Lessons in how NOT to design an experience

I've been to Glastonbury five times.

Five times I've stood in a field in Somerset, almost certainly damp, probably eating something questionable from a paper tray, and thought: this is it.

This is the one. This is the place where everything is considered and nothing is accidental and somehow, against all odds, it works.

Every year, it just works.

Last week, I went to Primavera Sound in Barcelona for the first time. And it did not work.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Because before the festival started, Barcelona was delivering.

The first three days looked like this: morning sea swims followed by brunch in the sun. Exploring new parts of the city. And three events - all born from online connections - reminding me why I still believe the internet can be gorgeous when it tries.

My friend Lauren managed to put on her first ever art show in a city she doesn't live in, pulling it off almost entirely through the power of people she'd never met in real life, who offered to help out. Then she launched her book at a brilliant little bookshop - and I got to host the conversation in front of fifty new readers in a room we'd never have found if the internet hadn't pointed us there the year before.

Then there was Carmen - someone I'd followed on LinkedIn for years, but never met in person - who invited me to the one-year birthday party of her business. Eighty-plus women showed up despite it never being advertised. No Instagram posts. No LinkedIn announcements. Just direct connections and word of mouth by a community that had decided to move for each other.

Three events. Three school nights. Three things that only existed because someone online became someone IRL.

The internet can be a complete hell-hole at times. But it can also create connections that would never have otherwise happened. And that’s really special.

Then Primavera started.

First of all, I'm going to completely ignore the absolute shitshow that was day one of the festival. If you're not aware, the festival that Brits go to for guaranteed gorgeous weather cancelled all of its programming from around 9pm onwards on the first day due to really bad weather. If you want to get a feel of the vibes, watch this.

Anyway. Day two arrives. And the weather is acting like that gaslighting ex.

Rain and dangerous gusts of wind? Me? No, you must be thinking of someone else.

Fine. We move on. We get there. And immediately, the poor experience is slapping the experience designer in me round the face.

Because if you take me anywhere, you can guarantee I'm going to be analysing the end-to-end experience with the devastatingly critical eye of Nicky Hambleton-Jones from 10 Years Younger.

If you're new here, I worked as an experience designer for digital products and services for about 7 years, built a business focused on designing incredible employee experiences, and I've designed immersive workshops and learning experiences for over 10 years. So it's very safe to say that I know what it takes to design incredible experiences.

Right, let's get into it.

Issue 1: death by two apps.

I had to download not one but TWO different apps to access my tickets. TWO APPS?! Why? For what reason? In what universe does this make sense? I'm genuinely asking. Someone made this decision. Someone said yes to it. I need their contact details urgently. But whatever, I could have easily gotten over this one (maybe, eventually).

Issue 2: no signage.

The venue is enormous. The stages are spread out. There is a lot of walking involved. And there is almost no wayfinding. A tiny, laminated sign at a crossroads. A stage name printed at a size you could only read if you were already standing in front of it. That's it. That's the signage. For the entirety of the festival, I navigated largely by instinct and mild panic.

Issue 3: policing water.

I'm not being dramatic when I say I am still raging about this. Staff confiscate the lids off your water bottles - reusable or not - on entry. Now, listen, I’m sober. A significant financial upside of being sober at a festival is that you're not spending £13 per drink. That upside evaporates immediately if you can’t bring in your own water bottle. To make matters worse, I could only find TWO water stations on the entire site, and one wasn't even working. Not to mention the fact that keeping hydrated is one of THE most important things at a festival in a hot climate. The person who decided lids were a safety risk while also providing approximately 1.5 functioning water stations for a festival of tens of thousands of people needs to go to hell.

Issue 4: zero culture.

The best festivals are mini-cultures. They're spun up for a few days and then they're gone, and the magic only lives on in your memories. They have music, yes - but also art installations, comedy, talks, weird little corners you wander into by accident, spaces to sit down and recharge. They have texture. There is literally nothing else to do at Primavera except get smashed and/or high, and watch music. Sure, that might be exactly what some people want but, to me, festivals are so much more than that.

Granted, the music was really good. JADE. Amaarae. Skrillex. Little Simz. Olivia Rodrigo.

And the xx. They were the reason I booked these tickets. My favourite band, after all these years. And standing there watching them was the kind of thing that makes you forget everything else like no water and rubbish signage, and you’re just there, fully present, in that gorgeous moment. I'll be replaying that set for months.

So, the music delivered. But everything else around the music was a different story entirely. Here's what 10+ years of experience design has taught me.

When something doesn't land, it's rarely because the content was wrong. It's because the container was.

The keynote speaker was brilliant, but the room was set up in tight rows and no one could see.

The offsite had exactly the right agenda, but it opened with 45 minutes of admin and lost the room before it had even started.

The workshop design was thoughtful, but the beige conference suite with no natural light zapped all the energy in the room by 11am.

Primavera is a perfect case study in exactly this.

The content - the actual music, the performances - was exceptional. Some of the best live music I've ever seen. The xx alone were worth the flight.

But the experience of accessing that content was so full of friction, so poorly considered, so obviously not designed by anyone who'd stopped to think about what it actually felt like to be a person moving through it.

That's a specific kind of design failure, and it’s one I find hard to forgive because it's so entirely avoidable.

This is the kind of thing I obsess over when I'm designing a facilitated experience.

Not just the agenda. Not just what we're going to do in the room, but how it's going to feel to be in the room. The arc of the energy across the day. The moments of levity built in before people need them. Whether people can find their way through the session without confusion or friction. Whether they know where they're going and feel held from the moment they arrive. Whether the temperature is right, the seating is right, the small logistical things that seem trivial but have been thought about.

The things that say, before a word is spoken: you are welcome here, and this has been made with care.

Because people either feel the care, or they feel the absence of it.

They might not be able to name it. They might just say "it was fine" or "I'm not sure it landed."

But underneath that is almost always a container that wasn't quite right - a seemingly small thing that made them feel like an afterthought.

And once that feeling gets in, it's really hard to shift.