Why Experience Design Matters More Than Ever in 2026?

The world has more options than ever. More hotels, more brands, more events, more content. And yet what they return to, and what they recommend, is rarely the option that offered the most. It is the one that made them feel something.

In 2026, that feeling is no longer a nice addition to the experience. It is the experience.

Experience design is the practice built entirely around making that feeling intentional, and its moment has arrived. And right now, it is the most important conversation happening across hospitality, culture, brand, and human connection. 

The Experience Design Summit India exists precisely because this discipline deserves a dedicated, serious space. EDS is a five-day residential gathering dedicated to experience design. It will take place from 23–28 October 2026 at Mundota Palace & Fort, Jaipur. It is built for people who take experience seriously as a practice. 

The Growing Impact of Design on How We Live and Work

For years, the question that drove most industries was a practical one. What are we making, and how do we make it well? That question has not disappeared, but a harder one has quietly moved in beside it. 

“What should a person feel when they encounter what we have made? ”. 

The organizations asking that second question seriously are the ones setting the standard everyone else is trying to meet. They are the ones whose hotels people talk about for years. Whose events people clear their schedules for. Whose brands people feel genuinely loyal to rather than merely habituated to.

Experience design is the discipline built entirely around that second question. It is the practice of making feelings intentional. The work that happens before anything else exists. Before anything exists, before the first wall goes up or the event has a name or the brand has found its colours, one question is already being asked. What should the person on the other side feel when they finally encounter this? Every decision that comes after is an attempt to answer it well.

What Changed, and Why Does It Matter Now?

For most of the twentieth century, the dominant question in business was about the object. 

Somewhere in the last decade, that bar moved. Nobody convened an experience economy conference to announce the shift. It happened because people felt the difference. A hotel that seemed to understand them before they arrived. A brand that communicated something beyond the product. An event that made them feel like a participant rather than an audience. Once they felt it, everything else was measured against it.

The shift from products to experiences has already happened. 2026 is simply the year it became impossible to ignore. Every industry that touches human life is feeling the pressure of it. And the organisations that are not designing to that standard are becoming irrelevant to the people whose attention and loyalty they need most.

This is not a soft observation. It is the most consequential business reality of the decade.

The Growing Impact of Experience Design Across Industries

Experience design has moved well beyond the walls of any single industry. Its influence is now visible across every field that involves a human being and a moment.

Hospitality is where experience design makes itself most visible. Guests today do not grade a stay on whether it delivered what was promised. They remember how it felt to walk in. The quality of light in the lobby. How long check-in took. How it felt while it was happening. The quality of silence in a corridor after midnight. A guest will not write these things in a review but they are the things that decide whether that guest ever comes back. They are not the finishing layer of a well-run property. They are its foundation.

In cultural tourism, it is the difference between a destination that has things to see and one that is itself worth experiencing. How a city tells its story. How a heritage site receives a visitor. Whether the encounter with something ancient feels alive or feels managed.

In live events and immersive culture, experience design is the entire practice. The most significant events of the last decade have not been the ones with the biggest stages. They have been the ones that made the person attending feel like a participant rather than an audience.

In brand and retail, it determines whether a customer feels seen or processed. Whether a space communicates care or efficiency. Whether someone walks out wanting to come back.

The growing impact of design on how we work is perhaps the least discussed but most consequential shift. When people spend their working lives in environments designed with care, it changes what those environments produce. Not as a theory. As a documented, measurable outcome.

Why Are Most Industries Still Getting It Wrong?

Here is the honest part. Despite the evidence, most industries still treat experience as decoration. Something applied at the end, after the real decisions have been made.

The light is chosen after the building is finished. The narrative is added after the product is built. The sensory environment is whatever the default happens to be.

This is not because people do not care. It is because the discipline of experience design, as a serious, collaborative, cross-industry practice, is still making the case for itself. There are few dedicated spaces and even fewer experience design conferences, where practitioners from different fields can actually think together about the work. Fewer still treat the subject with the depth it deserves.

That gap is precisely why experience design matters more now than it did five years ago. The world is not short on options, content, or convenience. Changing this requires a different kind of conversation.

Not a panel discussion. 

A residential, working, cross-disciplinary gathering where the question of how experience is designed gets the time, the people, and the space it actually needs.

Where That Conversation Is Happening?

This October, the Mundota Palace & Fort in Jaipur will become the gathering point for some of the most interesting people working in experience today. The Experience Design Summit India runs from 23rd to 28th October 2026, bringing 150 practitioners into the same space as 12 faculty members whose careers span everything from Oscar-winning cinema to sacred performance to sensory design. It is one of those rare things: a room worth being in before it happens.

EDS is not a conventional experience design conference. There are no keynote stages, no passive audiences. It is a working gathering where the location, the people, and the programme are inseparable from each other.

Mundota Palace & Fort in Jaipur is itself a study in spatial and atmospheric design. A 500-year-old estate above the plains of Rajasthan that has been producing a feeling in every person who walks through it for five centuries. It is not a backdrop for EDS. It is part of what EDS is.

The faculty at EDS comes from completely different worlds.

 An Oscar-winning filmmaker. A former Punchdrunk creative producer. A sensory transformation designer. A cultural storyteller. A sacred experience creator. 

I.e., twelve faculty members. Twelve careers built in completely different spaces. And yet if you asked each of them what the work is ultimately for, the answers would land in the same place. The feeling. The thing a person takes with them when it is all over. Not designing for that feeling from the start is, for all of them, simply not an option. 

If experience design is moving to the centre of how organizations think, EDS is where the people shaping that shift come together. 

Applications are open now. To apply or inquire, write to [email protected] or visit expdesign.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

1- What Is Experience Design? 

Experience design is the practice of making feelings intentional. Deciding in advance what a person should walk away with, and building everything around that decision.

2- Why does experience design matter in 2026? 

Because people now make every significant decision based on how something makes them feel. The organizations that understand this are building something that cannot be easily copied.

3- What is the Experience Design Summit India? 

Taking place from 23rd to 28th October 2026 at Mundota Palace & Fort in Jaipur, EDS is a five-day residential programme for 150 practitioners and 12 faculty members spanning hospitality, storytelling, architecture, and culture. It is not a place to sit and listen. It is a place to do the work. 

4- Who is EDS for? 

It is for practitioners who work across hospitality, luxury, live events, cultural tourism, brand, and design and have spent their careers knowing that experience is not a trend. It is the work.

5- How do I apply for EDS 2026? 

EDS is limited to 150 curated participants. To apply, write to [email protected] or visit expdesign.org.