Experience Design

25/04/2023

Are you looking to design emotionally charged products, services or events which form long lasting memories with your customers? Then discover a range of methods which will equip you to spark awe, spread enchantment and evoke wonder on the 🌟 Experience Design Foundation 🌟 course.

The short course is packed with tools and a process I have developed through 15 years hands-on practice as a producer, and refined into clear methods through 10 years of teaching, so you can take them from each session and apply straight away to your projects.

Across 4 action-packed modules, you will come away with:
👉 Deeper understanding on the power of experiences
👉 How to use the transformation cycle for long lasting impact
👉 Insights on the neuroscience of emotions & memories
👉 How to use the emotion wheel & design unforgettable customer journeys
👉 Range of behavioural science frameworks including nudge theory

The Foundation course runs Saturday mornings 06 – 27 May, online and in real time. Meet peers from around the world, join group discussions, and collaborate on practical exercises.

Hear from the previous cohort:
🙌 Totally surpassed my expectations & gone far beyond what I could’ve hoped to have learnt!
🙌 I loved the discussions and surprised with how much knowledge Pigalle has imparted on us, my head is overflowing in the best buzzy way.
🙌 It’s been invaluable and given me the language and tools to bring my vision into a clear reality.
🙌 I could use each module & put them into practise immediately in the experiences I’m designing.

Interested to find out more? You can download the programme PDF from https://lnkd.in/eJwe64HA, or send me a DM with your questions and happy to speak further with you.



Events produced for Guerilla Science and captured by the photographer Richard Eaton.

24/03/2022

🚀 Aaaand we're off! 🌱 Spring has sprung a great cohort of students taking part in the Experience Design Foundation course. I’m delighted they bring diverse views, perspectives and expertise from across the globe, ranging from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, through to the UK. In our first week, we’ve been exploring the meaning of experience, how to move the audience across thresholds into transformation, and how to design using a transformation cycle.

Experience Design considers the external and internal world of the audience, focussing on sparking internal changes in the way the audience feels, thinks and behaves. Through these changes, the audience become empowered to transform long after the experience has taken place. Jeanette Winterson, author, captures the importance of nurturing our internal worlds, in order to grow and thrive, rather than to merely survive.

02/03/2022

In an era of uncertainty and increasing dependency on technology as a conduit for interaction, human connection is becoming more vital than ever before. Unboxed festival is launching in response to the public’s “huge appetite to get out again and stand next to other human beings”, and to celebrate the power of creativity to bring people together.

The ambitious programme includes 10 multi-site projects throughout the UK, with free events running across live and digital platforms, from now until October.

To find out more: https://unboxed2022.uk

Background to the festival and the projects: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/mar/01/unboxed-festival-launches-with-vow-to-get-britain-reconnected

The controversial festival, hailed as a ‘once in a lifetime’ cultural event, opens with an immersive history of the universe, About Us, at Paisley Abbey

23/02/2022

* Have you familiar with Experience Design but unsure what sets it apart from other design disciplines?
* Do you sense this is valuable to gain expertise but unclear how it would expand your skills?
* Or are you already working in the field and looking for a step-by-step process to design with higher impact?

Pigalle Tavakkoli will be running an online Foundation course in Experience Design on Saturday mornings, guiding you through 5 modules covering key principles, a process which takes you from concept to delivery, with a range of methods to design emotions and change behaviours.

By the end of the course you will have a practical road map, discovered key theories and the scientific insights behind them, gained methods for changing emotions and behaviour, alongside inspiration from business and artistic case studies, to apply to your own practices and projects.

Curious to find out more? You’re welcome to send a direct message with your questions, and to receive the programme with further information.

31/03/2021

Wow almost a year on from our hiatus posting to the group - big thank you for staying onboard as we all navigated through the challenges and fast changing times. Last year the trend predictions were for the experience industry to grow across 2020+ and yet we were caught by surprise and it’s the digital industry that’s exploded and set to rise. In light of these changes, I’ve taken time to review and redevelop our Experience Design course to an online format, and excited to reveal we’ll be launching the first course from mid-April!

We're keeping the course limited to a small group, and will run it as an online classroom with 2 tutors teaching in person throughout, so you can collaborate with each other and we can provide more attention and direct feedback.

The updated modules include new content such as developing meaningful hybrid digital/live experiences, designing emotions, behavioral change models and multisensory design, alongside the latest research in science, such as psychology and neuroscience, and evolving practices from theatre and the arts are also included.

If you’re interested to develop your approach, expand your professional skills for future proofing your career, looking to explore new career paths, or simply would like to find out more, then feel free to send me a message on [email protected] and I can share more details with the course outline.

We hope to meet you and join together in creating new paths for the future of Experience Design.

07/03/2020

Last weekend I ran a short course exploring different ways the senses can be used in design and art. Dialogue in the Dark exhibition has just opened as a sensory experience which invites you to go on a journey to discover what it is like to be blind. You are guided through a series of rooms in absolute darkness, assisted by trained blind guides, which are filled with sounds, flavours and objects. The aim is to create awareness, empowerment and empathy towards visually impaired people and discover how rich and complex their experiences of everyday life is.

Running at SPACE in Hackney, for more information and tickets see the link below.

A sensory exhibition set in total darkness, designed to enlighten you and push you out of the comfort zone orienting you to a world without pictures. The concept of Dialogue in the Dark is simple: visitors are led by blind guides through dark rooms in which scent, sound, wind, temperature, and textu...

19/02/2020

We design experiences to spark emotions, provoke thoughts and stimulate physical responses in the audience. Scientists from University College London have now proved that watching a live show causes a much stronger reaction than watching a version on screen. They found that heart rates go up and down with the narrative arc of a story and that the highs are highest and lows lowest at a live show. To find out more on their research:

UCL scientists measured heart rates and sweat glands of audiences and found live shows caused much greater response

16/02/2020

On the Experience Design course we take a look at the senses and how they affect our behaviour. For a deeper dive I'm launching a weekend course on Designing Multisensory Event Experiences on 29 February-01 March, at Central Saint Martins. Saturday will cover extra content on the science behind the senses and how they are being used in the arts and design fields, while Sunday will examine the history, cultural meanings and psychology behind colours. There will be hands on activities in between to make your own discoveries on the senses and colour.

To find out more about the course:

Discover the neuroscience behind the senses, and the areas of the brain that are activated which lead to memorable experiences on this short course.

10/02/2020

French designer Emmanuelle Moureaux has filled the NOW gallery in Greenwich with her first large-scale installation in the UK. Inspired by the layers and colours of Tokyo where she’s lived since 1996, Moureaux invented the concept of shikiri, which means ‘dividing space with colour’. The installation, Slices of Time, is an example of shikiri in practice featuring a rainbow of hanging numbers.

Drawing on the gallery‘s location on the Greenwich Peninsula near to the Meridian, the piece represents the flow of time, with the layers of numbers illustrating the past, present and future. Visitors are invited to participate by taking time to remember special moments in their life and write a significant date in coloured pen to display along a coloured timeline on the gallery’s wall.

FREE to visit and running 5 February – 19 April, for more information: nowgallery.co.uk/exhibitions/slices-of-time/

06/02/2020

Looking for an alternative Valentines night out? Then you could take part in the art piece No.One.Gives.A.Mosquito’s.Ass.About.Us being held at Tate Modern, which asks the questions 'who or what has power over us?', and 'who or what is really important to us?'.

The artist Nástio Mosquito started the project in 2019 with several performances at the opening of the Venice Biennale. Since then the piece has taken different shapes each time he has presented it. For the evening at Tate Modern the piece will unfold in three acts, incorporating voice, sound, video and performance.

Taking place 14 February at 19.00–21.00, tickets £10, £7 concessions. For more information see https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/film/nastio-mosquito

02/02/2020

The word ‘immersive’ has become a popular buzz word and growing trend - but what separates a truly immersive theatrical production from a commercial event that uses the title in name only, and can there be a happy medium between the two? A thought-provoking article in The Observer looks at ground breaking pioneers such as Punchdrunk and longest-running immersive play The Great Gatsby to try and find the answers. Have you been to a great or disappointing 'immersive' event or show, what do you think defines and elevates the experience?

It’s had huge commercial hits with shows such as The Great Gatsby but critics fear the genre is now just in it for the money

18/01/2020

VAULT Festival is back! London’s annual underground arts festival returns for 8 weeks with hundreds of events, comedy, pop-up and immersive productions running in venues throughout Waterloo and the South Bank. Opening 28 January - 22 March, to look through the extensive and exciting programme, tickets and more information: https://vaultfestival.com/