Designing Religious Experiences

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Wednesday, 23 April 2008

We recently gave up cable at home. More specifically, we purchased Apple TV and then took the Cable Box back to Time Warner. My selection of a new media religion was immediately rewarded: I discovered TED podcasts from the comfort of a couch!

My favorite is TED award winner, Karen Armstrong’s talk about religion – more specifically her plea for global compassion. She reminded me of The Golden Rule.

When asked for a concise statement of the Jewish faith, Hillel said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Law; the rest is the explanation; go and learn”.  This is echoed in many of the world relgions. In short, you need to have compassion.

People often struggle with how to create experiences. And very often we are asked for the process or the timeline or a framework for making decisions. We think we often get lost in the details of checklists or discussions of Agile versus Waterfall or heuristics versus user testing.

Its simple. Just use compassion.

Its often harder to be compassionionate and accept people as they are versus how we might like them to be. In fact, I have often heard that you should build experiences for yourself. This flies in the face of marketing surveys, etc. But, I am always amazed by how many people cant or dont use the things they create! At least understand what you are asking your users or customers to live with.

Karen Armstrong is a great orator and her plea for global compassion well worth your time.

Posted in: Creative Process | Tagged: experiences, golden rule, karen armstrong, TED | No Comments