Structure Before Inspiration Before diving into structure, In experience design, whether it be a culinary experience or otherwise, structure is what enables inspiration to take hold. Without structure, all of your big ideas are fighting to be heard, rather than working together. Even the best of ideas can fall flat without structure. Structure and creativity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, structure is a tool that enables creativity to deliver a clear message.
It gives you a place to start. When designing an experience, you have so many decisions to make. You need to decide on a location (or locations), a time of day (or night), the type of emotions you want to evoke, the contrast and cadence of the emotions throughout the experience, etc. Structure helps you to organize those decisions into a framework that you can mold and shape. It helps you to figure out what should come first, what should come next and why. This is not restrictive, but rather the opposite. You can now focus on the details rather than staring at a blank piece of paper.
It enables consistency. Now before you think I’ve lost my mind, hear me out. Consistency doesn’t mean doing the same thing over and over again. It means that there should be a through-line from one thing to the next. Just because you want to create contrast throughout your experience, it doesn’t mean that one thing shouldn’t inform the next. Structure helps you to achieve that consistency. It helps you to create an arc for your experience. Otherwise, you risk creating an experience where one thing feels disconnected from the last.
It allows you to create space for contemplation. I truly believe that one of the biggest mistakes made in experience design is the failure to create space for contemplation. When you have a solid structure in place, you can balance out the big moments with moments of respite. Those moments aren’t a void, they are a tool. They give your guests time to process what they just experienced and prepare for what is to come. Structure creates space for silence, anticipation and reset.
It enables you to take your inspiration and turn it into something real. Without structure, you don’t have an experience, you just have a series of ideas. Structure turns those ideas into an experience that you can share with others, repeat, reflect upon and improve upon. I didn’t say that structure restricts your creativity, I said it that it comes before inspiration. In a good experience, you never see the structure, but you feel it. And in the absence of structure, the experience will always feel a little improvisational.
