magic from the mundane. It is the beauty of the things we refer to as a practice. Because, as we’ve seen above, doing the same thing over and over can so easily lead to us NOT thinking about whatever it is. Therefore, in the CHOOSING to continue to pay attention — deep and close attention — to what is the same, we can find awe.

Let me give you some examples: 

Ritual is…

• tea ceremony

• taking your first cup of coffee to the porch every dawn to watch the world come alive

• braiding your child’s hair before school each morning, a small and precious moment together

• starting every working session with a warm-up

• always closing with a circle of gratitudes

• telling yourself something over and over as a mantra of truth

Ritual is the words every and always — signaling again and continual, and each — giving attention to the singular within the repeating. 

Again…

~What we tell ourselves, over and over, until it becomes mantra and truth.~ Page of handwritten notes on the inside cover of one of Octavia E. Butler’s commonplace books, 1987. Copyright Estate of Octavia E. Butler.

Bringing it all together

Okay, that was A LOT. In short, how might we think about the relationships between these three little loop types?

Here are some ways (explored through late night conversations with Shuya Gong). Choose what resonates for you.

Perhaps it’s this: 

Repetition is the act of LEARNING the structure, routine is the act of USING the structure, and ritual is the act of finding the SACRED in both.

Or this:

Routine is you tuning OUT OF repetitious structure, ritual is you tuning INTO repetitious structure.

Or this:

Routine is the art of forgetting. Ritual is the art of remembering. Repetition is the bridge between the two. 

Or this:

Repetition is practicing. Routine is practical. Ritual is a practice.

Or this:

Framework created by Shuya Gong

Your assignment, should you choose to play (Here! Routine across posts! The same structure each time!):

1. Notice where you have intuitively leveraged repetition, routine, and ritual in your life, and the experiences you have designed of late. 

2. Pick something you are making now: a zine, a protest, a birthday, a gathering. Consider how you might manifest one (or all three) of these little loop structures. And tell us about it. 

Yours, Olivia (Here! Ritual! I’m doing it! Me, each time, saying that I am here with you, in these questions).