Over twenty years ago, Joe Pine and his co-author Jim Gilmore predicted the rise of Experience Economy. A manner of value creation with personal experiences as the greatest differentiator. With hindsight we can say they were spot on. Experience as an economical offering has permeated in all domains of branding, marketing and organisational thinking. The book Worlds of Wonder by Erik Bär and Stan Boshouwers, their first handboek on Experience Design, explores the power of experiences for personal development and transformation that are, according to Pine, the final and last economical offerings in service design.

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Or at Amazon (USA: available from 9 April 2019) 

Modern organizations are increasingly looking for ways to engage their customers with authentic and heartfelt experiences. Experience Design (XD), the enterprise of creating immersive worlds around people seems to be the creative industry’s biggest star in the marketing firmament of today. From museums to theme parks and from A-brands to governments, everyone wants to use the art of creating spaces that tell a story. And no other medium is more promising in connecting people to stories, places and ideas. What is the story behind this movement? How did it evolve and what is the best way of navigating in this sector?

This revealing book is written by the founders of Tinker imagineers, one of the leading experience design agencies in Europe. In Worlds of Wonder the two pioneers reconstruct the past 25 years, showing how designed experiences came to be central in our lives. Spatial storytelling is as old as architecture itself and modern media technologies have given an impulse to its scale and expressive powers. The bigger the online world grows, the stronger becomes the need for actual spaces of wonder and imagination. People seek out those spaces to indulge in immersive experiences and social interaction. This book contains many examples, with the intention of giving a sense of what works and why, from the psychological foundations of consumer behaviour to practical steps to action. Larded with the light hearted history of the authors’ own XD-firm Tinker imagineers, one gets more than a feel for this way of work.  

“Decades into today’s experience economy, experience design remains very much an art rather than a science. Worlds of Wonder exemplifies the state of that art, providing a beautiful, insightful, and wonderful view of the design of experiences that engage, inspire, and even transform.”

– B. Joseph Pine II –
Co-author of The Experience Economy, Work is Theatre and every Business a Stage

The book is intended for everyone in the process of exposing their brand, art, history, or ideas about the future. And since it contains a first person account of discovering what XD is, Worlds of Wonder is of high value for students, professionals, their managers and clients active in experience design. 

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