The future of experience design

Participation is no longer enough.

Today’s audiences expect more than a front-row seat, they want a voice in the experience itself. As attention spans shrink, technology becomes invisible, and new generations redefine engagement, brands face a critical challenge: how do you create experiences people don’t just attend, but actively shape?

In this episode of Inside the brand experience, host Robb Trost, Senior Director of Business Development at Invision, is joined by members of Invision’s creative team—Rob Deal, Executive Creative Director, John Edgington, Creative Director, and Kat Tischler, Creative Director—to explore The future of experience design.

Drawing from insights shared during their panel at PCMA Convening Leaders, the team unpacks the forces reshaping audience expectations, from the rise of neurodiversity and generational shifts to the growing role of AI and emerging technologies. Together, they examine why empathy has become a competitive advantage, why authenticity matters more than spectacle, and how brands can create experiences that invite audiences to become co-creators rather than passive participants.

Through real-world examples and candid perspectives, they share how the most effective experiences are designed not around technology, but around people, and why designing for a wider range of needs often creates better outcomes for everyone.

Key insights you'll learn:

• Why the future of experience design may have less to do with technology and more to do with empathy.
• How Millennials and Gen Z are redefining engagement by expecting agency, personalization, and opportunities to co-create experiences.
• Why the most impactful technology disappears into the background, allowing authentic human connection and storytelling to take center stage.

Whether you're an experiential marketer, event strategist, or brand leader, this episode will challenge the way you think about audience engagement and reveal how the brands that win tomorrow will be the ones that design for people first.

Transcript

Robb Trost (00:11):

Welcome to the Inside the Brand Experience, the Invision podcast where we explore the trends and ideas that cut through the noise and help brands own every moment with their customers. I'm Robb Trost, senior director of business development, and this week's episode is something really special. Today, I have senior leaders from Invision's creative team who recently attended the PCMA Convening Leaders conference where they took the stage for a thought-provoking panel and the future of experience design. I would like to welcome my team here. First, Kat Tischler.

Kat Tischler (00:44):

Hey, everyone. Excited to dive a little deeper and talk about the future of experience design.

Robb Trost (00:48):

Next, John Edgington.

John Edgington (00:50):

Hello. Thanks for having me, Robb.

Robb Trost (00:54):

And Mr. Rob Deal.

Rob Deal (00:56):

Thanks, Robb. I'm excited to be here as well.

Robb Trost (00:58):

So today, we get to unpack how brands navigate inclusivity, drive innovation, and respond to generational shifts, shaping the way people connect with experiences today. In this episode, we're bringing you that conversation, real examples, honest perspectives, and actionable insights from people shaping what's next. So grab your headphones and let's enjoy this lively insightful discussion.

(01:22):

First question is for Mr. Deal. What's fundamentally changing in experience design?

Rob Deal (01:28):

Well, experience design is trying to be very cognizant of our new audiences. And as you might imagine, our new audiences are digital natives. We're in intention battle for their devices between their watches and their cell phones. Our audiences are much more diverse in a number of demographics and really diverse in some things that we're taking into consideration relatively within the last five to seven years, which is the subject of neurodiversity. So in neurodiversity, one in four people are clinically neurodiverse, and that might be things like autism, the spectrum that is autism. It might be ADHD. It might be dyslexia. It's a number of different things. As we look at demographic research and it trends younger and younger, 51% are self-identifying as being neurodiverse. So when designing specific engagements, we have to take things like that into account because audiences that are identifying themselves this way are demanding from us that we create experiences that are relevant with them.

(02:39):

So we want to take into account different learning styles. As we have known for a while, there are visual learners, there are audio learners, and there are kinetic learners, and we want to offer up different learning opportunities for each one of these. And so we take that into consideration where we're designing engagements, all with the idea of the ROI that we see on events is translating the content to an audience and we want to make sure that we package up that content in ways that our audience feels really comfortable learning from it. In whatever learning style or way that they identify is most relevant to them.

Robb Trost (03:18):

Can you explain a little bit more and dive a little bit deeper on how you're talking about packaging things and explain the role of how creative directors should now lead with empathy?

Rob Deal (03:28):

I think empathy is the strongest skill of a creative director. I think really understanding the audience and how they consume content and also be empathetic for where they are in their journey in this experience that we're creating is one of our greatest skills. We also want to recognize the fact that attention spans are so much shorter in this battle for attention. So where once we thought a 45-minute talking head to an audience was really okay, we hardly ever recommend that anymore. And it creates a little bit of attention with our buyers because they often say, "Well, our CEO wants to get out there and really connect with the audience. He's got a 45-minute piece." And we're like, "Okay. Well, can we switch that up with some video? Can we switch that up with a demo? Can we switch that up with some audience participation so that the audience really feels like they've got skin in the game? And honestly, that's how they're going to learn more from that presentation."

(04:31):

And then we try to create places where they're interacting maybe digitally, they're interacting with polls or surveys, they're trying to really be part of the experience as opposed to a passive observer of the experience. And then really, we got to get under the hood with the content. We have to understand the content, what people currently think, feel, and believe, and what we want them to think, feel, and believe when they leave the experience so that we can track towards that goal. And in the best of all cases that we establish KPIs or measurement so that we can make sure that we really hit that target with the audience.

Kat Tischler (05:09):

I think now more than ever, it's important to lead with empathy when we're designing experiences, especially in this age and era of artificial intelligence, because empathy is what makes us human. And whether we are designing for a B2B audience, B2C audience, whether it's an analog or digital experience, we're designing for other humans. And so we can't lose sight of that. That's why empathy is so important.

Rob Deal (05:33):

Kat, when I was answering that first question, I didn't even think about AI. I just thought about all the distractions that you might have, but AI certainly has become part of the conversation and that empathy in the humanity is such an important part now more than ever.

John Edgington (05:50):

It's also a good, almost like a check on us where if we're leading with empathy, it's a good way to make sure we're not getting distracted by the shiny new tech or the really impressive splashy thing. It's a little bit of a way for us to check in with ourselves and making sure that we're keeping the audience as the primary driver for what we're proposing or what we're executing on, that it's not getting pulled in some cool new direction like AI or something like that.

Rob Deal (06:18):

John, you have a great example of that with something you did for a client recently in a walk-in experience.

John Edgington (06:24):

What Rob has referenced is an interesting walk-in experience that we did for a big tech client and the goal was to bring them into the experience and let them take over the screens, if you will. And our client wanted to use AI because it was a hot topic, but so what we did is we welcomed them into the experience. We gave them the opportunity to control the walk-in experience by generating the art, generating the imagery based on what the conference was about, using their messaging, that kind of thing, but giving them the opportunity to, in real time, scan a QR code, input some language that was aligned with, and we had parameters around it, but that was aligned with the brand and aligned with the messaging for the conference.

(07:07):

And then in a matter of minutes on the backend, we were able to approve and turn fully realized, pixel-perfect generated imagery on all of the screens during the very same days worth of content. And we attributed it to folks in the room, so everyone could see the prompts that they used to generate the piece of art, but who the person was, and that person generally speaking when they saw their artwork up on screen, you got a little pop in the room. So it was a way to make the AI usage more human but also make it practical, let people see their outcomes in real time. So it was, again, audience-first with the intention of bringing in AI, but doing it in a way that was serving the audience, not forcing them into a specific interaction type based on some other motive.

Robb Trost (07:55):

I love that. And I see here without being Captain Obvious, we need to be even more intentional with design and how we approach this and not for tech for tech's sake, if you will. So I actually have a question for Kat. Can you dive into how Millennials and Gen Z are reshaping our expectations with these engagements?

Kat Tischler (08:17):

If you look at the data right now, the US Department of Labor shows, in a fun pie chart, that Millennial and Gen Z are making up more than half of the workforce right now. That means that we're not the future, myself, elder Millennial. We are current decision makers within this space. And so as we're designing experiences, we have to be thinking about what this shift in generational behavior is doing to drive the priorities, the care-abouts for behind and driving our experiences.

(08:49):

Everyone says it's not just about a passive recipient at your events; it's participation. Actually, it goes a step further than that. Participation isn't good enough anymore. You need to be inviting this group in to co-write, to co-author, to co-create the experience. They have this desire for agency. They have this desire for choice. They don't need a million choices. They just need enough choice to feel that they had some impact on the experience and it changed because they went through it.

(09:22):

So that's a level of personalization that comes through and it's almost on the scale of actual personalization, which is very difficult and expensive to this appearance of personalization where you can rig the experience to make it feel like each person's affecting it. That's what they're expecting. They're expecting to be able to shape the experience in some way.

Robb Trost (09:42):

So then what does it mean to treat the audience as co-creators?

Kat Tischler (09:47):

Well, this is the first time we're seeing these individuals, maybe not my generation, but the next one below me and the one after are, as Rob said, digital natives. They're growing up with this creator-content mindset baked in. They are live posting, editing, shaping the narrative in real time, and so they really expect to be a part of what's happening. And so we need to go into experiences designing for that. So create things where they can have a voice in it and feel that they are showing up authentically as themselves, because that's the other thing. The next generations, as we're looking at them, have a really high BS barometer, and we all know that. You need to be real with them, you need to be authentic. Everyone's cutting through the AI slop. They need to know what's real. Brands right now are investing so much money in the behind-the-scenes makings of their commercials to prove that they made it themselves versus it was generated by AI. And so that's the kind of mindset you want to have as you're making and designing experiences.

Robb Trost (10:48):

So John, a question for you. When you design for inclusivity, you were talking about, at PCMA, the cognitive range, you increase engagement. What does it mean to design for cognitive range?

John Edgington (11:01):

What's interesting is that we're seeing almost competing data on this front. We just saw a study recently that said due to constant disruption, cognitive overload, we've got the entirety of the world's information in our pockets at all time, that live attention spans are down by nearly 30%, something like that. The same time, there was another study that was recently published that said that to increase retention, we have to engage multiple senses at the same time. So when you step back and just look at this data, it's like, okay, we're overloaded because there's too much going on at once and to get you to retain information, we've got to hit you with multiple things at the same time. And so it's like, what are we supposed to do with this, with the backdrop of all of this new insight into the data about different people's aptitude for different types of sensory experiences?

(12:01):

For us, all of that mixes together. But what it really means is that now more than ever, we have to be extremely intentional with how we're designing these experiences. We can't just rely on tech for tech's sake, like we mentioned before. We like to say tech for tech's sake is like a recipe for empty calories. It just means that we have to be vigilant about designing for the audiences the way they're showing up, designing for how they're walking into this space. Rob referenced it before that there is a difference between the diagnosed prevalence of neurodivergence and the self-identified prevalence of neurodivergence. And so if we choose to ignore that, that's on us. We need to be taking into account the way they're telling us they receive information. And so we have to take these things into account. We have to have a wide open aperture of how people are showing up.

Kat Tischler (12:53):

I think a lot of times, our clients either think this is a small subset, so I don't need to spend a lot of time designing for them specifically, or it's not worth the investments, or they don't see the value. John, what is it that you say when you design for this subset?

John Edgington (13:11):

Yeah. Designing for the subset often unlocks value for the whole. What we mean by that is, yes, there's just the face value of new and interesting experiences of value for everybody, but also, it's a tool to unlock conversations that might not have been on the table previously. Sometimes, businesses or clients or whoever just have things that are in the category of this is just how we do it, this is who our attendee subset is. And sometimes, these wrinkles, like that idea of the diagnosed prevalence of neurodivergence versus the self-iden ... That wrinkle in the data, sometimes, that is the tool for us to access a deeper level conversation that might've been off limits before. That subset of cognitive range, that subset is, for us, a key unlock to having a deeper conversation about the way audiences are truly processing information. So that's what we mean by designing for the subset can often unlock value for the whole.

Robb Trost (14:09):

Just to extend on that, you were saying that that subset is not nearly as small as we think it is.

John Edgington (14:15):

Yeah, that I think this stat was one in four, one in five is clinically diagnosed under the neurodivergent umbrella, but the number on that one study was half of people were self-identifying within that demographic group. That's a crazy discrepancy. So even if those numbers are slightly off one way or another, it's still suggestive of a massive gulf between clinical diagnosis, self-perceived diagno ... Self-perception. And it's not something frivolous. It's not something secondary. It's core. It's a core perception of who you are and how you process information and how you show up. So it would be almost negligent to ignore what people are saying about themselves in this kind of category.

(15:04):

And to crystallize this, to make this a little bit more real, I want to share an example from an activation we built for a global consultancy whose audience is almost exclusively C-suite-level IT executives. So this is an incredibly smart, very technical group of people, group of leaders, and they're at a conference where they're getting information delivered at them nonstop in the forms that you would expect senior leaders to get information delivered at them: it's keynotes, it's panels, really dense content blocks, everything you would expect for C-suite level attendees.

(15:41):

So with this space that we had in the expo for an activation, we didn't want to add more cognitive overload. We wanted to create space for individual moments to happen in an otherwise really high stimulus environment. So what we did was we designed an experience that took the form of a mixed media activation. We used Apple Vision Pros to let attendees step into a calm, quieter, fully realized luxury spaceport in the year 2045. Our client's prediction was that their research was that by 2045, 20% of people will be able to afford space travel. So for these attendees, they were part of that lucky 20%. They were boarding their flight to the moon. And on the way there, again, based on our client's research, we had a number of touchpoints. Life was happening around them that all spoke to some of their research points about things that will happen in the near future.

(16:36):

So this was a nearly five-minute experience that we were asking people to line up, to queue up for and sometimes wait for five or more minutes. And so just to double back, we're talking about C-suite-level IT attendees waiting in line for potentially five minutes and then go through this experience for almost five minutes. This is not something that traditionally you would suggest would be something that C-suite level people would do, but again, knowing what we know about the different types of brains that are hidden in plain sight within this audience, we felt like we had a good shot at this based on its storytelling ability, based on its laser focus on our client's business goals.

(17:19):

And for our client, getting a couple hundred people through this was a big win if we could really do that. We wound up getting over 700 people through it, and the big stat, the stat that I have strategically saved for this moment is that we had zero abandonment. So we had over 700 executives stand in line, participate fully active in this five-minute experience and we had zero abandonment. 8,000 interactions within there, all total zero abandonment. That's a crazy stat if you really think about it, but it just speaks to the diversity in the brains that are in that audience. For a subset of those attendees, this was the most engaging, the thing that they've been waiting for in an otherwise dense sea of activity. This was the one, a one-to-one experience within a headset where they could interact with the data, interact with the client's information at their own pace, not getting spoken to but being a participant in this information. So just an example of a real-world environment designed for people who are looking for a different type of experience.

Robb Trost (18:30):

I love that. Kat, question for you now. Explain to me why doesn't flashy tech impress audiences anymore.

Kat Tischler (18:38):

Tech is the most accessible when it starts to disappear into the background. It's doing its job when you don't see it. You just see the result of it. And we see this a lot in movies, television, films where the special effects are making it rain. Right? You don't under ... You're watching a scene, it's raining in it, you don't know that there's this huge production going on to make it rain.

(18:59):

I don't know if anyone has seen the Netflix film iHostage, but it's this film, it takes place completely in this Apple Store in Amsterdam. For whatever filming reasons, they couldn't actually film there. They couldn't shut down the store long enough. So they had to find this alternative solution. What they did is they built the set in this giant airplane hangar. I'm talking like 200 feet of LED screens curved, and then they built this digital twin that they projected on the screen, so it looks like, in real time, you are on the streets of Amsterdam. So in the final product, it looks like it was filmed on location. So that right there is a big large-scale production example of how tech is disappearing into the background.

(19:43):

Smaller scale, something we did recently for one of our tech clients, we built this product garden for them. The idea was to invite people to appreciate, take a breath, and appreciate the stillness. It was all about sustainability. It was built completely from sustainable products and that were these larger-than-life flowers. And it was a lot of whimsy that was introduced into this. So you would approach the bench and the lights would change, and the sound, you would start to hear the birds chirping, and it really transformed you into a different place. Right? So you're not seeing all that happen behind the scenes. You just hear the birds chirping and you see the lights go on. Right? So there were some great whimsical things on a little bit smaller, more intimate scale.

Robb Trost (20:29):

Authenticity is greater than the spectacle, is the key takeaway on that one. Rob, coming back to you now, what mindset shift do leaders need to make now with all of this information on hand?

Rob Deal (20:43):

I think first and foremost, we need to do our research. The last thing we ever want to do is make assumptions, because I think getting in, doing research and actually talking to human beings ... My favorite thing is observing the audience and eavesdropping on people and seeing what they like, what they didn't like. I always leave a keynote first before the audience does and lurk around the doors and listen to them coming out. But a lot of times, people are coming out and they're talking about, wow, that was really impactful for this reason. And I think that's invaluable as creative directors to observe the audience, to talk to people, to find out what was successful, what could have been maybe more optimized. I think it's important to be humble, to be authentic, to do a lot of observation, to not just sit there and think because this is what you do for a living, you're an expert at it, because honestly, it changes every single day.

Robb Trost (21:40):

That's great. When we think about the future of experience design, I'm hearing that you've boiled it down to three things - inclusivity, innovation and generational shifts. So making sure that we've done our research, we're being authentic, we are pursuing tech not for tech's sake, and we're making sure that we have all of our ducks in a row as far as achieving what we want to with our audience, and at the end of the day, being authentic to make sure that those moments matter.

(22:13):

Kat, I'd like to go back into and talk a little bit more about co-creators. Can you explain a little bit further as to what it means to be co-creators?

Kat Tischler (22:21):

I think as creative directors, our job is to draw inspiration from the world around us and that is the culture, we're talking about this generational shift, that that next generation is constantly building. What is this cultural movement? What's the next moment? What's happening? And I think that we can all take a note from the queen of cultural movements herself, Ms. Taylor Swift. Yes, I am a Swiftie. When she went and announced her latest album, all she did was she revealed the cover art. I think it was not even an hour before brands were jumping on that to join in the conversation and ride that cultural wave. I think it was Dunkin' where it was like "Me yesterday," regular orange Dunkin' logo, "Me today," sparkly orange Dunkin' logo. Right? They were all joining the conversation in a way ... Fans are already talking about it, but now, they're talking about it and donuts. Right? You're finding a way to get your brand in a relevant conversation.

(23:19):

I also actually saw recently my alma mater, shout out Bison, go Bison, 'ray Bucknell. Whoever's in charge of the social media feed there, kudos, well done. Every year, we know that Pantone releases their color of the year. This year, it was a little underwhelming. It was just an off-white color. I think it was Cloud Dancer. But the point is that Bucknell capitalized on that, and they did the social media post where they highlighted scenes of campus, little slices of life, and it showed the vibrancy of the students, the campus itself, campus life, but it put frames around the white paint of a building, Cloud Dancer, the telescope in a lab, Cloud Dancer. They were highlighting the snowy quad, just little pieces of campus life.

(24:08):

And I think as creative directors, what our job is take a step back and say, "Okay, that was a great one-time post. How do we turn this into a campaign that's going to ride this cultural movement but also help with a co-creation element?" So what if they did a call for submissions of photos saying, "Hey, everyone on campus, submit your pictures that highlight this color." Now, you're getting the audience involved in an organic way, in an authentic way to help feed the campaign all around this cultural moment.

Rob Deal (24:41):

Kat, that's a really fascinating take on co-creation. I know you just worked on a program where you really worked with your audience to be co-creators. Can you give us an example?

Kat Tischler (24:52):

Yeah, fan fest. Think of it as a Comic-Con for one specific game. It was a two-day conference, and we brought together 15,000 fans, and we built five in-game worlds in real life. Now, these fans, 15,000 of them were lined up for hours before doors even opened. And when they walked in, every single one of them phone up capturing every single moment. We're talking about digital natives, we're talking about the creator mindset baked in. This was creator-content heaven for them. Right? They came dressed in cosplay, putting themselves in these movie-style sets that we had created, these environments where they're seeing their real characters in game. So we designed for that specifically in mind.

(25:42):

So it's really interesting, one of the sponsorship consultants that we worked with reframed it for our team. He said, "Don't think of them as 15,000 fans or attendees. Think of them as 15,000 independent, unpaid media distributors." So that's exactly what they are. They're coming in creating content and exemplifying, amplifying your brand reach across social channels. So we designed for that. We created digital activations where people could gesture tech, select different accessories and characters from game they're posing an augmented reality with. All the way to the other end of the spectrum, we had 10 actors dressed up as non-player characters, NPCs from the game, fully scripted them on six side quests, sending people throughout on a photo scavenger hunt, just collecting content and posting about it nonstop on social channels. So when you're thinking about co-creating with your fans, it's what you said, Rob, you ought to go where they live and you got to design for what they want to do to give them that agency and those decisions to make it personalized.

Robb Trost (26:52):

We've talked a lot about how we address our audiences and how we're intentional and with a lot of best practices here with our creative team. Can you talk about some of our design imperatives that we use as we look at programs?

Rob Deal (27:06):

Yeah, sure. I think a lot of stuff that we've been talking today is really about your higher brain function, your frontal cortex. What I always like to talk about and remind people is that you've got this part of your brain called the amygdala, which is your lizard brain, and everything through your spinal cord goes through your amygdala first before it goes into your frontal cortex. So your amygdala is raw, it's emotion. That's where fight or flight is centered. That's where your desires are centered. The human animal loves beauty and loves symmetry, and that's hardwired into our brain. We don't like to be frightened. You can trigger that anxiety very quickly, and sometimes, just being in a big crowd or not knowing what's happening next can be a little anxiety-causing. So I think as we think about the attendee journey, I think the most emotionally resonant things that we can create are going to cause content to be retained by your frontal cortex.

(28:12):

I can use the example of when we do a pharma show, oftentimes we start with a patient story so that we can really talk about that person who's going through the experience that in many cases, some of the efficacies or drugs or treatments that a sales team might be talking about is really going to resonate with that and we create an emotion in the room. And then when we start to talk about the statistics of what's in the pipeline and what might be the chemistry of this particular drug or why it reacts to the human anatomy, which can be really dry, we've started that with the emotion of how it's going to affect so many people's health and wellbeing in the world. So that's a way to trigger the amygdala.

Robb Trost (28:58):

Amygdala, that is a $10 word for the day, which is as we look to everything that we've talked about today, it goes to Invision's core brand promise of how we own every moment. We believe the way modern audiences experience brands aren't linear, but it's a series of touchpoints, both big and small, that all add up somehow to how they perceive a brand. Each of these touchpoints, each of these moments are chances for brands to convey something. They're opportunities and they're very ownable. So when you look at audiences today, you start to see why this matters. Audience expectations are fracturing across cognition, culture, identity, and even generation, and all of this data is really quite striking.

(29:43):

Again, I'd like to thank my team, Kat, John, and Rob for joining us today. To all our listeners, thank you for joining us on Invision's Inside the Brand Experience. We appreciate you tuning in. Stay with us. Our next episode is coming soon.