Experience Design in Leisure and Recreation Curriculum

Abstract

Experience design is a term that has risen to the forefront in a variety of professional fields and has relevance for the field of park and recreation. Park and recreation professionals are primarily focused on providing experiences and thus could naturally consider themselves experienced designers. Surprisingly, experience design is not a topic often discussed within park and recreation publications or curriculum. This absence is at least in part attributable to the fact that experience design is an emerging field that has grown independently out of multiple disciplines. Consequently, the fields of park and recreation and experience design overlap in a variety of mutually beneficial ways which deserve further consideration. The purpose of this paper is to provide leisure educators a brief introduction to the practice of experience design and present information drawn from experience designers across a variety of fields about the skills, certifications, and resources necessary to become an experienced designer.

Keywords:

• Experience design
• experience designers
• experience economy
• park and recreation professionals
• professional development