jordangaston The Imagineering Pyramid
This skill applies the Imagineering Pyramid — 15 design principles distilled by Lou Prosperi from how Walt Disney Imagineering builds theme parks — to creative and product/experience work. The parks are the source material, but the principles travel: an onboarding flow, a landing page, a demo, a pitch, a feature, or an entire product can all be designed the way an Imagineer designs an attraction.
The whole pyramid serves one thing Disney calls the Art of the Show: you are not shipping features, you are staging an experience for an audience. Every principle below is a tool for making that experience coherent, legible, memorable, and worth returning to.
Read references/building-blocks.md before running a session — it holds the full per-block tutorials,
the product/experience translations, focusing questions, and worked examples you need to do this well.
The pyramid at a glance
Fifteen blocks in five tiers, built bottom-up. The foundation is non-negotiable; the upper tiers are applied selectively based on what the user is making.
| Tier | Block | In product/experience terms |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Foundations | It All Begins with a Story | The throughline/arc the experience tells |
| Creative Intent | The single guiding objective every decision serves | |
| Attention to Detail | Craft in the small things that builds trust and belief | |
| Theming | Cohesion — every detail reinforces the story and intent | |
| Long, Medium & Close Shots | Lead the audience general → specific; information hierarchy | |
| 2 — Wayfinding | Wienies | Visual magnets that pull attention and beckon the next step |
| Transitions | Smooth, seamless movement between states and seams | |
| Storyboards | See the whole journey as a sequence before building parts | |
| Pre-Shows & Post-Shows | Prime expectations before; reinforce and extend after | |
| 3 — Visual Communication | Forced Perspective | Framing and scale that shape how big/simple something feels |
| "Read"-ability | Instantly legible — the audience knows what it is and what to do | |
| Kinetics | Motion and energy that make it feel alive | |
| 4 — Making It Memorable | The "It's a Small World" Effect | One unifying feeling/signature moment that lingers |
| Hidden Mickeys | Delight details that reward attention and build affinity | |
| 5 — Walt's Cardinal Rule | Plussing | Never "done" — relentless, continuous improvement |
How to run a session
Step 1 — Establish the Art of the Show (always first)
Nothing upstairs matters until this is nailed. Before touching any other block, get crisp on:
- The experience and its audience — What is being made, and who is it for? Name the audience like a character (their situation, what they want, what they feel walking in).
- Creative Intent — The single objective the whole thing serves, stated in one sentence. This is the filter for every later decision ("does this serve the intent? if not, cut it").
- The Story — The throughline. What's the arc/transformation? Where does the audience begin, and where do they end up?
Check conversation history and memory first — some of this may already be known. If the user gives a URL or product, research it (web search/fetch) before proceeding. Be proactive; don't make the user do all the work. If Creative Intent is fuzzy, resolve it before moving on — a beautiful attraction with no intent is just noise.
Step 2 — Pick the mode
- Design — building something new. Work bottom-up through the tiers, generating concrete moves.
- Audit — critiquing something that exists. Walk the blocks as a checklist; find where the experience breaks the principle, and where it already nails it.
- Plus — the thing works but should be better/more memorable. Focus on Tiers 3–5.
State which mode you're in. Most real requests are a blend; lead with the dominant one.
Step 3 — Work the relevant blocks, tier by tier
Apply the pyramid bottom-up, but be selective — a real Imagineer doesn't force every principle
onto every project. For each block you engage, use the focusing questions in
references/building-blocks.md to generate specific, concrete moves for the user's actual artifact,
not generic restatements of the principle. Tie everything back to the Creative Intent from Step 1.
Skip blocks that don't apply and say so briefly. Quality of application beats coverage.
Step 4 — Plus it, then deliver
Close with Plussing: 3–5 concrete, high-leverage improvements ranked by impact, plus the one thing most worth obsessing over next. The mindset is "this is never finished."
Output: For a substantive design or audit, produce a structured deliverable (markdown, or a file if the user wants something to keep). For lighter requests, answer inline. When it helps the user see the structure, use the Visualizer to render the pyramid with their challenge mapped onto each block (foundation at the base). Always end with the ranked plussing moves.
Notes on doing this well
- Foundation discipline. Most weak experiences fail at Tier 1, not Tier 4. If the story and intent are vague, no amount of kinetics or hidden Mickeys will save it. Spend real effort there.
- Translate, don't transplant. Don't leave the user in theme-park metaphors. "Your wienie is the pricing CTA" only lands if you then say concretely what that means for their page.
- Selectivity is a feature. Naming the 3 blocks that matter most for this artifact is more useful than a shallow pass over all 15.
- Attribution. The framework is Lou Prosperi's The Imagineering Pyramid, built on Walt Disney Imagineering's practices. Credit it when introducing the skill.