How Does Experiential Design Address
Have you ever walked into an event space or visited a museum exhibit that captured your attention through its beautiful graphics, captivating music, and interactive elements? This is the essence of experiential design. The goal is to engage the senses of your attendees and tell a story about your brand that makes them want to come back.
It is a great way to build engagement with your audience, which can be a challenge for non-profits. It’s easy for your audience to become disinterested after they have made a single donation or attended a one-time event, but creating a memorable and interesting experience can keep them engaged long term.
Experiential Design is more than an “Instagrammable moment.” It addresses the needs of all the people who will interact with your brand, including people with disabilities and older adults. This is why it’s so important to communicate with your agency about how much involvement you would like in the project, and what level of collaboration you are looking for. Then you can find an experienced design firm that matches your working style.
How Does Experiential Design Address Accessibility and Inclusivity Concerns?
The general principles of experiential design can be applied to products, services, and spaces, but it is particularly important in services that are based on the customer’s interaction with your company. For example, the theme of a restaurant is an experiential design element that provides the customer with a particular perception of the brand (Hard Rock Cafe being the pioneer in themed restaurants).
Accessibility and inclusivity concerns are essential to successful experiential design. There are many ways to make a space more accessible, from simple accommodations like making sure that images have alternate text to creating more inclusive navigational paths and ensuring that information is presented in multiple ways to meet the needs of all audiences.
Incorporating accessibility and inclusivity into the design process can be challenging for agencies not familiar with these issues, but there are plenty of resources available to help them get started. There are also a number of proven UX strategies that can be employed to address these issues, including persona development, empathy mapping, heuristic evaluations, and iterative testing.
Getting your clients involved in the design process is another way to ensure that your experiential design is accessible and includes inclusivity. This is also an excellent opportunity to gain valuable feedback from your customers and develop a sense of passionate co-ownership. This approach can be especially useful when you are designing a product for an existing market and can incorporate the results of your research into a product that will work well for this group.
The bottom line is that when companies are more inclusive, they have a greater potential for success and profit than those who focus on meeting the needs of a limited number of people. As the world becomes more diverse, it’s important that your design team keeps this in mind when developing products and experiences that will serve a wide range of customers.