N.D. Austin: The Experience Designer Who Built Tony Hawk a Desert Train

The Desert Train Experience

• 🚂 N.D. Austin, an experience designer, created a unique event for Tony Hawk's office holiday gathering.
• 🎁 The experience began with gifts of a shovel, pickaxe, first aid kit, and a locked briefcase, leading the team on a drive into the desert.
• 🏜️ They discovered a five-car train built by N.D.'s team on abandoned tracks, featuring a piano player and a bar car.
• 🤝 A central part of the experience involved burying a bottle of whiskey and making a pact to share it if one of them passed away, aiming to mend relationships.

The Philosophy of Experience Design

• 💡 N.D. describes his role as an experience designer as placing stepping stones to create scenarios that lead to personal transformation.
• 🗺️ He sees the world as full of possibilities, much like skaters scan landscapes for places to ride, enabling him to find unique locations for his designs.
• 🔑 His work often involves exploring hidden or unconventional spaces, such as sewers, water towers, and basements, to create immersive experiences.
• 🎭 Experiences are distinct from events because they aim to create an internal occurrence that matters personally to the individual, not just an external event.

Origins in Ritual and Generosity

• 🌲 N.D.'s fascination with ritual began in his childhood near a village in Southeast Alaska with powerful funeral traditions.
• 🕊️ He later designed funerals, including one for a lawyer who created a custom board game to commemorate his friendships, with his ashes hidden in a secret compartment.
• 🎁 A core principle in N.D.'s work is generosity, which he sees as a way to reclaim power and act outside of others' jurisdiction.
• 🏡 He demonstrated this by rebuilding the foundation of his parents' house in Alaska, an act of generosity to repair their relationship.

Navigating Systems and Boundaries

• 🚧 N.D. grew up in a doomsday cult in Alaska, which instilled in him a fear-based worldview that he eventually rejected in favor of a more optimistic, beginning-focused perspective.
• 🚶‍♂️ He left the cult at 17 and later returned at 19 for a six-month commitment, ultimately leaving permanently after realizing it wasn't for him.
• 🛠️ His early experiences after leaving the cult involved practical skills like renovating apartments, highlighting his ability to build and create.
• 🚫 He views much of the tech industry's design philosophy as being focused on extraction and attention-grabbing, contrasting it with his own values of generosity and beauty.

Designing for Serendipity and Ethics

• 🍀 N.D. is currently working on a 6-year project to create serendipity and good luck for a friend struggling with depression and bad luck.
• 🤫 The project involves discreetly engineering opportunities, such as helping the friend find a new job, without her knowledge.
• 🤔 This raises ethical questions about whether such interventions, even if well-intentioned, constitute care or manipulation when deception is involved.
• ⏳ N.D. emphasizes that all his creations have end states and end dates, distinguishing his work from potentially trapping experiences and highlighting the preciousness of finite moments, like the 'magic circle' of summer camp.