Many of the readers of this blog are people engaged in the experience design space, so I thought you'd find this piece interesting. I have been creating different frameworks in attempts to create a taxonomy of experiences to help both clients and designers to use as a common language. I can share that with you another time. Today I want to share this piece by Bob Jacobson. He is an urban planner, technologist and author. He describes different types of experience — spiritual, philosophical, scientific and design — that bear on the practice of systemically designing for experience.
His first topic are spiritual experiences, experiences derived from the phenomenon of human existence we call spirituality. He describes his writings as “notes prelude to a more thorough discussion; neither complete nor conclusive, but suggestive of the broad array of experiences that derive from our spiritual natures.”
He identifies four types of relevant spiritual experience, each with its own defining characteristic:
* Ecstatic experiences — Personal epiphanies and “callings”
* Ritualistic experiences — Tribal and cult experiences often derived from oral tradition
* Formalized experiences — Highly structured experiences often adhering to a doctrine
* Spiritual living — Spirituality as a constant day to day experience
He will further describe “how spiritual experiences of various types interact with ‘designed’ experiences; and how designers can (positively) exploit spiritual experiences and what they must look out for when invoking (or ignoring) them.”
You can read the full story here.
