Feeling With: Consent in Experience Design

Experience Design is fundamentally built around rethinking the relationship between creator(s) and their audience. Where once an audience was seated and passive, experience design (and its many related practices like immersive theater, exhibition design, and experiential education, just to name a few) now expect audiences to become participants. Establishing consent is integral when developing interactive works. In this course, we’ll consider a host of ways to gauge consent, capacity, and willingness to participate in various kinds of experiences. How can designers create a sense of hospitality and care so that participants can have transformative experiences? If risk is often an element of transformative experiences, how can we create a foundation of trust and safe communication in order to build a space where risks can be taken? Together, we’ll think through sample experiences and how they might be shaped for better safety and care. This course is designed for artists, theatermakers, and experience designers who want to rethink the participatory and interactive elements of their work, and anyone that has relational components of their professional world (educators, executives, event producers, hospitality workers, etc). This workshop is facilitated by Odyssey Works Programs Co-Founder and Co-Director, Ayden LeRoux.