process is the architecture of experience
What connects experience design and process design?1
Let's take the "set of procedures" or "executable program" sense of process rather than thinking about process as the word for the flow of events through time and space (the "trust the process" sense).
The process is the container, the vehicle, the structure...
Collaborative processes are experiences of relationship and working together. Workshop design and facilitation are about helping people meet their goals or succeed in their work. Process design, or project management, are about planning and executing an effective, overall journey from A to B. Everyone involved has an opportunity to go on the journey. Going on the journey is an experience of growth, learning, connection...
The process is the architecture of the experience:
- Micro: the discussion prompts. 1-2-4-all and other Liberating Structures. Nancy Kline's instructions for a Thinking Partnership session.
- Meso: a day at a conference. Collecting your name tag at the check-in desk, the key note, the seminars, the coffee breaks, the evening social.
- Macro: the relationship between lectures, tutorials and assignments on a university module. Planting the seed, watering the plant, harvesting the crop (in non-heatwave and drought conditions..!)
Designing a process is a key part of designing experience(s).2
Ok, I hear you, a big difference is they're coming from wildly different realms. I'm trying to say that experience design might be a unifying framework that encompasses lots of things to do with managing change! And I think that thinking in terms of process design is narrow and miserable compared to thinking in terms of experience design.↩
I was tempted to write, designing an experience, for the symmetry with the first part of the phrase. But the reality is that there's a one-to-many relationship between your design and the experiences any participants have! We can hint and guide not control.↩