We are like fish in water, completely immersed in our own experience. We experience it subjectively, intimately, intuitively and richly; and it this very familiarity that prevents us from examining it objectively and consciously. We take it for granted and we no longer see what makes up the fundamental elements of our own or other’s experience.

For the most part, this lack of objective understanding is absolutely fine – who needs it when you are enjoying a sunset, a great conversation or an immersive story? Trying to deconstruct it while you are in it might--and likely would--take away from the experience. So, don’t bother to – while you are in it.

But if you create human experiences as a major part of your working life (that is how we define our work at e!), knowingly or unknowingly, thoughtfully or carelessly, and we all do create experiences for one another; then understanding and leveraging the fundamental building blocks of experience is essential learning for the road ahead.

I am currently directing a small team on the research of my second book. The question I am trying to answer is one our team has struggled with for years: How does an environment impact a person’s experience? To understand this we are exploring how the mind works, how we think, how we process sensory data, what we ignore and what we focus on. What do we experience consciously and what do we experience unconsciously? How do we make sense of an experience once we are in it; how do we frame and remember it and how do we choose to transfer this to real-life application? Not easy questions and the answers are elusive, but they are the questions that have driven the conversations inside e! for years. At leadership entrees, around dinner tables, at the back of classrooms, in people’s offices and across the aisles on planes heading for locations all over the planet, we have been fanatically focused on the nuances that make up an experience. Lately I have noticed that many others, not just from our field, but from marketing, communications, architecture, social anthropology and many more have joined in the conversation and it’s a great one.

We have come to a period when the fundamental factors are aligned for a significant and lasting social change. Of course like all social change it has been underway long before anyone was speaking about it – but at some point, and this is it, there is a tipping point where enough individual variables add up to create a much larger and more visible landslide of momentum. Socially, economically and psychologically the planets are aligned and the time to more clearly and thoughtfully understand our own experience of the world is now. The implications are profound for the field of learning, but they are in no way limited to our field.
Understanding what really makes up a good or great human experience is worth knowing. Researching and designing experience has made for a very interesting career for me. One that likely couldn’t have existed years before. For almost two decades now I have had the privilege of being an observer, a cultural anthologist of sorts, curiously watching humans in their environment and then designing ‘worlds’ from the ground up – living laboratories that allow for a condensed view and an intense and relevant human experience.

The breadth and depth of experiences that my clients and partners have afforded me is something I feel very grateful for – their trust and partnership has been the most generous gift I could have been given. I am happily obliged to pass on their generosity to others when I can. From living in the middle of an aboriginal reserve deep in northern Australia, to working with factory workers in Kuala Lumpur. From the brilliant sights, surreal sounds and pungent smells of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, to sophisticated restaurants and black topped basketball courts (my favorite ‘on the road’ day away from work) in the resilient and amazing New York City, to working on a production line for a pharmaceutical company in Toronto. It all has been a part of a continuing journey of curiosity, discovery and learning that I have shared with colleagues and friends. We looked, listened, felt. We questioned what was really going on in the store, in the classroom, in the office. We combed the research for anything that could help. We created approaches when often no approach seemed to fit what we were seeing. We learned from our mistakes and our successes as we stumbled along, most of all learning from our experience. The less we censored our naïve questions, the better the conversation got and the more inspired we became to keep learning. This has been and continues to be the passion of my intellectual life.

Over twenty years I can honestly say that this work is as exciting and relevant for me today as it always has been; an incredibly powerful draw for my heart and my head. We have learned something and it can and likely should change a number of things; but we still have much to learn. We have many more questions that will occupy me and us for the next two decades with new and old clients looking to more fully understand how humans experience their particular worlds. But now we have enlisted you in this captivating journey of curiosity and discovery and I hope we will add your voice to our own in the evolving conversation of experience; for me that is the true purpose of my next book and this newsletter will serve as another medium for us to exchange ideas. Let us know what you think. This column in our redesigned newsletter (great job team!) has been designated as a spot for me to share thoughts, to explore ideas and to continue the conversation we began almost two decades ago now: what is the impact of environment on the experience of individuals?

Stay tuned for the next column on how the mind processes (or ignores) specific information and how it impacts our learning environments.

I would enjoy adding your voice to his conversation. What do you think? don@experienceit.com