Discovery's "Life" Premiere as Event Design

Last night's (March 10, 2010) premiere of Discovery's new series "Life" offered not only an excellent preview but also some great lessons on event design, and thus learning experience design. If educators paid as much attention to the design of their experiences as Discovery did to this event, learning would be a whole lot more engaging...

So I had a very interesting experience last night: a friend invited me to attend Discovery networks' premiere of their upcoming series "Life." The venue (Mellon Auditorium) was fabulous; the screen was huge and high resolution; the videography was absorbing (very engaging; premieres March 21; don't miss it); the appetizers were tasty and festive; the whole experience was engaging. Oprah Winfrey narrates the series; and the music for the event was supplied live - by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. How cool was that? It was very cool.

But here's the thing. For long stretches, I watched the highly engaging video and forgot I was listening to live music. It's not that the 'cool factor' disappeared - in fact, it was very cool to focus for a moment now and then on the experience of listening to live music played by an entire orchestra. But as a whole, the live orchestra was overkill - superfluous, and ultimately distracting in that if I focused on the orchestra, I missed what was on screen. It was a great one-time experience, but it also shows why records, cassettes, CDs etc. have caught on - I couldn't even fit the string section in my house. ;-)

The food at the reception afterwards was more entertaining than the speakers - I remarked to my friend how odd it was that they insisted on giving speeches, even short ones, when their video content spoke so much more eloquently. And we spent a good portion of the evening trying to figure out who the invitees were - lots of diplomats, surely many Discovery employees, but who else? We could have gone up to strangers and asked them, but we decided to focus on the appetizers instead.

The point of this story? An engaging and successful learning experience focuses on what the designer views as important. In this case, except for the speeches, Discovery did an excellent job with its event design: even with a live symphony orchestra, the video (soon to be TV) program was figural; everything else was designed to set it off well - even the speeches did so if inadvertently by demonstrating how much more engaging the video was relative to the speakers. Interpersonal interaction was in the background; meeting new people required extra effort and was not really the point; the event was all about the video.

If educators paid as much attention to the design of their experiences as Discovery did to theirs, learning would be a whole lot more engaging. You may say that this statement is unfair; after all, what educators have the resources to match the Discovery networks? That's true - but no one is asking educators to match the production values of a Discovery TV program. What I am asking is for educators to pay more attention to how their learning experiences are designed. If you had to design a learning experience more or less from scratch, how would you do it? What would it look like? My guess is that would look rather different from a standard classroom lecture. Of course, we don't have to guess; we can look at the work of those online educators who have taken some time to reflect on this question and have come up with some interesting answers. Much more is needed, but looking at a learning experience in terms of event design is one good starting point...