Boredom, Cinematography, but, Don't Make Me Click: Learnings from Interactions 08

Posted by Rowland on February 24 at 4:20 PM Boredom

It was curious to see influences from traditional architecture, as opposed to information architecture, but even more curious to see the title "Strategic Boredom" from Molly Wright Steenson at Princeton. Some truly zany examples she provides, but most interesting is to think about how boredom inspires people to act. My takeaways below after the video.




My takeaways shift slightly from her talk, but the categories she provided for boredom are quite intriguing. Some extensions of mine from her categories of boredom:  

• Situational boredom. Like waiting for the train. Brands make people wait, just think of banks: in the branch, on the phone, even waiting for transfers or downloads online. An opportunity to capture attention is here (and opportunity for the audience to leave).

• The boredom of safety. Too much of the same thing. Think of a website you go to everyday, maybe again your bank site. Without change, you become bored. Often this is thought to be good, using standard navigation, web best practices, so people can find what they are looking for. Once you’ve found it, though, any sense of discovery is lost. What is the right balance between usability here, and maintaining interest?

• My favorite, existential or creative boredom. People become despondent with brands. They become lethargic with their common websites. How do you engage a sense of life and creativity in the everyday?

Going to the movies

Sarah Alen from Laslzo systems brings a very astute discussion of cinematic experiences to web applications. First, she considers narrative and story telling. Second, an emotional context. Third, visual cues and motion graphics.




Perhaps unintentionally, as she is focused on software application development, Sarah has hit upon some excellent points elements necessary in branding on the web, here are where my ears pricked up:

• Story is so often lost because the brand narrative is missing, or the user story is lost. Graphics then don't serve to push the story along, but simply as embellishment, "empty calories".

• Emotional engagement, a "back-story", intuiting needs of the user before they get to the site. Where are they? What do they need? We speak at DMD of a functional and emotional brand. Here, understanding the back-story of the user opens up some emotional connections to the brand through interface design.

• A lovely example from Casablanca, the classic roulette scene, to show the importance of pacing in plot development. High production value, but invisible to the viewer as they are caught up in the plot.

"Don't Make Me Click"

The interface is the product, and no interface is the best interface. That is the simple proposition of Aza Raskin (who is a bit of a genius). The less interactions the better, the less clicks the better. Facebook, iPod, Google all decrease the interactions and Facebook pushes constant content at people not requiring interaction. The video (does not show much of the slides, but still excellent presenter) then some thoughts.

• Lots of clicking is a video game. People don't want a video game to get to information. What is interesting here, though, is the problem on tracking interactions we see so often. If I get to a home page of a site, get what I need, read it, then leave; how was that tracked? In a funny way, the way metrics are put together for marketers actively discourages simple, easy, interactive design.

• The seduction of interaction. A great point on selling in fancy interaction to clients, versus what is actually going to be good for users. This point, called "The Presentation Paradox" has been made nicely here as well.

• Random Access. Good example on spell check. Microsoft Word used to force you to spell check the entire document, a linear process, rather than just one word at a time. Adding the red underline allows people to choose if they will interact with what words when. This is random access. Far too often we create linear stories that don’t allow people to access the information randomly, to jump in the middle of a process, and consequently they don’t use tools or truly interact with a brand.

     Topics: architecture and design, interactive        SHARE: