Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash
The Joy of Making Things
A Process Philosophy of Design
This page was created with the assistance of ChatGPT,
drawing significantly on ideas developed by Jay McDaniel.
The Design Studio as a Home for Process Thought
If Whitehead’s philosophy is to take root in academic life, it may not be primarily in philosophy or theology, politics or ecology, physics or education—or at least not in those domains alone. It may find one of its most fertile homes in what has come to be called design: a field increasingly concerned not with static objects but with shaping processes, relations, and lived experience.
Design’s Affinity with a Process View of Reality
Design, especially in its experience-centered forms, already operates with assumptions that resonate deeply with Whitehead’s vision of reality. It treats the world as dynamic rather than fixed, understands human beings as participants rather than spectators, and measures success not solely by efficiency or correctness but by the qualitative richness of what is felt and lived. In design studios, students are trained to attend to flow, timing, transition, affect, and context—precisely the elements that a process philosophy insists are metaphysically fundamental.
Design as Decision and Consequence
Moreover, design education foregrounds decision, consequence, and responsibility. Every design choice is understood to shape future experience, often in ways that exceed the designer’s original intentions. This practical awareness mirrors Whitehead’s account of each moment of experience as an act of creative decision—one that inherits a past and conditions a future. Design, in this sense, becomes an applied metaphysics of becoming, enacted through sketches, prototypes, services, and environments rather than through formal argument alone.
The Aesthetics of Design: Harmony and Intensity
Additionally, as in process philosophy, designers are guided by an aesthetic ideal rooted in lived experience—what Whitehead calls beauty. Beauty here is not just about how things look, but about how experiences feel over time. It has to do with harmony and intensity—sometimes calm and coherence, sometimes energy and depth, often both. These are not final states to be achieved once and for all, but qualities that develop, shift, and deepen as an experience unfolds. At its best, design aims for this balance: experiences that hold together well while also feeling alive, engaging, and meaningful.
Example: Designing a Public Space as an Ongoing Experience
Consider the design of a public library understood not simply as a building, but as an experience over time. Harmony appears in the way spaces are organized—clear sightlines, intuitive navigation, a sense of calm that helps visitors feel oriented and welcome. Intensity appears in moments of engagement: a child discovering a book that captivates them, a quiet corner that allows for deep concentration, a community event that fills the space with shared energy. The success of the design is not located in any single feature or object, but in how these moments hang together across a visit, and across many visits, creating an experience that feels coherent yet alive.
Example: Harmony and Intensity in Digital Experience Design
A similar dynamic can be seen in the design of a digital health app. Harmony shows up in a clear visual hierarchy, consistent interactions, and predictable navigation that help users feel oriented and in control. Intensity emerges in moments that matter: receiving a reassuring message after logging symptoms, seeing meaningful progress over time, or getting timely guidance during a stressful moment. The quality of the experience does not rest on any single screen or feature, but on how these moments connect across days and weeks, creating an experience that feels trustworthy, responsive, and human rather than merely functional.
Balancing Harmony and Intensity
Ideally, the aesthetics of design aim for a coalescence of harmony and intensity: for harmonious intensity, or 'aliveness,' as enjoyed by users and creators alike. However, there can also be a contrast. The contrast becomes clear when one of these qualities overwhelms the other. An app that prioritizes harmony alone may be perfectly organized, visually calm, and technically reliable, yet feel flat or disengaging—users understand how to use it, but feel little motivation to return. Conversely, an app that prioritizes intensity alone may offer bursts of stimulation through notifications, rewards, or dramatic visuals, yet leave users feeling anxious, manipulated, or exhausted over time. Effective experience design holds these tendencies in tension, shaping interactions that are both coherent and compelling, supportive rather than overwhelming, and engaging without being coercive.
The Joy of Making Things
Beyond its intellectual and ethical dimensions, design is also sustained by a distinctive kind of joy—the joy of making, exploring, and discovering possibilities that did not previously exist. In the act of designing, creativity is not an abstract ideal but a lived experience: the satisfaction of seeing an idea take shape, the surprise of an unexpected connection, the pleasure of iteration as a rough sketch gradually becomes something that works.
This joy arises not only from successful outcomes but from the process itself. Designers often speak of being “in the flow,” absorbed in a rhythm of trying, adjusting, and trying again. Constraints are not merely obstacles but invitations, focusing attention and provoking inventive responses. Materials, tools, users, and contexts all “push back,” and it is precisely this resistance that gives creative work its vitality.
From a process perspective, this joy reflects a deeper truth about experience itself: to live is to participate in ongoing creation. Each design move—however small—joins imagination to reality, turning possibilities into lived forms. The pleasure designers take in this activity is not incidental; it is a sign that creative engagement is aligned with something fundamental in how the world works.
At its best, design education protects and cultivates this joy. Studio culture, when healthy, encourages play, curiosity, and risk-taking alongside rigor and responsibility. Students learn that creativity is not a rare gift possessed by a few, but a capacity that grows through practice, attention, and care. In this sense, the joy of designing is not escapist or self-indulgent; it is a vital resource for sustained engagement in a complex and unfinished world.
The Studio as a Home for Process Philosophy
For these reasons, design may offer a uniquely hospitable intellectual home for Whitehead’s ideas—not as doctrine, but as orientation; not as system, but as sensibility. In the studio, rather than the seminar room alone, process philosophy finds a natural ally: a discipline already committed to relational thinking, temporal awareness, and the ethical shaping of experience in a world that is always still in the making. In the current situation, a particular movement in the design world seems especially resonant with a process orientation: the 'experience design' movement.
If Whitehead’s philosophy is to take root in academic life, it may not be primarily in philosophy or theology, politics or ecology, physics or education—or at least not in those domains alone. It may find one of its most fertile homes in what has come to be called design: a field increasingly concerned not with static objects but with shaping processes, relations, and lived experience.
Design’s Affinity with a Process View of Reality
Design, especially in its experience-centered forms, already operates with assumptions that resonate deeply with Whitehead’s vision of reality. It treats the world as dynamic rather than fixed, understands human beings as participants rather than spectators, and measures success not solely by efficiency or correctness but by the qualitative richness of what is felt and lived. In design studios, students are trained to attend to flow, timing, transition, affect, and context—precisely the elements that a process philosophy insists are metaphysically fundamental.
Design as Decision and Consequence
Moreover, design education foregrounds decision, consequence, and responsibility. Every design choice is understood to shape future experience, often in ways that exceed the designer’s original intentions. This practical awareness mirrors Whitehead’s account of each moment of experience as an act of creative decision—one that inherits a past and conditions a future. Design, in this sense, becomes an applied metaphysics of becoming, enacted through sketches, prototypes, services, and environments rather than through formal argument alone.
The Aesthetics of Design: Harmony and Intensity
Additionally, as in process philosophy, designers are guided by an aesthetic ideal rooted in lived experience—what Whitehead calls beauty. Beauty here is not just about how things look, but about how experiences feel over time. It has to do with harmony and intensity—sometimes calm and coherence, sometimes energy and depth, often both. These are not final states to be achieved once and for all, but qualities that develop, shift, and deepen as an experience unfolds. At its best, design aims for this balance: experiences that hold together well while also feeling alive, engaging, and meaningful.
Example: Designing a Public Space as an Ongoing Experience
Consider the design of a public library understood not simply as a building, but as an experience over time. Harmony appears in the way spaces are organized—clear sightlines, intuitive navigation, a sense of calm that helps visitors feel oriented and welcome. Intensity appears in moments of engagement: a child discovering a book that captivates them, a quiet corner that allows for deep concentration, a community event that fills the space with shared energy. The success of the design is not located in any single feature or object, but in how these moments hang together across a visit, and across many visits, creating an experience that feels coherent yet alive.
Example: Harmony and Intensity in Digital Experience Design
A similar dynamic can be seen in the design of a digital health app. Harmony shows up in a clear visual hierarchy, consistent interactions, and predictable navigation that help users feel oriented and in control. Intensity emerges in moments that matter: receiving a reassuring message after logging symptoms, seeing meaningful progress over time, or getting timely guidance during a stressful moment. The quality of the experience does not rest on any single screen or feature, but on how these moments connect across days and weeks, creating an experience that feels trustworthy, responsive, and human rather than merely functional.
Balancing Harmony and Intensity
Ideally, the aesthetics of design aim for a coalescence of harmony and intensity: for harmonious intensity, or 'aliveness,' as enjoyed by users and creators alike. However, there can also be a contrast. The contrast becomes clear when one of these qualities overwhelms the other. An app that prioritizes harmony alone may be perfectly organized, visually calm, and technically reliable, yet feel flat or disengaging—users understand how to use it, but feel little motivation to return. Conversely, an app that prioritizes intensity alone may offer bursts of stimulation through notifications, rewards, or dramatic visuals, yet leave users feeling anxious, manipulated, or exhausted over time. Effective experience design holds these tendencies in tension, shaping interactions that are both coherent and compelling, supportive rather than overwhelming, and engaging without being coercive.
The Joy of Making Things
Beyond its intellectual and ethical dimensions, design is also sustained by a distinctive kind of joy—the joy of making, exploring, and discovering possibilities that did not previously exist. In the act of designing, creativity is not an abstract ideal but a lived experience: the satisfaction of seeing an idea take shape, the surprise of an unexpected connection, the pleasure of iteration as a rough sketch gradually becomes something that works.
This joy arises not only from successful outcomes but from the process itself. Designers often speak of being “in the flow,” absorbed in a rhythm of trying, adjusting, and trying again. Constraints are not merely obstacles but invitations, focusing attention and provoking inventive responses. Materials, tools, users, and contexts all “push back,” and it is precisely this resistance that gives creative work its vitality.
From a process perspective, this joy reflects a deeper truth about experience itself: to live is to participate in ongoing creation. Each design move—however small—joins imagination to reality, turning possibilities into lived forms. The pleasure designers take in this activity is not incidental; it is a sign that creative engagement is aligned with something fundamental in how the world works.
At its best, design education protects and cultivates this joy. Studio culture, when healthy, encourages play, curiosity, and risk-taking alongside rigor and responsibility. Students learn that creativity is not a rare gift possessed by a few, but a capacity that grows through practice, attention, and care. In this sense, the joy of designing is not escapist or self-indulgent; it is a vital resource for sustained engagement in a complex and unfinished world.
The Studio as a Home for Process Philosophy
For these reasons, design may offer a uniquely hospitable intellectual home for Whitehead’s ideas—not as doctrine, but as orientation; not as system, but as sensibility. In the studio, rather than the seminar room alone, process philosophy finds a natural ally: a discipline already committed to relational thinking, temporal awareness, and the ethical shaping of experience in a world that is always still in the making. In the current situation, a particular movement in the design world seems especially resonant with a process orientation: the 'experience design' movement.
The "Experience Design" Movement
Consider some of the many kinds of design:
Across these diverse domains, experience design names a shared shift in emphasis: away from treating objects, interfaces, or systems as ends in themselves, and toward understanding them as means by which particular kinds of experiences are made possible. Designers in these fields attend not only to form and function, but to how people feel, perceive, remember, participate, and find meaning over time—and, in many cases, to how non-human creatures and environments are affected as well.
Experience design, then, begins with experience. As Abraham Burickson puts it in Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto, experience design;
- product design,
- industrial design,
- graphic and communication design,
- interaction and UX/UI design,
- service design,
- hospitality and event design,
- instructional and learning design,
- healthcare design,
- urban and community design,
- landscape and ecological design,
- game design,
- exhibition and museum design, social, civic, and organizational design.
Across these diverse domains, experience design names a shared shift in emphasis: away from treating objects, interfaces, or systems as ends in themselves, and toward understanding them as means by which particular kinds of experiences are made possible. Designers in these fields attend not only to form and function, but to how people feel, perceive, remember, participate, and find meaning over time—and, in many cases, to how non-human creatures and environments are affected as well.
Experience design, then, begins with experience. As Abraham Burickson puts it in Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto, experience design;
“comprehends the things we make, the systems we develop, the communities we facilitate as vessels for experience. Experience designers begin with the experience they wish to create and work backward from there.”
The description of his book amplifies the idea and distinguishes it from what he calls "traditional design."
"What does it mean to design experiences? Traditional design practices invite us to design things, and to use those things to solve problems. But experience is not a problem; it is life. Experience designers engage with unpredictability and the unknown, partnering with their audiences to generate possibility and relationality. Experience designers create worlds, craft narratives that leave the page and enter people’s lives, and structure transformation. Broadly interdisciplinary and deeply human, experience design is a practice that at once embraces new technologies and offers a balm for our disconnected lives."
At the most visible level, experience design is a movement within contemporary design practice and education.
As a movement, experience design is pragmatic and forward-looking. It grows through conferences, studios, curricula, professional communities, and evolving best practices rather than through formal doctrine. Its coherence comes from a shared orientation, not from a single canonical text.
The core ideas capture, in the idiom of contemporary design practice, a conviction that process philosophy articulates at a metaphysical level: that what ultimately matters are not objects or systems in isolation, but the qualities of experience they make possible, sustain, and transform over time. In process philosophy, moments in time - an actual occasions of experience - are the building blocks of life and of the universe. "Apart from the experiences of subjects," writes Alfred North Whitehead, "there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness."
Whitehead is not talking about human subjects alone, of course, but also animal subjects and cellular subjects and molecular subjects and, as he sees things, the divine subject. The entire universe consists of experiencing subjects, and our acts of making things, of designing thing, has as its proper aim the fostering of satisfying experiences for the subjects at issue. The purpose of this page is to bring the "experience design" movement and process philosophy, with the hope that courses in schools of design around the world might offer courses on process philosophy and experience design, and that designers around the world might find process philosophy a helpful encouragement to keep doing what they are doing: designing for lived experience.
At the most visible level, experience design is a movement within contemporary design practice and education.
- It represents a shift away from object-centered and artifact-centered design toward experience-centered design.
- It cuts across multiple design fields—UX, service design, event design, environmental design, instructional design—without belonging exclusively to any one of them.
- It is driven by shared dissatisfactions: with purely functional metrics, with efficiency-only optimization, and with design that neglects emotional, social, and ethical dimensions.
As a movement, experience design is pragmatic and forward-looking. It grows through conferences, studios, curricula, professional communities, and evolving best practices rather than through formal doctrine. Its coherence comes from a shared orientation, not from a single canonical text.
The core ideas capture, in the idiom of contemporary design practice, a conviction that process philosophy articulates at a metaphysical level: that what ultimately matters are not objects or systems in isolation, but the qualities of experience they make possible, sustain, and transform over time. In process philosophy, moments in time - an actual occasions of experience - are the building blocks of life and of the universe. "Apart from the experiences of subjects," writes Alfred North Whitehead, "there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness."
Whitehead is not talking about human subjects alone, of course, but also animal subjects and cellular subjects and molecular subjects and, as he sees things, the divine subject. The entire universe consists of experiencing subjects, and our acts of making things, of designing thing, has as its proper aim the fostering of satisfying experiences for the subjects at issue. The purpose of this page is to bring the "experience design" movement and process philosophy, with the hope that courses in schools of design around the world might offer courses on process philosophy and experience design, and that designers around the world might find process philosophy a helpful encouragement to keep doing what they are doing: designing for lived experience.
Core Principles of Experience Design
Experiences are the primary unit of value: Design is not ultimately about products, services, or interfaces, but about the quality of human experience that emerges when people interact with them.
Experiences are holistic and temporal: Experiences unfold over time and include anticipation, participation, reflection, and memory—not merely isolated moments or discrete touchpoints.
Attention is scarce and precious: Good experience design respects cognitive and emotional limits, aiming for the right level of stimulation—neither overwhelming nor dull.
People seek autonomy, competence, and connection: Well-designed experiences support a sense of agency, the development of skill, and meaningful relationships with others.
Emotion is central, not incidental: Experiences are shaped as much by feelings, moods, and affective tone as by information, efficiency, or function.
Meaning matters: Powerful experiences connect participants to values, purposes, stories, or communities larger than themselves.
Experience is co-created: Designers do not control experiences; they design conditions and affordances within which participants actively shape what occurs.
Context shapes experience: Social, cultural, physical, and historical contexts are integral to how experiences are perceived, interpreted, and remembered.
Memorability is a design aim: Experiences should be designed with an eye toward how they will be recalled, narrated, and woven into a person’s ongoing life story.
Ethical responsibility is implicit: Because experiences shape identity, behavior, and relationships, experience designers bear responsibility for the intended and unintended consequences of what they create.
Bibliography for Experience Design
Experience design (XD) is a multidisciplinary field that encompasses user experience (UX), service design, and environmental design. The following bibliography highlights foundational texts and contemporary guides essential for practitioners in 2026.
Foundational Texts
The Design of Everyday Things
(Revised Edition) by Don Norman (2013). Considered the "bible" of user-centered design, exploring how objects and systems should communicate their use intuitively.
The Experience Economy
(Updated Edition) by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore (2011). A seminal business text that defines "experience" as a distinct economic offering, foundational to modern XD strategy.
The Elements of User Experience
by Jesse James Garrett (2011). Outlines the classic five-plane framework (Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton, and Surface) used to build digital experiences.
Experience Design 1
by Nathan Shedroff (2001). One of the first texts to explicitly define experience design as a discipline separate from interface design.
Comprehensive Handbooks:
The Exhibition & Experience Design Handbook
by Timothy J. McNeil (2023). A modern guide that bridges physical environments, such as museums and attractions, with digital interaction and narrative.
Designing Experiences
by J. Robert Rossman and Mathew D. Duerden (2019). Focuses on the "how-to" of staging experiences, from micro-interactions to macro-journeys.
Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto
by Abraham Burickson and Ellen Lupton (2023). A rigorous, philosophical approach to crafting time-based human experiences across schools, communities, and art.
Methods and Specialized Topics
Service Design: This Is Service Design Thinking
by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider (2012). Essential for understanding the holistic design of services that span multiple touchpoints.
Just Enough Research
by Erika Hall (2013). A practical guide to incorporating meaningful user research into the design process without over-extending resources.
Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams
by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden (2021). Focuses on integrating experience design into rapid, collaborative development cycles.
Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
by Don Norman (2003). Examines the three levels of design—visceral, behavioral, and reflective—that trigger emotional responses Online Resources and Industry Leaders
Foundational Texts
The Design of Everyday Things
(Revised Edition) by Don Norman (2013). Considered the "bible" of user-centered design, exploring how objects and systems should communicate their use intuitively.
The Experience Economy
(Updated Edition) by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore (2011). A seminal business text that defines "experience" as a distinct economic offering, foundational to modern XD strategy.
The Elements of User Experience
by Jesse James Garrett (2011). Outlines the classic five-plane framework (Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton, and Surface) used to build digital experiences.
Experience Design 1
by Nathan Shedroff (2001). One of the first texts to explicitly define experience design as a discipline separate from interface design.
Comprehensive Handbooks:
The Exhibition & Experience Design Handbook
by Timothy J. McNeil (2023). A modern guide that bridges physical environments, such as museums and attractions, with digital interaction and narrative.
Designing Experiences
by J. Robert Rossman and Mathew D. Duerden (2019). Focuses on the "how-to" of staging experiences, from micro-interactions to macro-journeys.
Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto
by Abraham Burickson and Ellen Lupton (2023). A rigorous, philosophical approach to crafting time-based human experiences across schools, communities, and art.
Methods and Specialized Topics
Service Design: This Is Service Design Thinking
by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider (2012). Essential for understanding the holistic design of services that span multiple touchpoints.
Just Enough Research
by Erika Hall (2013). A practical guide to incorporating meaningful user research into the design process without over-extending resources.
Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams
by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden (2021). Focuses on integrating experience design into rapid, collaborative development cycles.
Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
by Don Norman (2003). Examines the three levels of design—visceral, behavioral, and reflective—that trigger emotional responses Online Resources and Industry Leaders
- Nielsen Norman Group (NN/G): The leading authority on evidence-based UX research and guidelines.
- Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF): Provides an extensive open-source library of literature on HCI and experience design.
- AIGA Bibliographies: Academic resources covering cognition, emotion, and design planning.
The Lure to Design
The Lure to Design
Inside each human being there is an urge to design things—to imagine, shape, arrange, and reconfigure the world so that life might go better, feel better, or hold together more meaningfully. We might call this the impulse to design, or, in process-relational terms, a lure to design.
Design Beyond Professional Titles
The lure to design is not limited to people whose job descriptions include the word design—product designers, urban designers, graphic designers, instructional designers, service designers, experience designers, ecological designers, and others. It appears whenever people rearrange a room to make it more welcoming, prepare a meal with care, organize a gathering, shape a learning environment, tend a garden, or imagine new forms of community in response to suffering or need.
It also appears vividly in children, as they build forts, draw worlds, invent games, rearrange objects, and delight in making things for no reason beyond the pleasure of doing so. The act of making things is itself a moment of creativity, animated by a joy that arises within the very activity of shaping and bringing something into being.
Design in Other Animals
This same impulse can be discerned, in varying degrees, in many other animals—perhaps in all of them. Birds build nests with care, adapting form to circumstance; beavers reshape landscapes through dams and channels; octopuses arrange shells and stones; primates improvise tools and play with materials; even insects construct intricate structures that exceed mere mechanical repetition.
From a process-relational perspective, such activities are not simply instinctual outputs, but expressions of creaturely responsiveness to felt possibilities within a given situation. They suggest that the lure to make, arrange, and shape is not uniquely human, but part of a more pervasive creativity woven into the fabric of life itself.
An Ontology of Design
Something like this creative impulse may be found in other domains as well, including the cellular, molecular, and atomic—and, on a very different scale, the stellar and galactic.
If this is so, then people whose job descriptions include the word design, and who think of themselves as designers, may be understood not as exceptions to the order of things, but as especially explicit expressions of a deep impulse present throughout the whole of actuality. We might call this an ontology of design: the suggestion that the very being of beings includes a tendency toward creativity, toward the making and shaping of forms—not only tools and artifacts, but also patterns of relation, modes of habitation, ways of living together, and visions of what a world might yet become.
Inside each human being there is an urge to design things—to imagine, shape, arrange, and reconfigure the world so that life might go better, feel better, or hold together more meaningfully. We might call this the impulse to design, or, in process-relational terms, a lure to design.
Design Beyond Professional Titles
The lure to design is not limited to people whose job descriptions include the word design—product designers, urban designers, graphic designers, instructional designers, service designers, experience designers, ecological designers, and others. It appears whenever people rearrange a room to make it more welcoming, prepare a meal with care, organize a gathering, shape a learning environment, tend a garden, or imagine new forms of community in response to suffering or need.
It also appears vividly in children, as they build forts, draw worlds, invent games, rearrange objects, and delight in making things for no reason beyond the pleasure of doing so. The act of making things is itself a moment of creativity, animated by a joy that arises within the very activity of shaping and bringing something into being.
Design in Other Animals
This same impulse can be discerned, in varying degrees, in many other animals—perhaps in all of them. Birds build nests with care, adapting form to circumstance; beavers reshape landscapes through dams and channels; octopuses arrange shells and stones; primates improvise tools and play with materials; even insects construct intricate structures that exceed mere mechanical repetition.
From a process-relational perspective, such activities are not simply instinctual outputs, but expressions of creaturely responsiveness to felt possibilities within a given situation. They suggest that the lure to make, arrange, and shape is not uniquely human, but part of a more pervasive creativity woven into the fabric of life itself.
An Ontology of Design
Something like this creative impulse may be found in other domains as well, including the cellular, molecular, and atomic—and, on a very different scale, the stellar and galactic.
If this is so, then people whose job descriptions include the word design, and who think of themselves as designers, may be understood not as exceptions to the order of things, but as especially explicit expressions of a deep impulse present throughout the whole of actuality. We might call this an ontology of design: the suggestion that the very being of beings includes a tendency toward creativity, toward the making and shaping of forms—not only tools and artifacts, but also patterns of relation, modes of habitation, ways of living together, and visions of what a world might yet become.
The Whiteheadian School
of Creativity and Design
imagining a hypothetical mission statement
for a hypothetical school
The School of Creativity and Design exists to educate designers who understand the world as a living, relational, and continually unfolding field of experience. Our mission is to cultivate designers who do not merely create objects, systems, or services, but who shape the conditions for meaningful, ethical, and life-enhancing experiences over time.
Grounded in a process perspective, the School understands design as participation in becoming. We affirm that experience is primary, that value is felt before it is measured, and that every design decision is a consequential act that opens some possibilities while closing others. Designers, on this view, are not external problem-solvers standing outside the world they shape, but relational agents working from within complex social, ecological, and technological processes.
We educate students to attend carefully to lived experience in its full depth—sensory, emotional, social, cultural, and ecological. Through studio practice, reflection, and collaboration, students learn to listen before they intervene, to design with empathy and imagination, and to remain responsive to change rather than attached to fixed solutions.
The School is committed to ethical responsibility and ecological care. We prepare designers to work with communities rather than merely for markets, to recognize the long arcs of consequence their work sets in motion, and to design for inclusion, dignity, and sustainability in a fragile world.
Our graduates leave not only with professional competence, but with a disciplined imagination and a reflective practice. They are prepared to design experiences that intensify meaning, foster relationship, and contribute to the ongoing creative advance of life itself.
Grounded in a process perspective, the School understands design as participation in becoming. We affirm that experience is primary, that value is felt before it is measured, and that every design decision is a consequential act that opens some possibilities while closing others. Designers, on this view, are not external problem-solvers standing outside the world they shape, but relational agents working from within complex social, ecological, and technological processes.
We educate students to attend carefully to lived experience in its full depth—sensory, emotional, social, cultural, and ecological. Through studio practice, reflection, and collaboration, students learn to listen before they intervene, to design with empathy and imagination, and to remain responsive to change rather than attached to fixed solutions.
The School is committed to ethical responsibility and ecological care. We prepare designers to work with communities rather than merely for markets, to recognize the long arcs of consequence their work sets in motion, and to design for inclusion, dignity, and sustainability in a fragile world.
Our graduates leave not only with professional competence, but with a disciplined imagination and a reflective practice. They are prepared to design experiences that intensify meaning, foster relationship, and contribute to the ongoing creative advance of life itself.
The Metaphysics of Design
All of the principles of the experience design movement sense from a process-relational (Whiteheadian) perspective. For process this perspective, design is understood less as the production of discrete artifacts and more as the orchestration of conditions under which meaningful, satisfying, or transformative experiences may occur. Experience design thus converges, from a different direction, with process philosophy’s insistence that reality itself is constituted by moments of experience and that novelty, creativity, and responsiveness are fundamental features of the world. What process philosophy offers the experience design movement is not a new agenda, but a deeper ontological grounding for concerns that designers already recognize as central to their practice. Below I offer eight.
Experience is everywhere, not in humans alone.
Designers working in ecological planning, landscape architecture, regenerative design, and animal-centered environments already recognize that non-human creatures have needs, sensitivities, and patterns of responsiveness. Process philosophy provides a conceptual grounding for this intuition by affirming that experience occurs wherever there is responsiveness to the world. Eco-design, biophilic design, and sustainable systems design thus emerge not merely as ethical choices but as forms of multi-species experience design—designing simultaneously for human satisfaction and the flourishing of soils, waters, plants, animals, and climates.
Every experience is internally related to its received world and creatively responsive to it.
In UX research, service design, and customer journey mapping, designers routinely attend to users’ histories, contexts, constraints, and expectations. Process philosophy deepens this practice by insisting that every experience is a response to a concrete past that is felt, not merely known. Designers are therefore not introducing experiences into neutral space; they are intervening in lived continuities. This reinforces the importance of empathy, listening, and contextual inquiry, and cautions against designs that ignore trauma, inequity, or cultural memory.
Consciousness is a form of experience, but not the whole of it.
Many designers already work with affect, atmosphere, embodiment, and pre-conscious response—especially in hospitality, retail environments, museum design, healthcare settings, and educational spaces. Process philosophy clarifies why this matters: much of experience unfolds beneath reflective awareness. Design choices shape moods, bodily ease or strain, trust or anxiety, even when users cannot articulate why. Experience design thus carries ethical weight precisely because it reaches into the tacit and unconscious dimensions of life.
Experience includes valuation, not just perception or behavior.
Fields such as brand design, educational design, civic design, and social innovation already recognize that experiences shape what people care about, not merely what they do. Process philosophy makes this explicit by affirming that every experience involves valuation—some possibilities are felt as attractive, meaningful, or avoidable. Designers, whether they intend it or not, participate in shaping desire, attention, and aspiration. This invites greater moral reflection without collapsing design into moralism.
Experience is momentary, but lives are patterned through repetition.
Service designers and UX professionals frequently emphasize longitudinal journeys, habits, and ecosystems of use rather than isolated touchpoints. Process philosophy supports this orientation by understanding persons as patterns of experience formed over time. Repeated design encounters can cultivate trust, alienation, agency, dependency, curiosity, or care. Designers are therefore involved, indirectly but meaningfully, in the formation of personal and communal character.
Experience is co-created, not delivered.
Participatory design, co-design, and user-centered methodologies already reject the idea that designers “deliver” experiences in a deterministic way. Process philosophy provides a metaphysical rationale for this humility: each experience is enacted by the experiencing subject in response to what is offered. Design functions as an invitation rather than a command—as a lure rather than a mechanism. Success, on this view, is not control but the creation of conditions under which richer forms of response become possible.
Design involves attentiveness to the unknown.
Process philosophy emphasizes that experience is inherently open-ended and that novelty cannot be fully predicted or controlled. From this perspective, experience design is not primarily an exercise in mastery or optimization, but one that includes an awareness and appreciation of uncertainty. Designers work with incomplete knowledge, emergent outcomes, and unanticipated responses. This orientation aligns with practices that value iteration, prototyping, and learning in situ, and it invites designers to respect what exceeds foresight—whether in human behavior, social systems, or ecological dynamics.
Design is historically situated, and its aims change with its time.
From a process-relational perspective, design never occurs in abstraction from history. Every act of design responds to particular social, ecological, economic, and cultural conditions, and the needs of design evolve as those conditions change. In the present moment—marked by ecological degradation, social fragmentation, and widening inequities—the dominant need is not simply for more efficient or appealing experiences, but for design that helps bring about, and itself embodies, the spirit of a new kind of civilization: an ecological civilization.
Such a civilization is characterized by harmony with the more-than-human world and by just, compassionate relations among human beings. It seeks creative peace rather than domination, cooperation rather than exclusion, and shared flourishing rather than accumulation for a few. From this standpoint, experience design is called to support ways of living in which no one is left behind.
The primary units of this work are not abstract systems alone, but local communities, both urban and rural, where ecological and social values can be enacted in concrete, everyday practices. Design in this context attends to food systems, housing, public spaces, education, healthcare, ritual, and cultural life—shaping experiences that cultivate belonging, mutual care, and ecological responsibility. Experience design thus becomes a participatory practice of civilizational transition, responsive to the urgencies and possibilities of its historical moment.
Experience Design:
A Participatory Manifesto
"What does it mean to design experiences? Traditional design practices invite us to design things, and to use those things to solve problems. But experience is not a problem; it is life. Experience designers engage with unpredictability and the unknown, partnering with their audiences to generate possibility and relationality. Experience designers create worlds, craft narratives that leave the page and enter people’s lives, and structure transformation. Broadly interdisciplinary and deeply human, experience design is a practice that at once embraces new technologies and offers a balm for our disconnected lives.
In this playful, accessible, and visually engaging book, Burickson lays out ten basic principles for this emerging practice. Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto invites the reader to stop making things and, instead, to craft the minutes and hours of human life. Rigorous and philosophical, the book guides the reader through the processes of empathic research; constructing worlds not just for fantasy fiction but in schools, communities, homes; and mastering the tools necessary to work coherently across disciplines to create new experiences. Whether you are a maker of immersive theater, an architect, a graphic designer, a community organizer, or just someone hoping to give a better gift, this book offers a vision of creating that is both new and as old as civilization."
In this playful, accessible, and visually engaging book, Burickson lays out ten basic principles for this emerging practice. Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto invites the reader to stop making things and, instead, to craft the minutes and hours of human life. Rigorous and philosophical, the book guides the reader through the processes of empathic research; constructing worlds not just for fantasy fiction but in schools, communities, homes; and mastering the tools necessary to work coherently across disciplines to create new experiences. Whether you are a maker of immersive theater, an architect, a graphic designer, a community organizer, or just someone hoping to give a better gift, this book offers a vision of creating that is both new and as old as civilization."
Interview with Abraham Burickson
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Everybody is an Experience Designer
Empathy Mapping: A Way to Understand People Better
(and be a better experience designer)
Empathy isn’t just a feeling—it’s a practice. This talk introduces the Empathy Map Canvas, a powerful tool that helps decode what others see, feel, and need, transforming how we relate to the people around us. From classrooms to boardrooms, the key to stronger communities and better collaboration might just begin with a simple question: “What is it like to be them?” With over two decades of experience guiding some of the world’s most iconic brands—including Apple, Google, and Gojek—Prashanth Tavalam is a globally recognized Business Transformation Coach and Product Strategy Leader. A master at diagnosing strategic drift and operational stalls, Prashanth has enabled the success of 14+ products across seven industries, and trained more than 1,000 analysts in the art of translating complexity into clarity. As the author of Requirement Heroes, he brings a unique synthesis of business analysis and design thinking to the forefront, focusing not just on solutions—but on uncovering the real problems that lie beneath the surface. His work empowers organizations to shift from reactive firefighting to intentional, scalable growth. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Imagining an Introductory Course
in process philosophy and experience design
Course Level
Introductory undergraduate or graduate foundation course (schools of design, architecture, interaction design, service design, or transdisciplinary design programs)
Course Description
This course introduces students to experience design through the lens of process philosophy. Rather than treating design as the creation of static objects or finished solutions, the course frames design as the shaping of conditions for lived experience within an evolving, relational world.
Students will learn to think of people, artifacts, environments, and systems as participants in ongoing processes of becoming. Design is approached as an ethical, imaginative, and relational practice—one that works with feelings, meanings, habits, and futures, not merely forms and functions.
The course combines conceptual grounding with hands-on studio exercises, reflective practices, and collaborative critique.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
Core Conceptual Framework (Plain-Language Translation)
Process Philosophy Concept - Design Translation
Reality as process - Design shapes ongoing experiences, not final states
Relationality - No user, object, or system exists in isolation
Feeling as fundamental - Experience always has a qualitative, emotional tone
Becoming - Every design participates in change over time
Decision - Each design choice closes some possibilities and opens others
Value - Good design intensifies meaningful experience
Course Structure (12 Weeks)
Unit 1: From Objects to Experiences (Weeks 1–2)
Key Questions
Topics
Exercise 1: Experience Autopsy
Students select an everyday experience (e.g., using a bus stop, entering a café, opening a website).
Steps
Deliverable
Unit 2: A Process View of Human Experience (Weeks 3–4)
Key Questions
Exercise 2: Designing for Felt Experience
Students redesign a familiar object or service without changing its basic function, focusing only on how it feels to engage with it.
Examples
Deliverable
Unit 3: Relational Design and Systems (Weeks 5–6)
Key Questions
Exercise 3: Relational Mapping
Students diagram all the relationships involved in a chosen experience (human, technological, environmental, institutional).
Deliverable
Unit 4: Time, Change, and Becoming (Weeks 7–8)
Key Questions
Exercise 4: Designing an Experience That Changes
Students design an experience that intentionally evolves over time (days, weeks, or months).
Examples
Deliverable
Unit 5: Ethics, Value, and Responsibility (Weeks 9–10)
Key Questions
Exercise 5: Ethical Reframing
Students take an existing design (e.g., social media feature, urban installation, service system) and redesign it from the perspective of a marginalized stakeholder.
Deliverable
Unit 6: Capstone Studio – Designing for Becoming (Weeks 11–12)
Final Project
Students design an experience (not merely an object) that responds to a real-world context.
Requirements
Examples
Final Deliverables
Pedagogical Methods
Why This Course Matters in a School of Design
This course offers a philosophical foundation uniquely suited to designers who seek creative agency with ethical depth. By integrating experience design with a process-relational worldview, students learn to design not for control, but for participation; not for closure, but for meaningful becoming. The result is a design education attuned to complexity, care, and the lived realities of a changing world.
Introductory undergraduate or graduate foundation course (schools of design, architecture, interaction design, service design, or transdisciplinary design programs)
Course Description
This course introduces students to experience design through the lens of process philosophy. Rather than treating design as the creation of static objects or finished solutions, the course frames design as the shaping of conditions for lived experience within an evolving, relational world.
Students will learn to think of people, artifacts, environments, and systems as participants in ongoing processes of becoming. Design is approached as an ethical, imaginative, and relational practice—one that works with feelings, meanings, habits, and futures, not merely forms and functions.
The course combines conceptual grounding with hands-on studio exercises, reflective practices, and collaborative critique.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Articulate the core principles of experience design.
- Explain key ideas from process philosophy in accessible, design-relevant terms.
- Analyze designed environments as dynamic systems of experience rather than static products.
- Design interventions that respond to lived experience, relational contexts, and ongoing change.
- Reflect ethically on the impact of design decisions on people, communities, and ecosystems.
- Prototype experiences rather than merely objects.
Core Conceptual Framework (Plain-Language Translation)
Process Philosophy Concept - Design Translation
Reality as process - Design shapes ongoing experiences, not final states
Relationality - No user, object, or system exists in isolation
Feeling as fundamental - Experience always has a qualitative, emotional tone
Becoming - Every design participates in change over time
Decision - Each design choice closes some possibilities and opens others
Value - Good design intensifies meaningful experience
Course Structure (12 Weeks)
Unit 1: From Objects to Experiences (Weeks 1–2)
Key Questions
- What is experience design?
- Why is designing experiences different from designing things?
Topics
- Experience vs. product
- Attention, emotion, and meaning
- Designing from the inside of experience outward
Exercise 1: Experience Autopsy
Students select an everyday experience (e.g., using a bus stop, entering a café, opening a website).
Steps
- Map the experience moment-by-moment.
- Identify emotional tones at each stage (anticipation, confusion, ease, frustration, delight).
- Note where design choices shape feeling rather than function.
Deliverable
- One-page experience map with annotations on feeling and meaning.
Unit 2: A Process View of Human Experience (Weeks 3–4)
Key Questions
- What is an experience made of?
- How do feelings, habits, and expectations shape design outcomes?
- Experience as temporal and layered
- Past experience and expectation
- The role of bodily and emotional awareness
Exercise 2: Designing for Felt Experience
Students redesign a familiar object or service without changing its basic function, focusing only on how it feels to engage with it.
Examples
- ATM interaction
- Course registration system
- Waiting room experience
Deliverable
- Concept sketch plus a short narrative describing the intended felt experience.
Unit 3: Relational Design and Systems (Weeks 5–6)
Key Questions
- How does experience emerge from systems?
- How do multiple actors co-create experience?
- Users, stakeholders, environments
- Feedback loops
- Social and ecological dimensions of experience
Exercise 3: Relational Mapping
Students diagram all the relationships involved in a chosen experience (human, technological, environmental, institutional).
Deliverable
- Relational systems map highlighting points of tension, flow, and possibility.
Unit 4: Time, Change, and Becoming (Weeks 7–8)
Key Questions
- How do experiences unfold over time?
- How should designers think about change, adaptation, and learning?
- Experience as a temporal arc
- Habit formation
- Designing for openness and evolution
Exercise 4: Designing an Experience That Changes
Students design an experience that intentionally evolves over time (days, weeks, or months).
Examples
- Orientation experiences for new students
- Community spaces
- Wellness or learning routines
Deliverable
- Timeline-based experience prototype showing phases of change.
Unit 5: Ethics, Value, and Responsibility (Weeks 9–10)
Key Questions
- What makes an experience good?
- Who benefits—and who bears the cost—of design decisions?
- Value beyond efficiency
- Power, inclusion, and exclusion
- Ecological and social responsibility
Exercise 5: Ethical Reframing
Students take an existing design (e.g., social media feature, urban installation, service system) and redesign it from the perspective of a marginalized stakeholder.
Deliverable
- Comparative analysis: original vs. reframed experience.
Unit 6: Capstone Studio – Designing for Becoming (Weeks 11–12)
Final Project
Students design an experience (not merely an object) that responds to a real-world context.
Requirements
- Clear articulation of intended experience
- Relational awareness (multiple stakeholders)
- Attention to emotional tone
- Openness to future adaptation
Examples
- Community-based experiences
- Learning environments
- Digital or hybrid services
- Public or ecological experiences
Final Deliverables
- Experience narrative
- Journey map or system diagram
- Prototype or scenario
- Reflective essay linking design decisions to process-oriented thinking
Pedagogical Methods
- Studio-based learning
- Reflective journaling
- Group critique and dialogue
- Short readings paired with experiential exercises
- Emphasis on iteration rather than finality
Why This Course Matters in a School of Design
This course offers a philosophical foundation uniquely suited to designers who seek creative agency with ethical depth. By integrating experience design with a process-relational worldview, students learn to design not for control, but for participation; not for closure, but for meaningful becoming. The result is a design education attuned to complexity, care, and the lived realities of a changing world.