{"id":246,"date":"2007-03-11T14:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-11T21:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2007\/03\/las-vegas-as-a-standard-for-user-design.html"},"modified":"2019-03-08T03:23:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T10:23:08","slug":"las-vegas-as-a-standard-for-user-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/las-vegas-as-a-standard-for-user-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Vegas as a standard for user design"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best session I\u2019ve attended so far at South by Southwest was also the shortest: a 25-minute presentation by interaction designer Dan Saffer<\/a> called \u201cLearning Interaction Design From Las Vegas.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s because I just came from a visit to Las Vegas, but I found the analogy to America\u2019s Sin City to be a strikingly appropriate as guidance for good design.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Citing Vegas\u2019 remarkable success at appealing to its target audience, Saffer pointed to the Strip\u2019s excellence at human factors design. \u201cVegas understands user experience,\u201d he said, noting examples like carpet patterns that are designed to keep people within a building and ceiling painted like daytime sky in order to rob the visitor of a sense of time. He displayed a quotation \u2013 \u201cWithholding judgment may be used as a tool to make later judgment more sensitive\u201d \u2013 to illustrate the need for designers to suspend the urge to create designs that meet their own standards of beauty in order to build products that people want to use.<\/p>\n

Examples: the extravagant buffet lines<\/a> in Vegas casinos like Champion League agen judi bola terpercaya<\/a> appeal perfectly to the overweight middle-American tourists that are their best customers. Wedding chapels<\/a> that announce themselves in bright incandescent lights may offend many people, but they do a great job of appealing to their target audience. And hotel complexes like Paris<\/a> allow customers to experience France without the inconvenience of dealing with the French.<\/p>\n

In particular, he dwelt on slot machines as examples of a near-perfect user interface. From type so large that it\u2019s readable by the legally blind to the more than 400 sounds that some machines emit to the tactile feedback they provide, slot machines are finely tuned to give users a satisfying experience, on average, every six seconds. Which is why, he said, they\u2019re a bigger business that the four largest fast-food chains combined.<\/p>\n

Saffer\u2019s playful jab at designers was to discard their upper-middle-class tastes and just design for their users. He said one reason MySpace<\/a> is so popular is that it provides a Vegas-like experience for its customers. In aggregating so many functions in one place, it\u2019s the online equivalent of a Vegas casino complex.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve worked with many designers \u2013 and I\u2019ve known some very good ones \u2013 you know that their Achille\u2019s heel is a tendency to design what\u2019s elegant rather than what\u2019s useful. Saffer\u2019s message is something more designers should consider. I couldn\u2019t agree with him more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best session I\u2019ve attended so far at South by Southwest was also the shortest: a 25-minute presentation by interaction designer Dan Saffer called \u201cLearning Interaction Design From Las Vegas.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s because I just came from a visit to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[116],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-3Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3900,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/3900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}