Time as a Design Element
Timing is a powerful factor in design. The same program will have dramatically different effects based on the design of the schedule. With 20 people going through it at a time, every other week, it is a successfully rated training program. However, with 100 people going through it every two days, back-to-back, it creates a significant culture shift.

Design Expresses Culture
Design of human experiences expresses the culture of the enterprise, in many ways more so than the content. Content expresses the stated intent and the logic of the organization, while the macro design elements express its unstated culture. Participants clearly get the latter message, whether intended or not and behave accordingly. The problem with much design is that the cultural messages being sent are either unintended or misaligned with the outcomes the company wants to achieve.

Doing ‘A’ While Hoping for ‘B’
Most design of human experience achieves ‘A,’ while hoping for ‘B.’ The experience often misses the way humans really work and often it is not the way we want them to work. Humans are messy. They sense, feel, think, do, act and react to their environment in patterns, but in not lock-step to design.

Design Lays the Cultural Tracks
Most organizations create decent strategy. Then they turn to the troops and effectively say, "Here it is, let’s go!" Great design of human experience lays the cultural tracks upon which the strategy can effectively roll out. Without it the strategy, good or mediocre, will be mired in implementation problems that bright people will not make the effort to solve.

Elevate
Great human experiences require some form of elevation: of the conversation… of the idea… of the purpose… of the core reason for doing it in the first place. The question of ‘why’ always has to be asked and asked again. Human experiences are always profound, though they can be disguised as mundane. Noticing the profound in the mundane and bringing this understanding to light for others elevates design.

The Power of One
Humans don’t have experiences as a group; they may however, experience events in a group. The difference is fundamental to design. Humans process their experiences internally, individually and on many levels, even when they are influenced by being in a group. Design needs to provide unique experiences for each individual – whether it is the design of a space or an experiential event. The details have to be deep enough for individuals to feel emotionally and intellectually that this experience has been designed for them alone. This is possible when you design an afternoon experience for six people or a day with 1000 people in the same room.

Resonate
Humans, even when they experience something new, need to ground that experience against something old. To have a new insight it must be both fresh and old at the same time. It must provide a new way of seeing but feel right intuitively from experience. It needs to both startle and resonate at once.

Everything is Changing
No it’s not. Yes, there are many changes happening on many levels of our world. But many things have not changed. We need love, some sense of control, acceptance, security and meaning in our lives. These fundamentals are enduring and drive every one of our daily personal and professional actions and choices. Design has to use the strongest foundation to build upon. We need to recognize change for what it is and what it says, but the design needs to build on rock-solid foundations that have not changed in a millennium.

Creative is Found Deep with Rigour
Great creativity emerges from the confluence of three deep rivers of thought: the honest examination of the landscape, issue or idea, the broad and deep experience of the designer, and the spark that ignites the two in the birth of an idea. The illusion is that it is from the blank page that creative design flows.. In fact, it flows from deep (sometimes invisible) processes that support it. Artists, actors, designers deeply mine and rigorously examine the landscape, whether that landscape is human behaviour, a business culture, a competitive advantage, a product innovation or a leadership vision.

Meaning Drives Everything
Abraham Maslow has underpinned our understanding of psychological behaviours for many years with his Hierarchy of Needs. It is ubiquitous with our modern design, so fundamental and deeply hidden in our culture that we don’t fully see its manifestation in our design experiences. It is there and the model is flawed. Meaning is at the centre of how humans interact in the world and designers needs to understand how humans constantly seek out meaning and try to make meaning in every experience.

Work is the Play of Children (and Play can be the Work of Adults)
Children need to be immersed in play in order to learn how the world works: how things are connected to each other, the impact that they have on the world – and vice versa. Adults do not find flow in their work until they engage at the same level as they did when they were children. As a child you are supported and can afford to give yourself fully over to an activity that you define as play. As an adult you are supporting yourself, your family and the community you are involved in – yet you can only leverage your potential when you give yourself over in the same way as the child, to the challenge at hand. Experiences need to pull humans into immersive and nuanced challenges.

Work is Noble
Work is noble. No matter what the job, supporting ourselves, our families and contributing to our community are noble acts. Great design needs to remind people of this inherent benevolence that they possess.

Each Person has a Gift to Contribute
You either believe this or you don’t. We do. Great design starts with this belief and then creates the experience for people to know or remember this about themselves.

Defining the Right Problem
The greatest opportunity for design impact is in the initial meeting(s) with clients and in the initial thinking about the problem. Solving problems is usually is not the hard part. Defining the right problem to solve – that is where great design starts.

The Boundaries of the Problem Solving Space
Our role in design is not simply to understand the boundaries of the problem solving space. It is to question why those are the boundaries at all.

For Design to be a Strategic Partner
If we want to achieve design results that align with the mission and culture of the enterprise, drop to the bottom line, and go beyond silo-based thinking, we have to drop those silo limitations from the design process as well. Design can’t simply be about training, it has to be about changing the results of the company.

Chaos to Order
Inherent in design is a journey. It is always an individual journey even when a group is involved. The individual needs to feel a movement from Chaos to Order. To begin with, they need to feel somewhat at disequilibrium and they need to then move to a state of equilibrium. Most design doesn’t work because it doesn’t recognize the need to start in disequilibrium. Understanding this is fundamental to great design; striking the right balance is both an art and a science.

Isolation to Community
Humans are always on the journey of moving from isolation to community; that is, past mere connection toward greater levels of relationship in a group or social structure. Great design needs to understand that this is one of the key reasons that people find the deep motivation required for learning, for growth, for skill development and for understanding. This movement helps them not only do their jobs, but it helps them move to greater levels of community and ultimately toward meaning.

Detail Matters
Nuance. Shade. Tone. Gradation. Volume. Detail. Humans are deeply moved by moments, not days. It is the sum--countless details that someone has not only counted but carefully crafted--of the whole that creates the individual reaction in an experience.

Context Trumps Content
Two examples:
• Who you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying.
• Say yes, but shake your head and look angry; which message do you think people will believe?
Humans say that the content matters, and to an extent it does. However, the extent is precisely determined by the context and the judgment of context. Designing content is never enough; the nuance of context delivers the power behind the message.

It is Possible…
…to create massive cultural shifts and to align around values, well-defined brands, clear strategies and a leader’s vision. It is not only possible – it is precisely what participants hope to be able to find in their work. Great design simply gets the junk out of the way between clear direction and natural aspiration. The challenge of design is that there is a lot of junk to clear out.

Four ‘Walls" of the Classroom
Whether those ‘walls’ are virtual or real, great design refines what is possible within them. It has to start with the foundational design tools, driving human motivations and leverage naturally magnetic human aspirations. It has to start with the foundational design tools, driving human motivations and leverage naturally magnetic human aspirations.

Size Matters
Size does matter and is an important design element. Whether small debriefing or mass energy, individual learning or massive cultural shift, size is a context- setting design element not just a logistical question.

When does the penny drop?
We do not understand how humans learn. Not really. Great design needs to recognize that at this moment in human evolution the best learning theory gives us only an approximation about how humans actually take in sensory data and choose at some level, at a specific point in time, to use it productively. We will only move the yardstick forward by recognizing the current significant gaps in our own understanding. Don’t underestimate the task at hand in having humans make different choices. Don’t let that lack of understanding paralyze you from productive action. Great design has to provide the room for the mystery inside the process of learning, or it will crowd out the very learning it is trying to achieve.

Culture as Outcome
Culture is always the outcome. Nothing can happen by rules, policies or laws alone; there has to be will. Culture aligns will. Period.

Facilitation and Design
Design in learning is in many cases facilitated by people. The design should support the best intentions of a skilled facilitator – rather than get in the way. Facilitation is an art. It is to be understood in the moment. Design needs to fit this dynamic, not try to change it into a static reality.

Consistency and Spontaneity
Design is meant to be experienced by individuals who will always create their own story within it. Facilitation is the ability to translate, not the design, but the experience; thus a facilitator has to respond to and respect both the design and the individual. The design needs depth and consistency. The act of facilitation requires knowledge of both this intent in the design and the unique story in the participant’s mind about the experience. Consistency and spontaneity are both required for optimal human experience.

Form Follows Function.
Yes, and Function Equally Follows Form
For years the idea of design was that form follows function. While this is true, it is only a half-truth. The other half is that function equally follows form. We shape the spaces we work in – but once we use those spaces they shape us! The design of human experiences is no different. Once we design an experience for humans it shapes, for good or ill, the behaviours of those within it.

Hints and Clarity
Any design that is perfectly clear is inherently dishonest. Life is not like that and at some level humans understand this. Some things serve an audience better behind a curtain, slightly blurry and with a gray mist in front of it. This is not to hide the clarity, but to reveal the mystery.

Human Attention
It is popular to believe that people aren't paying attention; the truth is that they are, much more closely than most would like. They see past your message and examine the messenger. They synthesize context at a much more profound level than they are given credit for. Understanding this is the opportunity in the design of human experience.

Design as Meaning Making
The design of human experience provides the context for the making of meaning for individuals. It is in making their own meaning that humans then choose to leverage the tools presented to them or not. Without a connection on some level to meaning, even the best tool, idea, process or strategy will not be enough.

Connecting to Your Audience
When you are training, educating, or communicating ideas, you are not only transferring ideas; you are connecting at a soul-to-soul level with other humans. Your audience will on some level ask two questions: "Who are you?" and "Why are you doing this?" Great design must create, in every nuance of the context (timing, emphasis, words, images, character, direction, tone and engagement), the opportunity for each individual to clearly and quickly arrive at positive answers to those questions for themselves. Only then will you have the opportunity for your idea to even be considered.

Story
Every human experience is a story. Every thing has, and is, a story. One of the most important talents a designer brings to bear on a project, perhaps the most important, is to understand the simple story of the sometimes very complex experience they are creating. By that I mean understand how the variables within that story intimately connect to each other and to those who will experience them. Do they flow? Do they dance? Is the story simple enough for humans to interact with it and create their own story from?

Complexity
There comes a point in every creation where the weight of the variables seem overwhelming and complex. This is the point of breaking the project or of breakthrough; and it is where the designer must answer one question successfully, 'What is the simple story of this experience?" Found or answered, successfully and honestly, and the back of the problem has been broken and you have arrived at the sweet side of complexity. Avoided or mis-answered and you are lost for the rest of that design, buried behind a shallow mask of complexity, until you give up and come back to the same question facing you, "What is the simple story of this experience?"

Simplicity and Complexity
The best designs are both simple and complex. They derive their unique character, creativity and complexity from the multiplicity of permutations and combinations of a very few, carefully chosen, simple rules. Underlying the most successful 'complex' designs are a few simple and clear driving elements. Underlying unsuccessful designs, whether complex or simple, are either unclear drivers, or overly complex ones. Inside each simple driver you must find a rock solid foundation of both heart and logic.