Theme Parks in the Transformation Economy: Evolving Beyond Experiences
Matthew Waller
Walt Disney Imagineering Intern | Industrial Designer | Georgia Tech Alumni | Eagle Scout
Over the past three years, my exploration of experiences began with reading "The Experience Economy" by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore at the end of my first year of college. Since then, I have engaged with numerous industry professionals and attended conferences centered around experiences. The World Experience Organization united experienced designers and creators to flush out more information about experiences and how to implement them into one's business. While many books on experience principles have come about, and there have been multiple conversations about them, I never hear many people talk about what comes next. What comes next after we master creating experiences?
Enter the?"transformation economy" – the next evolution in the economic progression of offerings. Transformations are customized experiences. Transformations are about creating change.
The Project
My observations and reflections over the past three years culminated in my final capstone project: a paper envisioning the future of theme parks in the transformational economy that opens in 2045. This project involved defining transformation-related terminology and exploring the use of such terminology in themed entertainment.
Trends
This paper centers around the cross between the trends of transformations, theme parks, and life-centered design. The paper also delves into transformations, their impacts, and a conceptual theme park called a "life park." Life parks represent a shift towards individualized, life-centered designs, creating self-discovery and narrative exploration. It is a concept where people go to enhance their identity and help them reach self-actualization.
This project occurs as Joe Pine outlines transformations in a new book he is currently co-creating with subscribers in Substack. One can learn more here.
Results of Research:
Below, I highlight some of the resulting terminology from my research.
One can learn more details, including finding the abstract and full paper, in my portfolio here and here.
领英推荐
In summary, the comparison table below show what is impacted between the traditional theme park vs the envisioned life park.
Next, below is a table that defines the difference between a theme park and a life park on a fundamental level.?
While the terms/concepts presented are subject to revision, I hope this work helps ignite discussion among experienced designers. To become transformation designers, transformation strategists, or similar, we may first need to master (to the best of our ability) experiences, but it does not hurt to think about what could be next beyond experiences.
Since this is the first time I have tried to do a research paper like this, I welcome feedback and further discussions on this concept as I refine it. Feel free to reach out via my website or email. As mentioned before, one can learn more details, including finding the abstract and full paper, in my portfolio here and here.
Thank you for your time and interest in my final capstone project.
Matthew Waller
Video Producer | Storyteller | Video Production | Video Editor | Videographer | Motion Graphics | Storyteller| Budget Management | Project Management | Media Asset Management | Digital Asset Management
10 个月Very interesting, and it seems closely related to what I’m doing now with Jackalope Junction , which I call a “Storypark” as it focuses around one main story, which is created to bring back and instill biblical values into mainstream storytelling - and characters who are based on real people - who have their flaws that almost anyone can relate to, but also qualities that we hope will inspire our audience - guests to the park, folks who read our companion books, and others who will watch our companion television series - which all focus on the life and times of Jackalope Junction and our characters. We give kids time to play interactively in the park, create and build, discover, go on scavenger hunts with their parents - and each of our custom designed attractions not only tell the story of JJ and a very dark past, but will also cause, hopefully, our guests to look inward of themselves. How do they behave around others, how do they react to change, how can they be better as far as just being humans towards others, despite having been a victim of something- and instead of taking on the victim mentality, learning how to rise above that and become an overcomer, stronger, resilient, and strong? Something that transforms the guests…
Ontological Designer, Product Strategist, WorldBuilder & Experiential Designer
10 个月Transformation shouldn’t be defined as self-actualization or orient around individualization. I think “customized experiences” is problematic and is rooted in capitalistism and consumerism that has a sludge of problems. That’s what the last few decades have been about and it hasn’t been helpful. Customizing experiences for individual transformation is a flawed premise and misses what the moment we are in needs. Experiences are good at creating shared moments and so that’s what we should be deepening into-collective actualization and nature connectedness. We simply don’t need to orient more around individualization because that’s just going to be more of the same. It’s neither individual transformation nor collective. Transformation needs to be radical because we are facing a polycrisis and anything orienting around the self is more of the same. Eventually we will get there but I wish we could leap frog transformation that orients around individual and into collective actualization and nature connectedness. The future of experiences ought to be about opening our doors of perception, attuning us to the living presence of the animate earth so that we can remember what we are and our ecological role on this planet. ??
Purpose-driven tourism nerd
10 个月This might be of interest to you, Thomas R. Andersen :-)
Creative Executive Director, Strategist and Research Investigator
10 个月Matthew Waller, I shared with my network so you can get as much diverse feedback. For my 2 Cents, we have yet to ignite the audience imagination with all senses, in all dimensions, in all directions with all realities as ONE world. This will be when we engage audiences with a bigger bandwidth of the “phenomenology of the Augmented Imagination.” It will not be what we do, but in how we enable others to do what they couldn’t, maybe wouldn’t, most definitely shouldn’t in real life! This starts with a compelling story and results in a cherished memory. Everything else is just “stuff.” The dreams that stuff is made of with the mass consensual hallucinations we call experiential entertainment….
?? CEO, World Experience Organization ?? experience designer & strategist ?? keynote speaker, 2x TEDx ??? author, 2x bestselling books ?? futurist
11 个月Fascinating ideas. Trying to navigate / define the stepping stones / bridges between experience & transformation is going to a very fun area of exploration over the next 10-20 years. For an example of a standout 'lifepark' - or at least an experience designed for mass transformation, consider Burning Man & Boomtown (esp the opening & closing ceremonies). Heather Gallagher & Mair Morel strike me as the go-to experts here. Heather's talking about this at the Summit. Mair's said she'll give a Campfire talk... but she's seriously busy & we haven't yet nailed down a date!