![]() ![]() Holding open the space for transformation is an active process. Once the worthwhile risk, the experience structure, and the magic circle in place, transformation can unfold. In this system, a magic circle can be either conditioned or embraced. Once they are inside, keep the perimeter strong so as to keep out disruptive elements. Do the work of helping them across that perimeter. Construct the Magic Circleīe mindful of the invisible perimeter that your participants need to cross to get into your experience and engage fully. #THE MAGIC CIRCLE GUIDE FREE#What can they rely on you to take care of, and how does that free them up to confront the worthwhile risk?Ī consistent experience structure is one ingredient for establishing trust between you and the participants, and trust is a prerequisite for enabling transformation. The experience structure is an unspoken contract between all parties. You can look at the experience structure as defining the responsibilities of the designer, the facilitators (if different than the designer) and the participants. The experience structure dictates how participants move through the space inside the magic circle. What experience structure is best suited to support the participants in confronting the worthwhile risk? At the highest level, options for an experience structure include exploratory, progressive, or cyclical structures. Is there something the participants can reconnect with, discover, or open up to by confronting the risk at hand?īe mindful of cultural norms, life stages, and personal agendas (yours and theirs) when taking this step. It’s your job as the designer to identify if a particular risk is actually the deceptive wrapping of a gift that your participants will benefit from receiving. ![]() Addressing the primal risk through an experience can go a long way to freeing someone to fully engage the higher order risks they face. The root of the higher order risk may stretch back into one of the primal risks I discuss here. If what initially comes up are higher order risks, like financial, political, or legal risks, look for the deeper root of the threat. Drill deep and get as specific as possible about the risk facing the people you are designing for. The broad categories of risk are social, emotional, and physical, but don’t stop there. Getting specific about the risk is your first step to designing an experience. Risk is a threat to one’s current state that can destabilize the way things are. These parts show up in wildly different kinds of intimate, transformative social gatherings. With a vocabulary, however, we are better equipped to design transformative experiences suitable for complex, modern situations where blueprints from past traditions don’t offer us all the answers we need.ĭrawing from game studies, the anthropology of ritual, and positive psychology, I’ve identified the critical building blocks of the vocabulary to be: Risk, The Magic Circle, Experience Structure, and Transformation. ![]() Without a vocabulary to identify what the possibilities are, improving on the design of high-stakes experiences like sex parties, funerals, and wilderness trips is an impossible task. The experiences are in some way inexhaustible, in that what the participant does and takes away from the experience has such wide variety and depth that it cannot be fully prescribed by the designer.įollowing sociologist Erving Goffman’s definition of a social encounter, the experiences are bound by space, time, goings-on, and co-presence. The experiences are interpersonal and require active participation. For wilderness trips, the uncontrollable element is the inherently vulnerable nature of human life when put in a context that challenges basic survival needs. For funerals and post-death customs generally, the risky element at play is human emotions around mourning. In the case of sex parties, the potentially chaotic element that the guide needs to manage is human sexuality and desire. The most stunning commonality among these experiences is that the risk posed to the participant also poses a chaotic and uncontrollable element to the guide that, if fully tamed, destroys the transformative potential of the experience. When at their best, sex parties, funerals, and wilderness trips all fall in the ‘human enrichment’ category. Experience design is the creation of experiences for the purpose of entertainment, persuasion, recreation, or human enrichment where the emotional journey of the individual or group is the focus. ![]()
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