hero-centered design

Written by

Jamie Kwan

Date published

February 17, 2020

How I use storytelling to design for heroic transformation.

If you’ve ever been to a theme park, you can relate to the following sentiment: they’re shockingly energizing, in some of the best ways possible — and you can’t help but feel an anticipation to return.

When I joined an architecture firm that specialized in the design of these theme parks, it changed my outlook on what 'human-centered design' really means.

Looking back after 5 years, I discovered that theme parks taught me more about design than any other experience. I truly believe that these lessons shifted how I now design everyday experiences that leave the end-user transformed through delight, drama, and joy. Let’s unpack that story.

In 2015, I became a “storyteller” for theme park attractions, shaping the creative direction of landscapes that placed visitors into a brand’s heart and soul.

I was thrown into designing everything from nature walks through a ‘Forbidden Forest’ filled with hidden unicorns and nature spirits, to missions on Mars in a sci-fi inspired VR gaming experience. I was lucky to be the one championing the visitor and the story throughout the process.

I discovered that theme parks existed in these truly designed “bubbles” of highly functional, immersive, and seamlessly consistent spaces — visitors stepped through those entry gates, and they’ve entered into a fully-realized story world that considered every point-of-view that could be occupied. We were designing ideal, miniature (and highly profitable) cities, where the story took precedence over any design discipline, and regardless of what you were creating, it connected back to an overarching world unfolding in front of you. Every single touch point was an opportunity to experience the heart of said story.

And, as a visitor, you weren’t just in the audience of this story. At every moment (booking your ticket online, in the queue waiting for hours, on the ride, and yes, even while eating lunch), you were living out a storybook; you were the storyteller, and most importantly, you were the hero of the story. 

The moments were designed to make you feel something heightened — empowered, excited, intensely joyful. It was more than the baseline expectation. The designed environment and interactions simply became the backdrop that enabled and encouraged a heroic transformation through a heightened emotional journey. And that very approach, kept people coming back for more.

I absolutely loved that the end-user was measured in terms of their joy, their excitement, their fear (and overcoming of that fear), and ultimately, how this transformed them in the end. I realized, this feeling of transformation was something missing in our every-day world, filled with design priorities of achieving KPIs, conversions, and utilization rates.

Enter what I like to call “hero-centered design”.

Today, I often describe what I learned from this most unique of jobs using this simple phrase. I like to think of this as bearing so many similarities of ‘human-centered design’, but with one key difference: a mindset of designing for heroic transformations.

Whether you're a product designer, a service designer, or an architectural designer, here are six considerations when designing with a hero-centered mindset.

1. The Hero’s Journey: Holistic Transformation
2. The Sidekick: A Companion Experience
3. The Establishing Shot: Setting a Tone
4. The Magic Circle: Inviting Agency
5. The Defining Moment: Celebrating Progress
6. The Surprise Twist: Keeping it Fresh

1. The Hero’s Journey: Holistic Transformation

Storytellers often use the archetypal Hero’s Journey as a framework for an adventure — storyboarding the key moments along the way. As a tool for design, the Hero’s Journey can be utilized to storyboard an experience: Who is our Hero? What is their clarion call-to-action? Their dramatic refusal to engage, and ultimate resolution? The challenge(s) they face along the way? The emotional transformation into a celebrated protagonist? The penultimate return (and the sequel story)?

I love to use this as a way of elevating the typical human-centered design process — framing the “user journey map” in terms of the Hero’s Journey to understand both sequence and transformation.

Identifying latent needs and problems to solve should be default by 2020 design standards. In my mind, seeing the output of our design as meeting desirable human needs is pretty baseline. But what about this mindset for heroic transformation? How do we go beyond seamless experiences, and think about our heroes in terms of how we can help to make them their best selves through interacting with the design?

For Airbnb’s CEO, Brian Chesky, their light-bulb moment for their mobile expansion was driven through a process inspired by Snow White. They hired a Pixar Animator to help storyboard the host process, guest process, and hiring process to discover that their service had little to do with a website or resource. It wasn’t just about creating cheaper, more accessible, and better located accommodation experiences. Guests weren't looking for a room; they were looking for a basecamp to their trip in a foreign place. It was an overall experience that was transforming stressed travelers with piles of baggage into authentically-local explorers, unearthing the never-before-seen aspects of the world. It was an experience that made the host, a companion to the hero.

2. The Sidekick: A Companion Experience

Developing a clarion call for heroes is a daunting task only made easier by having support, like a sidekick. Frodo had Sam to carry him and the ring’s burden across Middle Earth. Harry had Ron and Hermione, always grounded in family values and love facing against Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

A companion experience isn’t just about assistance as a function — it’s about release into a mindset of adventure, ready for anything that comes your way. It's about designing for a sense of belonging and togetherness, whether if it's a Dinner for One, Two, Three, or Four. A roller coaster would surly not be fun as a single-person ride, screaming alongside you as you drop from the peak of that inversion coaster. In a retail store, how might a store associate focus less on pushing product, but actually listening and solving for the need you’ve come to resolve? For Airbnb, before you even get to your destination, you already have a trusted friend for recommendations to undiscovered territory.

Companions also start to form communities, allowing heroes to find their tribe.

At Starbucks stores, round tables are used as a mechanism to battle loneliness, and in a way, the furniture becomes a companion to the experience. Round tables don’t define the number of seats, welcoming single customers— and so an ambient feeling of belonging is embedded in the surroundings. Because in a Starbucks, you might be alone, but you’re not lonely with the other solo-experiencers.

3. The Establishing Shot: Setting a Tone

In film, the establishing shot sets the tone for the story that’s about to unfold. Often times, this is taken from a distance, expressing context beyond physical, spatial, or geographic setting; the design of these scenes reveals critical information about character and plot.

In theme parks, the view corridor on approach is one of the many critical considerations of the visitor experience. At Legoland, the gateway is often comprised of over-sized LEGO® bricks themselves, and hiding easter eggs that range from giant dragons to themed Miniland characters. This is more than just an expensive column that utilizes brand colours and assets. The madness contains these miniature moments to discover. It sets an explicit tone that imagination is about to be stretched and empowered in every aspect of the experience — a translation of LEGO® promise for the “Joy of Building, Pride of Creation”.

How do you want your end-user to feel, and how do you communicate a start of a transformation towards that feeling, at the very onset of the experience?

The Paper app, by FiftyThree, is brilliantly designed in it’s simplicity and prompt. The drawing app is an un-fussy way to quickly jot notes and capture your thinking in fast and clear formats: a brand founded in simplicity in every which way, suggesting that drawing isn't about the spectrum of tools and media, but the simple act of marking on a page. The app’s icon is a simple, wide stroked squiggle with only primary colours. The interface is simply a blank page with only five drawing modes. And all this driven by their (now discontinued) stylus, the Pencil: shaped like the rudimentary pencil symbol you'd draw if you were in the 5th grade — setting the tone for a Crayon-like experience.

4. The Magic Circle: A Powerful Prompt

In games, the “Magic Circle” is a term used to describe the boundary players step into where the rules of play are engaged. That might mean the bounds of a playground — where the rules of tag start to become law — or the simple virtual portal to the video gameplay space. Walking through the gates of a theme park, you not only forget how to "behave" in a typical urban environment — running off in excitement to the large queue line forming behind the Behemoth roller coaster — but you're encouraged to do so. Not only are you in a fantasy world that’s separate from the everyday world, you’re empowered and engaged to make it your own. You are the main character and driver of the story.

And there’s science behind this feeling of autonomy. As per the IKEA effect, when someone has a role in creating a product or experience, it increases the perceived value of it.

Great design processes are not just about inviting a variety of people to the table, but giving them the appropriate agency, empowerment, and prompt to engage fully in order to enrich a problem solving session. What are the “rules of play” (or lack of rules) as it pertains to the design process, and how do you unleash creativity through simply designing an appropriate brainstorming workshop? The format of engagement — where it’s not just about post-it notes on a wall — impacts how this magic circle is formed, and where creativity is prompted. In this case, the heroic transformation is not the end-user, but the design team itself.

The design of theme parks naturally levels the playing field, when it comes to bringing so many different disciplines to the table. No one is educated, or an expert, in theme parks — and it’s for this reason that theme park design transcends any discipline, to simply focus on driving and unfolding a story for the visitor. It's the reason that our disciplinary "rules of play" are thrown out the window for new and shared ways of working.

5. The Defining Moment: Celebrating Progress

Simple ways to celebrate progress exist in digital and service-based designs across the world, in response to the use of gamification and game mechanics. However, given the saturation of rewards and loyalty experiences in everything from retail to entertainment to workplace, what else can be done to celebrate defining and transformative moments? Where can we move beyond "incentives" to engage with an experience? From extrinsic motivators, to intrinsic meaning-making?

At Disney’s new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge themed land, the new lightsaber experience allows visitors to become Jedi themselves with a custom hand-built lightsaber of their own. Visitors choose their parts and unique gem to power their blade, culminating in a moment where everyone in the room — sat at a rounded table, almost in King Arthur fashion — raises their newly created lightsabers as they activate for the first time, in a pose of allegiance to this new Jedi induction. While a small moment in terms of time, this experience is significant in celebrating progress — its drama is so elevated, that it creates this highly empowered and memorable experience while forming an unprecedented visual experience of light and sound. And according to the Peak-End Rule, this is a moment that will be ingrained in one's long-term memory.

Skype also experienced a “defining moment” in their history, and used celebration as a factor to empower employees towards a mission-driven organization. During a slump, Skype’s leaders reminded employees of the emotional connection that their service has created in a very personal way — reminding designers and developers that the progress of their careers at Skype had impacted the reunion of two geographically separated people through their video calling service. With this, they weren’t designing an app anymore — they were designing a means of connecting a hero, with their loved one.

6. The Surprise Twist: Keeping it Fresh

Every memorable story has a surprise twist for the hero to navigate; a plot point that no one ever expected. And surprise can take a few different forms in your world.

But one of my favourite elements of the Disney Magic Band — Disney’s in-park RFID wristband that acts as your digital wallet, FastPass, and interactive touchpoint — is that it allows Disney performers to interact with guests on a highly personal level. Imagine a young visitor, saying "hi" to Cinderella for the first time, after seeing her step from the screen and into the real world. Now, imagine that same visitor, seeing Cinderella again later that day, and being able to continue the same conversation. The Magic Band empowers this interaction, allowing for guests to move from being acquaintances with mascots, to being true friends with the characters.

This ability to personalize experiences, and keep it fresh, allows for repeatability factor. It makes experiences less transactional, and more meaningful and personal. It makes it less about meeting their "needs", and more about supporting their growth, ambitions, and dreams.

So where can you start, to design with a hero-centered mindset?

It all begins with starting with "why". Not to rip that off of Simon Sinek, but it's simply asking yourself why you're designing what you're designing, with an eye on impact and outcome— how that 'why' progresses your hero's growth.

Recently, I stumbled upon an ideation approach from Artefact, that nicely frames a conversation early on in the design process about impact. They called it, "Is to... So that..."

It starts with evaluating your design purpose using this framework:

They use Facebook as an example. In a re-design of the Newsfeed, you might see the exercise in two ways:

...or from a different angle:

See how that second design outcome may be more linked to heroic transformation?

Since learning about these stories of design impact, I continue to strive to create meaning in my work. I mean, as designers, that’s really why we’re in this profession — as we shape small parts of this ever-changing world. I hope that this inspires you as much as it continues to do for me, as I work to uncover and create small moments of heroic transformation in our day-to-day lives.

** This article is a re-posting of what was shared on Medium, back in February 2020.

a quick bio...

💁‍♂️ Jamie Kwan is an Experiential Designer and Strategist, working at the intersection of space, service, and digital experience design. During the day, he’s a Lead Service Designer with Atlassian in 🇨🇦 creating white-glove customer experiences, but more broadly … He's a recovering Architect, 'creative-tech'-dabbling designer, and a research-driven brand strategist, who's worked alongside clients in the retail, technology, themed entertainment, and financial services sectors in navigating the future — transforming their brand purpose into designed experiences that connect with their audiences (and strives to make their heart skip a beat). ✨ Through his work, he's on a mission to inject the power of play, storytelling, and hero-centered experience design in envisioning the future. Selected clients include the Panama Canal Authority, CJ Group, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), AIRMILES, Canadian Tire Corporation, Cineplex Entertainment, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).

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Get in touch and say hello@jamiemkwan.com