
BECOME A CERTIFIED EXPERIENCE DESIGNER
Master the art of experience design1 with the Experience Design Certificate Program from Odyssey Works. Enroll in our 10-month, low-residency program, join an ENGAGED and dynamic community and become a certified experience designer.
Applications open summer 2026
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EXPERIENCE DESIGN is a revolutionary way of designing focused on the experience of the audience.It has the power to transform any art or design practice that involves humans.

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ODYSSEY WORKS has been at the forefront of transformative experience design for over two decades and has worked with employees at Facebook, Apple, Nike, The Stanford D-School, and countless others. With our program, you will gain access to the expertise of our experienced instructors, Abraham Burickson and Ayden LeRoux, who have written the books that define the field, lectured and led workshops at some of the most prestigious universities and organizations worldwide.
The Experience Design Certificate Program from Odyssey Works2 is a 10-month, LOW-RESIDENCY program designed to transform you into a cutting-edge designer of powerful experiences. The program offers personalized education with MENTORSHIP, feedback, and community building. It provides a broadly applicable and RIGOROUS design methodology that equips students with the tools they need to create innovative experiences.
Applications open summer 2026


Program Curriculum
In order to be able to understand how design affects experience, research must combine traditional methodologies with lived experience. For an in-depth look at the Ten Principles of Experience Design, visit this page.
In order to be able to understand how design affects experience, research must combine traditional methodologies with lived experience.
Experience design is both a profession and a way of making within any practice. Great experience designers are sought-after professionals and revolutionary thinkers.
Starting in 2026, students in the program will receive memberships to the WXO, allowing them access to live and archived "campfires" to keep you on the cutting edge of the industry, discounted tickets to the WXO summit, and connection to the worldwide community of Experience Economy professionals.
Applications open summer 2026

Schedule
Weekly Classes in Small Groups
Career & Personal Transformation
Students will take a weekly course online and receive MENTORSHIP from our instructors. The program will be bookended by in-person weekend intensives. Students will leave the program with two COMPLETED portfolio projects.
Retreat 1
Jan 30 - feb 1, 2026
Cragsmoor, New York
Session 1
Feb 3 - may 12, 2026
Weekly Classes Online
Students will be sorted into one of two cohorts that meet the same day every week and are assigned upon acceptance. You may note on your application if you are unavailable for one of the slots. One cohort will meet Tuesdays 2-5 pm EST, the other cohort will meet Wednesdays from 12-3 EST (New York Time)
In-Person Session
Variable Dates
In-Person Session
Students are required to attend one other in-person session. This may include weekend intensives, the family reunion, the WXO Summit, or a self-organized session with other students.
Research session
June - august
Lived Research Session
Self-directed, with weekly accountability group meetings in June and July.
Session 2
September - November
Weekly Classes Online
One cohort will meet Tuesdays 2-5 pm EST, the other cohort will meet Wednesdays from 12-3 EST (New York Time).
Retreat 2
Public Presentation & Graduation
Nov 20 - 23, 2026
New York City
Final projects will be presented to a ticketed public in New York City. Certificates awarded.
Student Showchase
Graduates leave the program not only with a MASTERY of the practices of experience design, but work to prove it. Their two portfolio projects span the digital and the physical, guided by PERSONALIZED mentorship and the excitement of a public presentation in New York City.
Applications open summer 2026

PURPOSE
Experience design is a professional practice, but it is also a means of thinking broadly about your effect on the world. The experience design process, anchored by Phase Zero, builds a question of purpose2 into any project. Your project may be as small as dinner or as large as a nation state; if you approach it from an experience design point of view, you are approaching it with purpose.
Our programs are community-driven because the development of IDEAS never happens in a vacuum. Because we approach this practice as an evolving conversation, our students remain in community with us long after the programs are done.
Applications open summer 2026
FAMILY REUNION
entire island in Connecticut for the weekend to share projects, skills, dreams, and share good-old fashioned dinner conversation.AUG 22-25th, 2025 // Laurel Island

Instructors
For more than TWENTY YEARS — since before “experience design” was a popular term — Odyssey Works has been researching and innovating experiential practices3. Committed to creating an “infinitely more affected audience”, we understand experience design to be a MODE of practice rather than a technique, and have honed a vision for collaboration, experimentation, creative rigor, and empathy-centered making.
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With international acclaim for our work, three books, dozens of lectures, and a history of pioneering pedagogy, the Experience Design Certificate Program is our invitation to reimagine the world together.

ABRAHAM BURICKSON Co-Founder of Odyssey Works and Co-Director of the Experience Design Certificate Program, has spent more than two decades exploring the relationship between what we make and how it is experienced. Trained in architecture at Cornell University and in poetry and playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, he has also studied the transformative power of designed experience with the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and with countless artists, designers, and students through Odyssey Works. He is also the founder of The Long Architecture Project, which rethinks architectural practice from the perspective of Experience Design. He has won prizes, lectured and taught widely, given a TEDxtalk, and was once hired by German television to kidnap an American skateboarding champion. His book on Experience Design was published by Yale University Press in 2023.

AYDEN LEROUX is the Co-Director of Odyssey Works and Co-Founder of the Experience Design Certificate Program. An advocate of interdisciplinary and genre-defying creative work, she holds art and writing degrees with extraordinarily long titles from New York University and University of California San Diego. She writes extensively about disability and sexuality, and her essays, fiction, and criticism have been published widely. Her praxis is informed by experience in artist collectives, worker-owned cooperatives, and farming, and seeks to cultivate radical hospitality, GENEROSITY, and intimacy. When she was eight, she told her parents she wanted to dress up as a painter for Halloween. Thinking she meant house painter rather than fine art painter, they unwittingly opened a decades-long existential inquiry about the intersection of domestic life and creative practice.

BROOKE VIEGUT is a narrative-driven experience designer, audience-centric theater maker, design critic, donut connoisseur, collector of silly little things, educator, and the creative lead at for play.
Working at the intersection of play, community, ephemerality, and radical joy, their multidisciplinary approach has created work for audiences of 30 to 3,000. Past collaborators include Mailchimp/Invisible North, Tribeca X, De Niro Con, Emursive/The McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep No More), 3D Tech Fest, RWS Global, Virgin Voyages, National Audubon Society, and Historic Hudson Valley among others.
Brooke will be faculty for the full 2026 year.

KRISHNAN UNNIKRISHNAN's journey to remix oral storytelling tradition through modern technology has thrust him onto an uncharted path of interdisciplinary and emerging mediums including XR, live roleplaying, collaborative ritual-making, and generative AI art. Crafting hi-tech make-believe with embodied stagecraft, he invites you to participate in emergent community experiments for personal and cultural transformation through the sacred power of play.

TIU DE HAAN (she/her) is a ritual designer, creative facilitator and idea doula, specializing in reminding people how to shift their perspective to see the magic in the MUNDANE. She works with individuals, teams and global organizations helping people connect to their creativity and wake up their sense of wonder. Learn more: https://www.tiudehaan.com/

Amy Segreti is a certified experience designer (OW '22), artist, mentor and relational wayfinder who uses experience design principles to admit more love in the moment. Through her creative consultancy, Our Circuitries, she works with individuals and partnerships — in love and in business — transforming flat encounters into right-sized connections through presence, invitation and devotion.
Her methodology draws from over a decade of direct study with visionary leaders in experience design, Jungian psychology, and relational counseling, including Third Rail Projects, Esther Perel, Authentic Relating International, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and of course, Odyssey Works. Her talks/workshops on relational alchemy are featured on TED.com and at the annual WXO Summits and WXO Campfires.

BARB GROTH is founder and creative director of the Nomadic School of Wonder, a traveling troupe of wondermakers who create “adventures in awe” rooted in nature, art, COMMUNITY and play. Barb has led creative teams at the most imaginative and iconic brands on the planet — Walt Disney Imagineering, Google, Alphabet and Meow Wolf.

ERIC CLOUGH is the founder of 212box, a multidisciplinary ARCHITECTURE and design firm known for innovative projects like the "Mystery on Fifth Avenue" apartment and numerous Christian Louboutin boutiques. Educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University, Clough integrates elements of architecture, product DESIGN, and art into his transformative designs.

LAURA HALL is an artist, writer, puzzle-maker, immersive and narrative designer living in Portland, Oregon, where they create video games, immersive experiences, and escape rooms. She is the author of Katamari Damacy for Boss Fight Books and Planning Your Escape for Simon & Schuster.

Lea Redmond seeks the extraordinary hiding in the ordinary and wants to share it with you. She makes things, books, and activities that invite humans of all ages to be CURIOUS, PLAYFUL, AND KIND. Lea is the author of Knit The Sky, Wonder Hunt, Paint Chip Poetry, and the bestselling Letters To My… series of keepsake journals. As the Postmaster of the world’s smallest post service, she has charmed thousands with her tiny mail transcriptions. Lea gathers people for workshops, letter writing, and other creative services in her Tearoom of a Thousand Wonders in Oakland, California. Keep in touch at LeaRedmond.com.

Lynn Kiang is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Arts in London. She is co-founder of Dome, a multi-disciplinary design studio founded in Brooklyn. She previously led teams in experience design at SYPartners, collaborating with strategists and company leaders in transforming their brand. She was a designer at Local Projects, overseeing graphic, interaction, and media design for museums and cultural institutions. Her work has received numerous awards and recognition including from Communication Arts, D&AD, Art Directors Club, Core77, Print Magazine, Type Directors Club, SEGD, ASLA, and AIGA.

Matthew Purdon is Founder, CEO & Chief Creative Officer at Woander World, where he develops premium, family-first immersive experiences including Wylding Woods. A pioneer of participatory storytelling, he co-founded Odyssey Works with Abe Burickson and created The Campus Beat, the first improvised, interactive sitcom for the web in association with ImprovOympic & Del Close.

MEGAN LIVINGSTON works to create meaningful and transformative experiences through individual and collaborative work in Baltimore City — she is currently seeking LIBERATION frames everywhere she looks, so that she can build on a practice of self-transformation and usher in a praxis of worldbuilding, not for the sake of narrative or entertainment, but to contribute to the MANIFESTATION of a world we might all actually want to live in. She is a Core Creator with Submersive Productions, a company member with The Acme Corporation, an Odyssey Works Advisory Board member, Communications Manager for The Baltimore Rock Opera Society, and the Program Manager at 901 Arts. IG: @meganlivingstonlives

RACHEL EVE GINSBERG is a strategist and experience designer who consults on initiatives of all kinds, from large scale research projects through designing programs that connect strategy to tactics. Rachel is particularly passionate about PROTOTYPING collaborative approaches to community engagement and connecting artists and makers to cultural organizations to explore big ideas together.

Risa Puno is a NYC-based interactive installation artist who takes play seriously. She is known for crafting DISARMINGLY PLAYFUL experiences that explore human connection, social dynamics, and shared interactions through site-specific public artworks, games, and participatory design.

TASSOS STEVENS is director and ceo of Coney, an arts and social change charity making all kinds of play to spark change. He is writing a Playbook, to which you can subscribe.

ZACH MORRIS is a director, choreographer, experience designer, and Co-Artistic Director of the internationally acclaimed Third Rail Projects. Zach's work includes theater, dance, site-specific performance, multimedia installation art/environments, and he is particularly interested in how all of these intersect with audience-centered experiential gatherings.
Payment Plans
INCLUDES books and a materials stipend for the final portfolio project. Students are responsible for their own travel and accommodations for the weekend intensives. No transaction fees. (includes a $2,000 deposit due at acceptance)
Divide tuition into THREE payments throughout the program. $3,217 per installment (+$2,000 deposit due at acceptance). Including transaction fee.
INCLUDES books and a materials stipend for the final portfolio project. Students are responsible for their own travel and accommodations for the weekend intensives. No transaction fees. (includes a $2,000 deposit due at acceptance)
EU/UK
*Many countries in the EU offer sponsorship for arts related education programs. Applicants are encouraged to apply for arts funding if their country offers it. Students have received support from UK Arts Funding and the Canada Council for the Arts.
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We happily write letters of support for all students who ask that are seeking funding from foundations, institutions, and their employers.
Thanks to a generous donor we are offering two full-tuition SCHOLARSHIPS to BIPOC applicants. We are also proud to offer two half-tuition, need-based scholarship, and two half-tuition work study scholarships. All of these are extremely COMPETITIVE and we encourage you to seek additional sources of funding4. You will be able to INDICATE your interest in being considered for both forms of scholarship in your application. If you’d like to be considered for need-based assistance, there is a BRIEF additional form for you to complete.
A non-refundable deposit of $2,000 will apply to students recieiving scholarships.
FOR ORGANIZATIONS
Work for a company or institution that has funds for continuing your education or professional development? Odyssey Works partners with organizational leadership to support employees in this program. Numerous alumni who worked at places like Nike, IDEO, and McCann World Group, or at academic institutions, have received full or partial funding from their employers for our programs. Get the conversation started by sending your employer to this page today and feel free to contact us for further information.
Program Reviews
“Participating in EDCP has been TRANSFORMATIVE — unlocking a deeper purpose within my work and changing how I've approached life since. The program has equipped me with the TOOLS to create intentional experiences, movING the needle for the organizations I serve. As these organizations thrive, it has meant REMARKABLE growth for my own business.”

Victor Carinha
“My experience with you and ECPD has been a TRANSFORMATIVE odyssey. Everything we have been doing has been immediately applicable to my work [at Wells Fargo] and I have used the experience design lens and the resources you’ve shared frequently.”

Yvette Hatton
"Thank you for WELCOMING me into the OW family with open arms and continued support. [I've received] community, connections, resources, inspiration, REFRAMING, transforming and owning your practice, and great books!"

Tracy Smith
“I can CONFIDENTLY say that the ‘In Solidarity: The Beth El Civil Rights Experience’ project would not have been a success without what I learned in the Odyssey Works program. From diagramming to audience roles, I was able to directly APPLY those principles to this project, which is now a permanent installation and hosting students from around the country each week.”

Tyler Jones
“The program has helped me reframe my artistic and community PRACTICE, has spurred new collaborations, and introduced me to a diverse international community of practitioners.”

Natalie Silk
"This program has finally giving VALIDATION to the kind of work I've been doing for so long."

Mel Bieler
"I would recommend this program for anyone who is looking to be SHAKEN out of your normal way of thinking and to open up your process to different tools and different PERSPECTIVES."

Margo Gray
“In ten months EDCP has allowed me to gain confidence and true collaborators, and completely changed the direction of my career and my life. Nothing can be said for how grateful and insanely thankful that the chance was taken on me.”

Kasaundra Couch
"This program was truly LIFE CHANGING for me. I have better words for grounding my audience (of other producers, directors, designers, developers) in what's important to the project but also to them."

Jerome Morrison
“This work was what I had been looking for my WHOLE life, and I’m so excited to see where it takes me. Thank you for your support, your encouragement, your warmth and mischief and invitations to dream big and swing high.”

Jessica Schoolman
"It was such a good reminder that deepening what MATTERS TO ME as a designer, rather than reaching for things that feel like what a designer should do, will produce better and more authentic results."

Janae Phillips
"This year has been one of SIGNIFICANT disruption and liberation, and I believe this program was key to unraveling the world I knew…Thank you for imagining such a generative space where people from a KALEIDOSCOPE of lenses could come together and bring ideas to life. This was a joy and a challenge and a catalyst for so much more to come."

Hailey Jordan
“My experience in Odyssey Works has undoubtedly disrupted [my work life] and LAUNCHED me out of purgatory. I am…ready for “the great pivot” and I finally put my imposter syndrome to bed.”

Emily Hostutler
"The knowledge and CONFIDENCE I was able to gain from the EDCP was a key factor in earning a new position. EDCP is uniquely VALUABLE in that individuality is celebrated in a way that allows us to shine under an intense polishing a friendly grit that sloughs off the PATINA of 'reliable choices."

Emily Gill
“The ACCOUNTABILITY of this program has helped me fight through this process in a way I would not have stuck with on my own, showing me a new model for my own creative output and giving me greater confidence that I can go to this uncomfortable place again in the FUTURE.”

David Jermyn
Program Details
Designed for Working Professionals
Applications open summer 2026

Interested in learning more about the THREE KEY PHASES of the Experience Design Certificate Program? Join our mailing list to get notified about our next info session; which is free and a fantastic way to bring your questions directly to the program directors. We’ll talk about funding options, outcomes for alums, and who is the right fit for this INTIMATE cohort. Plus, you’ll gain access to a treasure trove of insights and updates about Experience Design and our Certificate Program.
Applications open summer 2026


Students are REQUIRED to attend weekly classes in Spring and Fall, complete weekly assignments, and to produce two major Portfolio Projects. During the summer, students conduct LIVED RESEARCH independently, with the support of the cohort through accountability meetings and one-on-one mentorship meetings with the directors of the program.
We do not give grades, and find that it is more meaningful to give students narrative evaluations. In spring and fall, we write narrative evaluation letters to students, giving them detailed feedback about their PARTICIPATION, projects, and contributions to the community.
Our students come from ALL OVER the world (Brazil, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Israel, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, Costa Rica) and across the United States, and range in age from mid-twenties to late sixties. Those who are younger are often looking to jumpstart careers as experience designers by CONNECTING with others, solidifying their language and methodologies. Our students who are established in their careers come in looking to REFRESH their perspective and incorporate experience design practice into the work they already do.
As a professional development program, our students have often (though not always) completed other FORMS of higher education. More important than having other types of degrees is the sense that you have a developed relationship to your PRACTICE. Our best students are PASSIONATE and looking to do things in a new way. They come with questions about how they can make the world a better place. EDCP is a good fit if you are ready to deepen, re-engage, or re-think your orientation to creative work and your career as an experience designer.
Experience Design is an approach to making in general rather than a specific step-by-step METHODOLOGY limited to a few applications. The basic notion - that an experience designer identifies the experience they WISH to create first and then works their way backwards - means that it is an inherently interdisciplinary practice, one which might involve Design Thinking or UX practices but might also involve wildly divergent practices. Many of our students come from Design Thinking / HCD or UX/UI trainings looking for something more broadly APPLICABLE and more transformative.
Tuition covers weekly class meetings online, ALL of your required reading material, as well as programs and most meals during our TWO in-person retreats. $500 of your tuition is allocated towards materials for final projects that are presented at our final exhibition in New York City, The New Frame.
You are responsible for your own TRAVEL and lodging for the spring and fall retreats, as well as a few meals during those weekends. We offer an optional summer retreat, the Odyssey Works Family Reunion, that you can attend.
Outside of the $500 Final Project reimbursement, if there is any software, equipment, or additional materials you require, those are at your own expense.
Students have had a wealth of success, both during the program and after they graduate. Numerous alumni have received PROMOTIONS at their current jobs or proposed new roles as experience designers at places where they work, like Meow Wolf, Wells Fargo, Nike, and Slalom. Every year there are students that find new jobs that are more ALIGNED with the work they want to do. Alums who have their own businesses find that being an experience design practitioner distinguishes their proposals, leads to higher rates securing new clients, and increases their revenue and value. The Experience Design Certification differentiates them as people who are at the forefront of thinking in new ways, indicating to others that they bring an empathetic, human perspective along with VISIONARY approaches to design.
Many of the Lived Research projects and experiences presented at the New Frame go on to be shown at other venues, exhibitions, festivals, or conferences. Our alums have received a wealth of GRANTS and awards to fund their projects, using the frame of experience design.
The EDCP is very much about learning in community. Odyssey Works has many opportunities throughout the year to connect in-person, and attending the one of these which is most useful to you will fulfill the requirement. If you cannot make one of these, you may self-organize a 2-day session wherever you wish with at least 3 other students. To fulfill this requirement, any weekend intensive (tuition waived), the Family Reunion, or joining us at the WXO conference are among the easy ways to make this happen.
Many applicants have secured Canadian and UK Arts Council Funds. If you are trying for this with an upcoming deadline that necessitates prior admission, please contact us about rolling admissions. We will need to see your application.
Attend one of our info sessions and get answers to your questions, live from our program directors. You can also view recorded info sessions here, or get in touch with us.
Free Download
The four steps in this guide can be used at the beginning of ANY PROJECT to transform your design into an experience design. At the end of the guide, you will find worksheets that you can use to respond to prompts.
Thank you for reaching out.
We’ve received your inquiry and are honored by your interest in Odyssey Works. Our team will review your message and get back to you shortly.
In the meantime, if you’d like to explore more about what we do, we invite you to delve into our performances, publications, or the Experience Design Certificate Program.
Welcome to the beginning of a deeper story.
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