Why “does this look good?” might be the wrong question in experience design; what a twenty-sided dice taught me about building believable spaces; and why the most useful part of a creative brief might be everything you refuse to put in it.

Why most gatherings are designed around the table and never the reason; what six women and a string of beads did for a friend who was afraid of giving birth; and why the first question of designing any experience is not what to build but whose need it is meeting.

Why the most polite hosts are actually leaving people to fend for themselves, what Poppy's gingerbread house taught me about structure in a gathering, and why an architecture firm needed a cage match to finally tell the truth.

Why Cleopatra sent scent ahead of her ship, what a Creed perfume did to me at Selfridges, and what both say about designing an arrival for an event.