Experiencer Design: Reclaiming Agency in a Designed World | Carlos Pompa | TEDxKigali
Carlos Pompa argues that experience designers focus narrowly on objectives and personas while ignoring the 'upstream' impact their designs have on individuals as experiencers. He introduces the concept of 'experiencer design' — the idea that designed experiences are actively shaping how people experience life — and calls on designers and consumers alike to become more conscious of this dynamic.
Summary
Carlos Pompa opens by observing that designed experiences permeate daily life, from the moment people check their phones to how they connect with friends and family digitally. He explains the standard experience design loop: designers set an objective (e.g., increase retention, clicks, or sales), define a persona as a synthesis of the target audience, and then continuously iterate on the experience to reach those objectives — a cycle visible in the constant updates users see in apps.
Pompa then introduces what he calls the central 'blind spot' in this process: the actual human being behind the persona. Using an analogy from a water treatment engineer, he explains that while it seems intuitive that what goes downstream is gone and irrelevant, in engineering every downstream device affects what happens upstream. He applies this to design: designers are so objective-obsessed that they never look 'upstream' at how the designed experience is affecting the individual as an experiencer.
To deepen the concept of 'experience,' Pompa draws on a quote from the historic Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama): 'In the seen, there is only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the cognized, only the cognized.' He illustrates this through sensory experiments — closing one's eyes to hear without projecting images, or muting sound to observe visuals without connecting them — to show how the mind integrates separate sensory channels into one unified experience. He argues this integration means that what we experience shapes us as experiencers, creating a feedback loop.
Bringing this back to design, Pompa coins the term 'experiencer design' to describe the phenomenon where designed experiences are not just products people use, but forces that shape how people experience life itself. Because this dynamic is ignored, a vacuum exists that gets filled by incentives, algorithms, or defaults rather than intentional human-centered consideration.
He closes with three calls to action: (1) start talking about this blind spot publicly, (2) urge designers to think beyond objectives and consider the lasting impact of repeatedly-used experiences on people, and (3) encourage consumers to pause after engaging with designed experiences and check in with how they feel — energized or depleted. Pompa's central conviction is that the only person who should be designing how you experience life is you.
Key Insights
- Pompa argues that the standard experience design process — objectives, persona, iterative experience loop — contains a critical blind spot: it ignores how the designed experience is shaping the actual individual behind the persona.
- Drawing on a water treatment engineering analogy, Pompa claims that just as downstream devices affect upstream ones, designed experiences have 'upstream' effects on individuals that designers consistently fail to examine.
- Pompa invokes the Buddha's teaching that each sensory channel (seen, heard, cognized) exists independently, and argues that the mind's integration of these channels into a unified experience means that what we experience actively reshapes us as experiencers in a continuous feedback loop.
- Pompa warns that because the impact on the experiencer is an unaddressed vacuum in design, it tends to be filled by external forces — algorithms, incentives, or defaults — rather than by conscious human intention.
- Pompa contends that while systemic change from designers may take time, individuals can reclaim agency right now by pausing after design experiences to consciously assess how they feel — a simple act he frames as becoming a more active, self-determining experiencer.
Topics
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