The 5E Experience Design Model

The process through which it was created is an instance of what’s called co-design: the ideas belong to the group, and the end product is the result of an interactive social process. It’s also an instance of what design researcher Ezio Manzini calls “diffuse design”—where the work is “put into play by non-experts with natural designing capacity,” a

Learning experiences are like journeys. The journey starts where the learner is now, and ends when the learner is successful (however that is defined). The end of the journey isn’t just knowing more, it’s doing more.

the goal of good learning design is for learners to emerge from the learning experience with new or improved capabilities that they can take back to the real world and that help them do the things they need or want to do.

We introduced the idea of life design in this book by telling you five simple things you need to do: (1) be curious (curiosity), (2) try stuff (bias to action), (3) reframe problems (reframing), (4) know it’s a process (awareness), and (5) ask for help (radical collaboration).

The AEIOU framework comes from Dev Patnaik, Needfinding: Design Research and Planning (Amazon’s CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013).

Prototyping the life design way is all about asking good questions, outing our hidden biases and assumptions, iterating rapidly, and creating momentum for a path we’d like to try out.