The experience economy has transformed our way of life, and industries are evolving to meet the moment. Across sectors and spaces, we’re seeing more experiential cross-pollination—design that blends the experiences you’d expect from one place into another.
Examples include:
We’re learning that the life forms that survive and thrive best are those that borrow from other environments. What can workplace design learn from this to provide more inspiring and engaging spaces for employees?
1. Choose emotion over technology
Few people understand how the technology of The Sphere in Las Vegas actually works, but anyone who’s seen a show there can tell you how it feels. Workplaces too can offer rich, communal experiences; however, they often focus on infrastructure and office technology as solutions to human needs.
To design spaces people want to be in, we need to prioritize their emotional and professional needs—not audiovisual diagrams and screen specs.
2. Create purposeful, welcoming spaces
Post-pandemic workplaces need more than a makeover; they need a purpose. Experiential design not only reveals and elevates a business’ core purpose—it creates the places and conditions for humans to connect with that purpose and with each other.
Great storytelling works because it invites us to become part of something bigger and feel a sense of belonging. Taylor Swift’s fans aren’t just buying a ticket to a concert—they’re becoming part of a global community. And that’s worth way more than the price of admission.
3. Borrow from "third places"
We go to coffee shops, bars, parks, and squares to feel energized, experience chance encounters, and reconnect with people outside home and work. Large companies are drawing inspiration from these spaces to design workplaces that bring people together more casually, blurring the line between the outside and the inside.
“In the same way biophilic design in the workplace seeks to meet our need to be close to nature, the emulation of third spaces seeks to enrich workplaces with the same social dynamics we find in the outside world.” - David Waingarten, Creative Director of Strategy
What's your ____________ + ____________?
To create experiential spaces and accommodate employees’ shifting needs, workplace designers should brainstorm two places to mix. Office and coffee shop? Conference room and laboratory?
Not every combination will work, but bringing seemingly unrelated ideas together can add value, spark inspiration, and foster greater productivity and collaboration across workforces.
Read David's full article in Work Design Magazine.
David has 20+ years of experience directing interactive and immersive story-driven experiences for global brands and cultural clients—from concept to delivery. He is passionate about finding and expressing the heart of a project, setting its creative vision, and leading teams to execute it at the highest level possible.
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Learn more about Downstream Unispace
With 20+ years of experience, Downstream is a community of visionary designers, technologists, content developers, account managers and production leads. The company became part of Unispace Global in October 2021. Collectively, they are a company on the forefront of brand communication, reaching around the globe, building compelling brand experiences for some of the biggest and most dynamic companies in the world. With global hubs in New York, Portland, Amsterdam and Melbourne, Downstream harnesses the latest insights and challenges themselves to consistently seek out new technologies and methodologies to create the impossible.
Interested in more info on Downstream? Reach out to David today.