Tarot lessons for experience design

On a recent trip to London I booked myself a Tarot experience on Airbnb. I’m not that much of an esoteric person. But I had heard that many people found the experience transformative, so I had to know what it was all about.

Two criminal psychology Phd’s joined me for the session and together we took a 6 hour deep-dive into the world of Tarot. Our tutor explained the details of every card and we ended the session with a reading for each of us.

Against our own expectations, we were all amazed with the accuracy and helpfulness of the cards to the questions we faced in our lives. In fact, we all agreed that if we hadn’t just been trained, it would have seemed like ‘magic’.

I will not take you through the intricacies of Tarot. For that I recommend you book your own experience. (it’s educational, but above all good fun).

Meanwhile, here’s what I learned:

#1. Archetypes are great shorthand to convey character.

In Tarot there is a set of cards which is called the ‘Major Arcana’. These are 22 cards that feature highly archetypical characters. There is the Magician. The Lovers. The Hermit. The Devil. The Fool. The Priestess. Death.

While it takes some effort to interpret all the symbolisms on each card, it was remarkable how quickly we understood the various aspects of their personality. Purely because of our familiarity with the (story) archetype they represented. On a side note, this is also why Carl Jung got pretty excited about the Tarot.

Experience design/storytelling lesson learned

While archetypes leave limited room for nuance, they are a great way to convey a complex character in a matter of seconds. If you have little time, stick with an archetype and it’s hard to go wrong. Tip: for a list of 99 archetypes (beyond Tarot) check out this article on Screencraft.

#2. Let audiences tell their own story.

In Tarot, there is a saying that ‘the cards don’t lie’. But in the eyes of a scientist, this is statement is blatantly wrong. After all, the cards don’t really say anything at all. They’re just randomly drawn pieces of cardboard with beautiful prints.

But the cards can be ‘heard’ in a way that feels true to the person being read. They can act as intelligent (story) prompts that help you tap into a personal and intuitive narrative around the challenges you face. Combined with the right questions from the tarot ‘reader’ this helps you switch off the rational answers to the questions you face and discover the more intuitive answers that you may face.

Yes, I know this sounds woolly, but if you go through it yourself, you’ll know what I mean.

Experience design/storytelling lesson learned

Stories that your audience tell themselves have more meaning than any other. So when creating experiences (or telling stories) less can be more. Just like every good author knows that audiences ‘paint’ the story of a book in their mind’s eye, immersive experiences can also benefit by not giving it all away. By letting audiences project their own thoughts and ideas on the environment and then come to their own conclusions.

#3. You can script suspension of disbelief.

Tarot only works if you’re willing to at least suspend some of your disbelief and surrender to the randomness of the cards.

With our audience, this was an interesting challenge. Just as a reminder, we were two criminal psychology PhD’s who were there as part of their studies and myself, a customer experience hunter with sceptic of all things paranormal.

While we were all willing subjects, you didn’t really have a group ready to depart on cloud nine because someone told us. But when we had our cards read at the end of the session, none of us was immune to the magic in the air.

We knew what was happening and why it was happening. And still the room, the smell of Palo Santo, the ‘magical’ address, the friendly but also eccentric personality of our reader and the cards immersed us in the experience. While part of our brains remained analytical, we were all touched by the magic of the cards.

Experience design/storytelling lesson learned

If your environment is consistent with the experience you are trying to provide, even the most logical of us can suspend disbelief. Especially because — in our hearts — we all want to. The set design need not be elaborate or expensive. The red wizard robe worn by our reader wouldn’t be credible on any traditional theatre stage. But in the context of the intimate tarot session, it felt authentic, consistent and honest. If you make the effort to create the audience’s stage, they will fill in the gaps.

#4. Story drives value

It’s clear from the previous lessons that the day was as much about the ability of people to project stories as it was about Tarot. Unrelated to the cards this was brilliantly illustrated by an exercise in which we were presented with a number of trinkets with no obvious value (some old rings, some coins, a piece of paper, …).

But as we looked at some, their value started increasing with every story that was told about them. What if that unobtrusive coin was actually the last coin of its kindever minted? What if the plastic ring we were holding was a forgotten gift for someone who wanted to please a loved one?

I’m sure that our host invented some of these tales. But somehow this didn’t matter. Because those trinkets that had been ‘touched by stories’, started living their own life. It transformed them into something more valuable than the other objects we could have picked.

Experience design/storytelling lesson learned

You can rapidly increase the emotional value of any object, by giving it a credible (back)story. Inside the experience, this can give extra meaning to any props you use. But it can also be a brilliant way to let your guests take home something of value, without breaking the bank.

#5. Lessons don’t need to be taught

I’ll write more about this in a separate post, but there is one big learning I’ve had over the past year, and which was apparent again in my Tarot experience. This is that lessons don’t need to be taught to be effective. Or at least they don’t need to be taught in the traditional manner of someone telling you how something should be done.

In fact, NOT explaining what happens, and letting the audience figure it out for themselves, can be much more powerful. In this case, my main takeaway was about the power of projection. As humans, we continuously project stories. We do it to Tarot cards, but also to the objects, people, situations and environments that surround us. To rings, coins and trinkets. To each other. And finally, to ourselves.

But it’s remarkable that — thinking back — we never explicitly discussed this during the afternoon. There was no ‘lesson’ about projection. Instead, the topic was woven through the different experiences. Through little statements by our host (‘surely, that compliment you just gave her is just projecting your own beliefs and standards’). These clues have come together in my head as a lesson which would take a book to describe, but which I know intuitively know to be true.

Experience design/storytelling lesson learned

If you want to teach others, think about ‘not teaching’. Think about ways in which you can offer them experiences which allow them to reach their own conclusion. This will be much harder on yourself, as it is a lot easier to ‘impart wisdom by PowerPoint’. But the impact of the lessons learned will be much bigger and last a lot longer.

© Alain Thys, 2019 — all rights reserved.