Frequently asked questions

We're an experience architecture & participation-first design practice. We clarify the change an experience is meant to make more likely in the people who move through it, design the conditions that invite it, and engineer the systems that keep those conditions alive. We can perform creative ideation with our participation-first, visitor empowering design philosophy, or simply support your existing creative partners with the experiential architecture and scaffolding that tracks and protects creative intent. In practice that means technical consulting, strategy and evaluation, and creative leadership for museums, themed entertainment, and immersive venues.

Any designed experience operates on three layers. The primary layer is what you build. The secondary layer is what visitors do. The tertiary layer is what visitors carry forward, the lasting change in how they feel afterward, what they understand, and what they do differently once they leave. Most experience design focuses on the first, measures the second, and hopes for the third. We design for the third.

Yes. The practice is taking new engagements. Start with a conversation. If you want a smaller first step, an Experience Audit, a workshop that clarifies the change before design commits, or a plan review is usually the right size.

The company is incorporated in the United States. The principal is based in Wellington, New Zealand. The work is global, and always has been.

With a conversation, then with clear scoping. We define deliverables and costs before work begins. No ambiguity about what you're getting or what it costs. An Experience Audit, a workshop, or a plan review is often the right first yes.

An owner's rep sits on your side of the table. We review integrator, contractor, and creative partner work against your design intent, so the thing you're paying for is the thing you get. If your project involves multiple vendors and you don't have deep systems expertise in house, you need one.

No. We design systems and oversee integration partners through commissioning. Staying out of the integration business is what keeps our specifications vendor neutral and our recommendations honest.

Yes. Plan review is built for exactly this. We review the planned systems against the design intent and tell you where the plan falls short, where the intent asks more than the systems can deliver, and where both can be pushed further.

No. We lead, translate, or advise depending on what the project needs. The practice is built on understanding both how creative teams think and how technical systems deliver, and most of our value lives in that gap.

No. We lead, translate, or advise depending on what the project needs. Most of the value sits in the gap between creative intent and technical delivery. The practice is complementary to studios, makers, and integrators, not a rival bidder for their scope.

Alongside, on a defined workstream. You invent and make. We clarify the change that work is meant to make more likely, keep that intent through design and fabrication, and leave operations with a way to protect it after handover. We do not replace your creative leadership.

No. The best work starts when intent is still movable. We are not a substitute for planning or a cleanup crew for a plan that was never made. When the ambition is real and the seam between intent and delivery still needs to be found, that is the right call.

A way of designing experiences backward from the change that actually matters. Any designed experience operates on three layers. We design for the tertiary, what visitors carry forward, from the first conversation. The full method is set out in The Tertiary Effect, forthcoming late 2026.

Yes, though not with exit surveys and dwell time, and not with the same assurance as calculating if a beam can carry a load. Transformation is private, often delayed, and it resists the instruments institutions usually run on. Signal-based measurement, paired with machine learning trained on the language of transformation, turns faint and scattered signals into something you can act on. Without surveilling anyone.

No. The method scales because it's a way of making decisions, not a line item. Naming the change an experience is meant to make more likely sharpens a small project as much as a large one. Some of the most effective moves it produces cost nothing to build.

Neither position survives contact with a real project. Used well, AI and machine learning are additive: more ways for different people to find meaning in the same environment, less staff time lost to the tedious, more capacity to adapt when the day does not go as drawn. Technology should empower the people inside the experience, not extract from them. Where it widens discovery and dignity, we design with it. Where it manufactures emotion or surveils, we design around it.

Visitors should be recognized by an experience without being identified or tracked by it. That is recognition without identification: session bounded data, aggregate sensing, no covert biometrics. It's a design position rather than a compliance posture, and it produces better experiences, because a visitor who trusts the room opens to it.

No. We're hardware and software agnostic on purpose. We specify and recommend based on the project, not on partnerships, and we don't take referral fees.

That is a service we offer. We evaluate whether the technology belongs in the experience, how it might be applied, and what guardrails keep it responsible. Ask what it makes possible for the visitor that wasn't possible before, what it takes from them, and who it's really for. If the pitch answers the first question with a feature list, the second with silence, and the third with "marketing," you already have a signal. We can run the full evaluation with you.

Living documentation that connects systems to creative intent is already part of how we deliver. In development: the Experience Operations Platform, a knowledge system for operators when something fails, and the Experience Performance Platform, an inspector for experience quality against creative intent. Conversation welcome.

Anyone who creates experiences meant to change people rather than just satisfy them. Museums and cultural institutions, theme parks and themed entertainment, brand and experiential work, immersive and location-based experiences. If you've built something and sensed the gap between what you made and what you hoped would happen, it's for you.

The Tertiary Effect is forthcoming late 2026, in paperback and hardcover. We'll share how to get a copy when purchase opens.

Yes. The book sets out the method. What an engagement adds is application: our hands on your specific project, systems, and team.