Framework: The Four Realms of Transformation

Applying a classic framework to transformative experiences

I was recently updating my annotated Table of Contents for the book (still a work in progress) in response to an editor’s desire to make it clearer that readers will be learning how to guide transformations throughout the book. She felt like it seemed that all the how-to ideas were in the last chapter, tentatively entitled “Guiding Transformations”.

There are definitely learning and application opportunities in every chapter, but I didn’t get that across effectively. It caused me to make changes throughout, including moving some chapters around as I thought about how to make sure each chapter built on top of what came before (a subject for another day). But in thinking about this I realized that because transformations are built atop experiences, the core frameworks for designing engaging experiences of course apply to designing transformative experiences, and perhaps should be updated.

I actually already did that once already, intuitively, where I updated how experience stagers need to embrace dramatic structure with the one form of dramatic structure specific to transformations, The Hero's Journey (with a second post specifically to provide a real-world example of Applying the Hero's Journey).

Here in this post I’m updating our classic 4E model to see how hitting the sweet spot of the four realms applies to transformative experiences. I think there’s a lot of promise here, but it is lengthy and I’m not sure it should be in the book – unless the value it provides to transformation guiders is worth it.

So at the end, I ask my paid subscribers to please give me their feedback on this specific question, and their thoughts on the framework. Thank you.

Joe

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Outside of the Progression of Economic Value itself, the most used framework in The Experience Economy – and surely the most researched by academics with perhaps hundreds of journal articles using it to assess various experiences – is the four realms of experience, or as Jim Gilmore and I affectionately call it, our 4E model.[i]

The x-axis, from left to right, portrays the level of guest participation in any experience. This varies between passive, where you are not affecting the experience much, and active, where your participation decidedly affects the experience. Recognize, though, that no experience is ever 100% passive (you would be in a coma or at least unconscious) nor 100% active (you would have every neuron in your brain and every muscle in your body firing simultaneously).

The y-axis, from top to bottom, delineates the connection, or environmental relationship, that guests have with the experience, which could be one primarily of absorption, where the experience comes into you, or fundamentally one of immersion, where you go into the experience. As with the participation axis, this connection axis is a continuum with no hard boundary.

The Four Realms of Experience

These two axes then define four realms of experiences:

• Entertainment: where you passively absorb in the sights and sounds presented to you. Watching TV or movies, listening at concerts, taking in plays, and other such experiences take advantage of the entertainment realm. Such experiences engage audiences that enjoy the experience.

• Educational: where you actively engage with what is presented to you. Taking a class, listening to an informative presentation, or watching a video to figure out how to fix something (a specialty of our son-in-law Ryan), and other such experiences focus on the educational realm. Such experiences engross learners (a much more active term than “students”) that, naturally, learn from the experience.

• Escapist: where you actively join in the experience happening around you. Playing golf, skiing, touring a city or destination, and other such experiences involve the escapist realm. Such experiences involve participants that go to some location and do activities within it.

• Esthetic: where you passively immerse yourself in a place. Walking in a park, visiting a museum, sitting in a café, and other such experiences gain from the esthetic realm. Esthetic experiences connect with – well, there isn’t a perfect word as with the other three, so I’ll just say connect with selves that sit down, hang out, and just be in the experience.

And to be very clear (so very many of the academic articles mentioned above get this wrong): we do not use the term “esthetic” merely to enable us to call this our 4E model. This realm is simply not (just) about aesthetic experiences – which refers to the philosophical study of beauty – but the esthetic realm of experiences, which is an architectural term describing the built environment, the place in which one is immersed.[ii] (Even if it is a natural environment, such as a canyon or forest, for there are always things an experience stager, such as a tour guide or even the experiencer yourself, can do to enhance the esthetic value of being there).

Hitting the Sweet Spot of the Experience

While the examples given for each realm above all have their “center of gravity” in particular quadrants of the framework, all four experience realms are always in play, and in fact should be factored into the design of virtually all experiences. For the most engaging, the most memorable, the most robust experiences richly draw from all four realms by hitting the “sweet spot” in the center. While escape rooms, for instance, clearly have a center of gravity in the escapist realm, participants immerse themselves in a place designed with a theme whose esthetic elements create a desire to come in, and then have to learn how to escape through exploration of those elements, all the while being entertained by watching fellow participants, and themselves, repeatedly and often failing attempts to solve the puzzles required to escape the room.

So in whatever experience you design and stage – whether memorable, meaningful, transporting, or transformative – richly consider all four realms of experience by asking yourself these questions:

• Entertainment realm: What can be done to make the experience more fun and enjoyable?

• Educational realm: What do you want guests to learn from exploring new activities?

• Escapist realm: Where may guests go, and what then can they do to become active participants?

• Esthetic realm: What can be done to make guests want to come in, sit down, hang out, and just be?

By incorporating elements across all four realms of the experience you hit the sweet spot in the middle of them, and thereby make your experience much more robust, and usually more meaningful, particularly if you customize elements across these realms to individual guests.

It’s easiest to employ all four realms by cycling through them, where guests can experience elements from each across their experience. While I have not been there in ages, one of my favorite experiences in the world, Jin Li Street in Chengdu, China, exemplifies this (as well as so many other principles of experience design and rendering authenticity[iii]). It’s center of gravity lies in the escapist realm, for it is a world apart from the modern city of Chengdu, as once you enter its gates emblazoned with the two Chinese characters “Jin” and “Li” you are transported back in time to the period of the three kingdoms (220-280 AD). While the shopping street looks as if it has always been there – an oasis in the middle of the city – it in fact rose from the dirt in part due to funding from a nearby museum on this period in China’s history. Its meaningful purpose entails saving the ancient handcrafts from the Szechuan province and the modern artisans who carry on these trades.

Jin Li Street further extends the escapist realm with, for example, games that you can play that were popular almost 1,800 years ago. The esthetic environment – again, built from scratch – so immerses you in the era, especially at night when lantern lights fill your view from above. And one part of the street that precedes the place incorporates deep-rooted temple gardens that bestow a respite for your day, while also being the home for such entertainment offerings as a flautist playing period-specific music pieces. Puppetry and other shows also involve elements from the entertainment realm, while the many educational elements include information, exhibits, and interactions on both the time of the three kingdoms and the modern artisans in the shops, from whom you can buy goods made right there, such as clothing handcrafted on looms.

There is one activity when all four realms come together simultaneously to hit the sweet spot

So while you can easily encounter elements from each realm in any visit to Jin Li Street, there is one activity – the place’s signature moment – when all four realms come together simultaneously to hit the sweet spot: the daily parade. (It’s just like the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Walt Disney World, except less modern and, you know, not at all Disney.) Here, guests escape further into the time of the three kingdoms while watching characters come alive. They actively participate in the show and its movements, learning more about the period and what people did there, while enjoying the people-watching of fellow guests and hanging out with their friends, family, and characters. It is passive and active, absorptive and immersive all in the same place at the same time. That’s truly hitting the sweet spot.

The Four Realms of Transformation

With transformations built atop experiences, there are naturally four realms of transformation built atop and intertwined with the four realms of experiences. For each realm lends itself to a particular kind of transformation, and taking into account all four realms – no matter where your center of gravity might lie – will enable you to hit the sweet spot to offer more robust transformations.