Designing Wonder: Experience as Innovation
How can we design experiences that stay with people? An exploration of wonder, memory and the role experience can play in innovation and connection.
Connected Worlds Exhibition, NY Hall of Science
More than a decade ago, I encountered a series of experiences that still shape how I lead and think. At the time, I was founding Mahuki, an innovation hub within Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum and the world’s first business accelerator for the culture and heritage sector.
Here’s what I encountered:
Museum Hack in New York — a renegade tour company reimagining museums through irreverent storytelling and radical personalisation. It was a masterclass in meaning-making and joyful democracy. While on my tour, I watched a pastor enthral his congregation with stories of the same art I was viewing but through his unique lens and beliefs. The multiplicity of storytelling. It was deeply moving.
Sleep No More — a dark, immersive theatre inspired by Macbeth. Audience members wandered a dreamlike, multi-story set wearing white masks. Each journey was different, but came together in a single, unforgettable crescendo. It was a bit sexy and at times scary and I felt incredibly uncool amongst the cool New York set. But it was intricate, beautifully set and high memorable.
MK Haley, a visiting Disney Imagineer who introduced the idea that design is not just about form or function it’s about feeling. She helped our accelerator participants see that joy, interaction, and even crowd movement are part of great design.
These experiences weren’t just fun. They taught me that people want to be immersed, to participate and to feel. That innovation and creativity doesn’t only happen in labs or sprints It lives in life and can be found in the most intriguing of places. And that’s why….
Wonder Works
How Meow Wolf built a playground for the imagination
Not long ago, I stood inside a former bowling alley in Santa Fe now one of the most radical immersive art spaces in the world: Meow Wolf.
The space was gifted by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin to a group of artists and dreamers. I met with founding CEO Vince Kadlubeck, who reflected that while they began by building something for their friends, they soon realised they were building something larger, a sustainable model that gave credibility and economic weight to artistic expression.
Meow Wolf has grown into a multi-city phenomenon that is part art collective, part economic engine, with plans to expand into global markets like Singapore. In Santa Fe alone, their presence was projected to generate $1.5 billion USD in economic impact over the next ten years (Forbes, 2021).
In late 2024, I visited two sites: House of Eternal Return (Santa Fe) and Convergence Station (Denver).
What I saw was unforgettable, part museum, part dreamworld, part choose-your-own-adventure. Built by hundreds of artists, it is pure activated imagination.
Innovation lessons for Aotearoa:
People crave authentic, immersive experiences — and not just kids. Adults want magic too.
Wild ideas work — Meow Wolf didn’t come from a boardroom. It came from creative chaos.
Storytelling and collaboration are economic engines — shared authorship builds scale.
If you build for wonder, people will come — especially when you respect imagination. Not only will they come but they will also create their own stories and memories from your stories.
It doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful — some parts of Meow Wolf were slick, others looked just like… art. Raw, playful, real. Authenticity beats polish.
It reminded me of homegrown creative leaps:
World of WearableArt (Nelson)
Māoriland Film Festival (Ōtaki)
A young Peter Jackson, re-making King Kong in Pukerua Bay with his mum’s fur coat.
These weren’t “business models.” They were visions and they scaled.
In an AI-saturated future, perhaps storytelling, culture, and imagination will be recognised not as soft or extra but as the final frontier.
The places AI can’t reach. The spaces only humans can make.
And humans love to be delighted….
Designing Delight: What a Disney Imagineer Taught Us
When MK Haley came to Aotearoa, she brought decades of insight from a place most of us associate with magic: Disney. Her key message was designing delight shouldn’t be limited to theme parks. It belongs everywhere.
We hosted MK at Te Papa for a workshop on how people feel in a space, service, or system matters as much as what it delivers. Every space is an experience, physical or digital, formal or informal.
· Small shifts can create deep impact and delight doesn’t need a massive budget.
· Cultural design is experience design, especially in Indigenous contexts.
· Joy is a strategic asset, it invites trust, participation, and memory.
MK reminded us that innovation isn’t just about solving problems. It’s about creating moments worth remembering.
Bird Island Principle: Engaging Your Stack
Engaging Your Stack - A term coined by the founders of Techstars (the blueprint we used to set-up business accelerators in NZ when I worked at Creative HQ incubator).
Every organisation has an innovation stack, the people, processes, mindsets, and tools that shape how ideas flow (or stall). To unlock it:
Make your challenges visible. Mahuki educated NZ’s innovation ecosystem about the challenges (and opportunities) of the culture and heritage sector. That beyond core purpose, they can be big businesses spanning everything from event management and ticketing, wayfinding, digital preservation, scientific research, catering and so on. That’s a lot of opportunities for the stack and most had no idea of the size and scope.
Invite others into the work (to help you solve your challenges). Mahuki created new partnerships and stakeholders (in particular with angel investors) and it also created new ways for the entire stack to engage with the museum and with the sector.
Offer meaningful ways to participate. Create opportunities for the stack to engage with one another - to collide, make connections and create magic.
Experiences like Meow Wolf, Museum Hack, and Sleep No More show how to activate the emotional, narrative, and human layers of the stack.
Innovation doesn’t always start with a spreadsheet. Sometimes it starts with delight.
“What might your organisation look like if it were designed to be felt?”
