game mechanics

for experience designers

an interactive virtual workshop on using the tricks and tools of game design to up-level whatever experience you’re creating

📆 our next workshop date 📆

to be announced!

🎲 save my seat for the next sesh! 🎲

game design is more than just designing games

learn how to leverage game mechanics to make participation irresistible instead of obligatory

🎲 🎲 🎲

In an age of apps and algorithms, a constant focus on efficiency, and the relentless drive towards increased productivity, gamification has become a way for companies to drive likes and lure us into addiction.

This is not what we're here for.

We're here because true game design means activating all the divergent ways we can play.

Designing with game mechanics invites us to get creative with what it means to participate. It nurtures agency in unexpected ways. It urges us to imagine and write new rules. It rewards curiosity.

And when done well? Game mechanics helps us create experiences that are luscious, engaging, and deeply satisfying.

Whatever you're designing, using game mechanics can make it a hell of a lot better.

In this live, interactive workshop...

We’ll explore how the mechanics of play can become the mechanics of participation.

You’ll learn how to use the tools of game design to deepen engagement, sustain energy, and create experiences that feel gorgeously alive from start to finish.

Together, we’ll identify the patterns that make games irresistible — clear goals, feedback loops, choice, and flow — and translate them into your own practice as an experience designer.

By the end, you’ll walk away with a map of the game mechanics you can use to level up any experience, plus new ideas that might just change how you think about design altogether.

Let’s play, shall we?

🎲 tic tac totally 🎲

what you'll learn

✨ 9 core tools of game designers — space, elements, collaboration, skills, rules, chaos, time, pleasures, and balance — and how they shape motivation and meaning.

✨ how to apply game mechanics to your experiences to build flow, momentum, and engagement that lasts.

✨ why certain experiences fall flat and how to design for curiosity instead of just compliance.

✨ a practical framework for creating participation loops that make people want to keep showing up making beauty together.

we’re not just talking theory

you’ll walk away with tools, templates, and a map of core game mechanics you can use immediately to turn your next experience into something people can’t stop talking about.

this is for you if…

✔ you’ve ever hosted an experience that worked on paper but didn’t quite land in practice.

✔ you’re tired of forcing participation and want people to join in because they want to, not because they have to.

✔ you love creating workshops, retreats, or programs and want to build more flow, energy, and momentum into them.

✔ you’re curious about how game design principles can make your experiences more rewarding, and a whole lot less boring.

✔ you want to design interactions that spark curiosity and keep people coming back for the next move.

✔ you believe fun and depth can coexist — and that play might just be your best design tool.

why join live?

🎮 hands-on design: workshop these game mechanics for your own experience and see how small tweaks can transform participation.

💡 collective creativity: swap ideas, share discoveries, and get inspired by how others use play to spark flow and connection.

🎤 live q&a: bring your questions and get real-time feedback on how to apply game mechanics to your specific context.

📘 exclusive resources: take home a bonus guide with the prompts, tools, and frameworks for how to use game mechanics to uplevel whatever you’re building.

🎲 deal me in 🎲

how folks leave feeling...

about Olivia Vagelos and the Studio

Hi, I'm Olivia.

I'm an experience designer, facilitator, and the founder of The Design for Feelings Studio. Previous to studio life, I was a long time IDEO’er and Stanford d.school’er.

I create spaces for people to find the strange-beautiful parts of themselves that have been left behind, to imagine and move differently, and to meet one another in new ways — all through immersive workshops, interactive events, and multi-sensory experiences.

My work blends story, behavioral psychology, architecture, learning, and play to design interactions and experiences that change us.

I love helping people make whatever they’re making more memorable, more meaningful, more beautiful, and more chaotically and curiously weird.

The robots may be here, but that means we need wild-wild-humaning more than ever.

"Olivia is a world-weaver, spinning together meaning, myth, ritual, language, and the full spectrum of the sensorial into spaces and experiences that unlock new possibilities.

When we speak of “magic,” we mean delight in the unexpected, the joy of wonder, emotional care, and a full-bodied sensorial immersion we are happy to surrender to.

Quite simply, Olivia is a magician."

Mitch Carter Jafery

Co-Founder of Friday Gallery & Design Fellow at IDEO, former Chief Creative Officer at IDEO

save your seat for

game mechanics for experience designers

📆 next date to be announced soon! 📆

Join us in putting an end to awkward ice breakers once and for all!

🎲 I'm game 🎲

"Olivia is a phenomenal experience designer at the top of her craft, who is taking the rigor of the design thinking processes that she rocked at IDEO and combining it with the intangible art of experience design. She has created a process around the chaos of creating both the emotional and the transformational.

Run, don’t walk, to whatever she makes, or whatever she invites you to experience."

Jenny Gottstein

Creative Director and Founder of Playscapades Studio, Creator of the Climate Action Game Show

"As an executive producer of experiential marketing, I find Olivia’s approach to designing with emotions super aligned with how we should all approach creating experiences. Her ability to create safe space with intention is unique, and I find her strategies and tactics incredibly valuable and useful.

If you get a chance to spend some time in her welcoming space, definitely take it!"

Isis Arias

Executive Experiential Producer & Brand Marketer, Former Marketing Lead of Global Live Experiences @ Netflix

"Olivia challenges your existing perspectives with tenderness; brings depth, texture, and emotion to every topic, and takes participants on a gentle and provocative journey into what's next in truly beautiful ways.

Work with her! You might cry? You'll definitely feel warm and fuzzy. And maybe a little upset by the world as it is.

But that's ok, because you'll already be on your way to building what could be, instead."

Keely Adler

Cultural Futurist at RADAR & Dentsu Creative

have questions?

Drop us an email at [email protected]