https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/Essays on experience design and worldbuilding by Abraham Burickson, with letters from the Odyssey Works team.enhttps://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/homers-odyssey-continues-to-inspire/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/homers-odyssey-continues-to-inspire/Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTSophie LarsmonNolan's Odyssey, an Odyssey for Roz Driscoll on Zakynthos, and Cavafy's Ithaka: on the slow, human, collaborative journey.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/anatomy-of-a-tedtalk/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/anatomy-of-a-tedtalk/Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonHow Anne Gottlieb and I wrote and designed Yoshua Bengio's TED talk on AI in under a month, and the road to a million views.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/the-origins-of-the-odyssey/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/the-origins-of-the-odyssey/Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTOdyssey WorksOdyssey Works began twenty-five years ago with one question: what is the maximum possible impact our art could have on a person?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/a-pause-on-the-transformation-economy/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/a-pause-on-the-transformation-economy/Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonJoe Pine says transformation is the next stage of economic value. Should the tools of human flourishing be products only for the rich?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/what-is-odyssey-works-for/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/what-is-odyssey-works-for/Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonAdvent, a TEDtalk on AI, a keynote in Montreal, and Ayden LeRoux's final year: what experience design can be for, at the turn of 2026.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/what-can-a-body-do/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/what-can-a-body-do/Tue, 26 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxSara Hendren's book, the Medical World Hack, and De Hogeweyk, a Dutch memory-care village that treats healthcare as immersive theater.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-childhood/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-childhood/Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonThe kids are not alright, and we designed the world that made them this way. Childhood is a design process: what is our childhood Phase Zero?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/flow-with-me/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/flow-with-me/Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxFlow, immersion, and attention: notes from a writing sabbatical, and from Csikszentmihalyi's Finding Flow, on what we seek for its own sake.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-ai/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-ai/Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonAfter writing Yoshua Bengio's TEDtalk: what we lose when machines do our making, and why interiority is worth designing for.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-climate/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-climate/Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonClimate is a worldbuilding problem. After a collaboration with the WWF: redesigning our sense of self in the world, starting with our origin stories.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-architecture/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-we-fix-it-architecture/Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonThe first in a series on the world's wicked problems. Architecture builds the world; what if every building began with Phase Zero?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/the-body-electric/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/the-body-electric/Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonA thought experiment in origin stories: what if Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric were the foundational text of the United States?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/sweat-soak/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/sweat-soak/Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonSaunas, hammams, and a Temazcal in Tepoztlán: what sweat and soak traditions teach about immersive, ritual experience design.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/a-walk-through-memory-lane-2024/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/a-walk-through-memory-lane-2024/Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTTaouba KhelifaOdyssey Works' 2024 in review: the third Certificate Program cohort, a new foundation, an Odyssey in France, and connections around the world.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/mystical-pedagogy/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/mystical-pedagogy/Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonOrthodox education answers questions; mystical education helps students answer their own. The case for teaching that centers a personal question.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/rebuilding-our-world/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/rebuilding-our-world/Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRoux and Abraham BuricksonWhy the Odyssey Works Foundation exists: making an education in experience design accessible, and a classroom without a white majority.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/on-making-it-up/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/on-making-it-up/Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxThree stories of transformation from Certificate Program graduates who are inventing new projects, studios, and roles for themselves.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/contested-placemaking/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/contested-placemaking/Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonCities are enormous, collective, contested experience designs. Why placemaking is such a quintessential experience design project.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/where-did-you-learn-to-work/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/where-did-you-learn-to-work/Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxA question from artist Chloe Bass, and how the way we learned to work shapes our art, our money, and the life we make possible.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-to-get-unstuck/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-to-get-unstuck/Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxWhen the creative process stalls, return to what moves you. Pina Bausch, long walks with friends, and the recognition underneath being moved by art.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/anatomy-of-a-rebrand/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/anatomy-of-a-rebrand/Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonBranding is the act of sculpting a narrative that makes sense to oneself. How Odyssey Works articulated its mission and rebuilt its identity.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/what-happened-in-tius-odyssey/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/what-happened-in-tius-odyssey/Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxA lobster's molt, a deliberately failed Odyssey, and pronoia: Ayden LeRoux on how the Master Class designed an experience for Tiu de Haan.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/report-from-an-odyssey/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/report-from-an-odyssey/Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxAyden LeRoux reports from the Odyssey made for ritual designer Tiu de Haan in France, and on watching thirteen strangers become collaborators.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-does-change-happen/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-does-change-happen/Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonExperiences transform us while we are in them, then midnight strikes. Preparation, transformation, maintenance: why lasting change needs all three.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/rethinking-the-news/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/rethinking-the-news/Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonNews stories are stories for a reason. What would it mean to design how we take in the story of the world, instead of leaving it to the click economy?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/scale/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/scale/Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonWhy Villeneuve's Dune works where others failed, and why scale is often the first place to tinker when designing an experience apart from the ordinary.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/worldbuilding-to-change-the-world/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/worldbuilding-to-change-the-world/Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonThe climate technologies exist; our world isn't designed to use them. Seeing the world as designed is the first step to redesigning it.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/time-is-an-experience-design/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/time-is-an-experience-design/Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonThe calendar may be the most powerful design we have. Advent, the French Revolutionary calendar, and the folks who brought you the weekend.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/the-diagram-of-a-book/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/the-diagram-of-a-book/Thu, 07 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonA table of contents is a map that prepares the reader. The dozens of iterations behind the woven TOC of Experience Design.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/we-need-to-talk-about-empathy/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/we-need-to-talk-about-empathy/Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonThe case against empathy is damning. Why designers should keep it anyway: smart and humble, paired with research and inclusion.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/a-world-built-on-stories/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/a-world-built-on-stories/Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonJournalists are storytellers, and our real worlds are worldbuilding projects. A passage cut from Experience Design about origin stories and war.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/can-i-tell-you-a-secret/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/can-i-tell-you-a-secret/Sun, 24 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxYou come into the Experience Design Certificate Program expecting a class. What students find is closer to their own Odyssey.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/lets-talk-money/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/lets-talk-money/Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxOn choosing a graduate program you can afford, and how we try to make an MFA-equivalent education in experience design accessible.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/lived-research/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/lived-research/Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonIf your medium is experience, you should attend to how you experience things. Why the Certificate Program builds lived research into the curriculum.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-to-rekindle-the-magic/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/how-to-rekindle-the-magic/Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMTAyden LeRouxA week at the College of Extraordinary Experiences in a Polish castle, and what it says about who we get to be at work.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/on-narrative/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/on-narrative/Wed, 23 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonMeow Wolf, a four-year-old's Whaaaat???, and Santa Fe's endless self-storytelling: how the stories we carry prepare us to receive experiences.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/architecture-as-experience/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/architecture-as-experience/Tue, 08 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonThe cover of Experience Design, Alejandro Aravena's half-built houses, and a dervish shrine in central Turkey where every visitor came out in tears.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/books-are-experiences/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/books-are-experiences/Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonWhy the physical book outlived the e-reader, what it teaches about designing for focus, and the rejected covers of Experience Design.https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/is-it-time-to-join-a-cult/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/is-it-time-to-join-a-cult/Tue, 11 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonCult documentaries warn us off divergent worldbuilding. But how can you change your world if you have never lived inside a different one?https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/experience-design-is-everywhere/https://www.odysseyworks.org/phase-zero/experience-design-is-everywhere/Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMTAbraham BuricksonA severe old lady named Peggy, the ruins at Palenque, and the moment experience design became the thread running through everything I make.