Toolkit
The Ritual Design Toolkit
A guide to scoping, creating and testing rituals to enhance the experience of your customers, colleagues and community.
(File Size 10.8 MB)
About
Rituals are intentional behaviours with a distinct emotional outcome. They fill our lives with deeper meaning and are found everywhere from the workplace to the kitchen table.
We have made the Ritual Design Toolkit to help you understand rituals, how to harness them, and how to design them. In our own work, we have used the toolkit in a range of applications including enhancing key moments in a customer journey, helping people adopt healthier eating habits and building and strengthening communities.
The toolkit can be used for grand rituals and micro-interactions. Whether you are a manager of a team, a packaging designer, or a service enthusiast, you can find guidance here to build more meaningful moments into your work. The toolkit offers a ritual design process consisting of three main steps: scoping, creating and testing rituals.
Design Approach
Scope
In this phase of the process, you will learn how to write a brief for your ritual opportunity area and conduct research as you prepare to create a ritual.
Create
Here you will generate ideas for a ritual and develop one or more of your ideas into a complete ritual. You will be helped with the Ritual Design Canvas, Ideation Cards and a Storyboard to give the ritual sequence form.
Test
In the final phase of the process, you will prototype and test the impact of your ritual. You will benefit from being specific about your objective and outcomes in the previous phase.
Reference
Baxter, W., Roots, S., Tuomala, E.-K., Aurisicchio, M., Ratcliffe, E., Spinola Rodrigues, P., Childs, P., Martin, N., & Saclier, C. (2020). Ritual Design Toolkit. Interaction Foundry. http://www.interactionfoundry.com/rdt
Materials
The toolkit consists of several tools here separated for ease of download. The Ritual Design Canvas is where you will analyse and design your ritual. The canvas has two parts: an A3 Context Cluster and an A4 Ritual Cluster. The ritual Storyboard Sheet helps you imagine the ritual and bring it to life. The Ritual Ideation Cards provide you with inspiration when coming up with your ritual design.