For six years, I taught interaction design at Cal State Los Angeles University. My favorite subject matters was mental models—the gap between how people think the world works versus how it actually works.

Like why everyone pulls on “Push” doors. Or why literally no one trusts the popcorn button on microwaves. (Has it ever worked? I’m still excavating kernels from mysterious kitchen crevices.)

Mental models shape everything we do. Including why some virtual events feel like magic and others make you question your life choices.

But I’d never applied those insights to my own events, until one November night in 2018 when everything changed.

I’m live on camera, hosting the finale of the Greater Toronto Area Adobe Creative Jam LIVE competition. Students from different design schools are logged in—strangers about to present app prototypes they’d built in Adobe XD.

Then disaster strikes. One student’s prototype breaks right before their presentation. I can see their panic through the screen.

Before I can even unmute myself to help, something beautiful unfolds. A George Brown student jumps into the chat with an XD-specific fix. Then someone from OCAD offers an additional workaround, the kind of generous specificity that only comes from debugging that exact nightmare at 2 AM.

That's Social Proof in action. When one person offers help, others follow. But here’s what made my host heart fill up: these kids had never met each other before.

In that moment, I realized I’d been designing events completely backwards.

I’d been treating community like the cherry on top when it should have been the cake itself. Here’s what I learned about Anchoring: that first moment sets expectations for everything that follows. I’d been anchoring people in “audience mode” when I should have been anchoring them in “community mode.”

The most successful events don’t create community, they activate it. Those Toronto students already shared struggles with Adobe XD and dreams of design careers. My job wasn’t to manufacture engagement—it was to create space for what was already there to flourish.

This insight completely flipped my design process. Instead of asking “What content should we create?” I started asking “What connections do I want to enable?” The difference was immediate: 3x more chat activity, people creating shared workspaces without me asking.

Here’s what I learned studying registration patterns: people don’t sign up because you promised “actionable insights.” They sign up because they caught a glimpse of their future self: the version who finally belongs to something bigger.

Your event isn’t competing with other events. It’s competing with whatever’s new on Apple TV+ and that little voice that whispers, “maybe later.” When you paint a picture of who attendees could become, everything changes.

Strategy isn’t what you’re offering. It’s who they get to become.

Those Toronto students didn’t randomly start helping each other. The event structure created Flow Theory: that perfect balance between challenge and skill that keeps people deeply engaged.

But they engaged even more because of the IKEA Effect: we value things more when we’ve helped build them. My team started designing run of show plans around co-creation—voting on topics, collaborative boards, naming segments together.

The Peak-End Rule taught me that people remember emotional highs and closing moments more than anything else. But they also remember when they felt genuinely helpful, when their expertise mattered to someone else.

Your run of show isn’t a script, it’s a carefully orchestrated emotional arc that lets people become co-creators.

Most virtual events violate Cognitive Load Theory: when you overload people’s mental processing capacity, they shut down. While teaching university students, I learned how to chunk information, pace delivery, and create clear psychological transitions.

The Doorway Effect became crucial—people need explicit permission to shift from observer to participant. Now every event starts with Appropriate Challenge: content that’s slightly challenging but totally achievable, with immediate micro-actions that make contribution feel obvious.

When people stop thinking about being overwhelmed, they start thinking about being helpful.

Those Toronto students are still connected years later. That’s the Flywheel Effect: the more value people get from one experience, the more likely they are to return and bring others.

But it requires Iteration Bias: people notice when each experience improves. I started highlighting human moments in follow-up content: the problem-solving, the encouragement, the “wait, how did you do that?” exchanges. The Spacing Effect means spreading these touchpoints across time builds a deeper connection.

Community isn’t a Slack channel that goes quiet after three days. It’s a shared story people want to keep writing.

That Creative Jam breakthrough became the foundation for STREAM—my framework built entirely on behavioral psychology:

Strategy → Anchoring + Future Self Projection
Topics & Talent → Parasocial Relationships + Contrast Effect
Run of Show → Flow Theory + Peak-End Rule + IKEA Effect
Execution → Cognitive Load Theory + Appropriate Challenge
Analysis → Experiential Learning + Feedback Loops
Momentum → Flywheel Effect + Iteration Bias + Spacing Effect

Each principle emerged from watching strangers transform into collaborators in real-time. But this is just the foundation—there are deeper layers that transform how events actually feel.

Understanding why strangers help each other tells you more about event design than any production guide ever will. We’re not in the event business—we’re in the belonging business.

Just like those Toronto students who turned a technical disaster into a genuine human connection, the best events happen when people feel safe enough to solve problems together.

That’s the mental model shift: from designing perfect experiences to designing spaces where imperfect humans can be generous with each other.

STREAM isn't a checklist, it's a psychology-based approach to creating experiences people actually remember. There are deeper mental models behind each phase that completely transform how events feel.