Looking to move deeper into the practice of how we make more beautiful experiences for one another? Hungry for tools, frameworks, and inspiration? Have something in particular you are making that you want to be exceptional?
Join us for our upcoming virtual retreat, Designing Experiences for Radical Imagination. We’ll spend 8 weeks diving into how we can design for the connection, structure, and play needed to craft the moments we remember.
The retreat launches February 18th! Sign up for an early February info session to learn more.
Note: scholarships for folks of color with financial need available.
A few weeks ago two friends rented out a tiny, red velvet theater tucked away in an alley, for a birthday screening of ‘Lord of the Rings’.
“Please come in costume, plentiful hobbit food provided” read the invitation.
And the party goers did, as they say, nail the assignment.
There was an Ent with scavenged, leafy branches. Multiple po-tay-toes. Hobbits with no shoes — despite the sub-freezing temps outside, and heavy, clanking cast iron pans. A very gay Ladriel (Galadriel gone drag). Many elves.
My wife and I came as first and second breakfast, respectively.
But I will say, there was a clear winner of the costume contest:
Full white spandex unisuit. Brushed on grime and chest definition. Loin cloth. Pointed ears. Color coordinated shoes. Painted face with skeevy eyebrows and glaringly white and blue eyeballs drawn over her eyelids.
And this precious costume, in particular, was a good reminder…
That two half asses do not a whole ass make.
And by that I mean that it is the easier road, often, to do many things in an experience moderately well. Make all the moments, the artifacts, the resources, the outfits pretty good.
But what we remember, months or years later, is whoever, or whatever, goes in for the full enchilada.
Experience design is the art of making choices. About what to invest your always-limited resources in. We never have unending time, or money, or space, or paint.
So Gollum is here to remind you not to spread those resources too thinly around. Rather — pick something to go all in for.
Experiences without high highs or low lows, but that are replete with fairly good quality middles, fade into our memorial backgrounds quickly and without fanfare.
But when we go out on a limb for a moment, that is what people remember.
Perhaps because not only does this investment of care create something spectacular, but it is also vulnerable — a risk to show everyone else how fully you have bought in.
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
What are you making right now? A potluck or a conference or a fundraiser or a galentines day party?
What is one thing, just one, that you might go way extra on?
The extravagant chocolate fountain. The handwritten cards you place at everyone’s seat. Your outfit. The geese-themed memes you spend hours tracking down, one for each slide of your presentation.
And what might you let go of — allow to be more meh or mediocre or forgettable, so that you can have your brightly shining Gollum moment?
Yours, Olivia
If you’re looking for a soft hour to make a quiet, beautiful, experiential mess together, join us for our next public gathering of Designing for Feelings, Wednesday, February 5th @ 8:30 am PT.
Find out more and get added to the calendar event below!
verbatim I have been quoting Ron Swanson to myself. Unfortunately it feels like I have one-billionth of an ass in way too many pies right now. Horrible mashed up metaphor? I whole assed that.
Yasssss, Olivia, well expressed! I agree - there's something about that full send of vulnerability that people pick up on and cherish. These moments typically leave me with a short-lived vulnerability hangover, but it's almost always worth it, short-term and long-term.