Opera at SXSW 2008

SXSW Presentation: Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs

By John Jones. Sunday, 9. March 2008, 17:36:36

2008, magic, sxsw, design

When I saw this presentation on the schedule, it piqued my interest because I recently finished reading Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers, a book on how magicians can use the techniques of actors to improve their shows. The book was useful to me because—in general—it is about how to get an audience's attention, a skill that is useful not just for magic, but for presentations and writing as well.

The presenter was Jared Spool, the Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering. Similar to the multi-functionality of Magic and Showmanship, Spool's claim is that the techniques of magic can be used to improve experience design.

The presentation was divided into acts. The first act focused on the role of mental models. According to Spool, an illusion is created by separating the experience of the user from the experience of the designer. One example of this difference in action for design is Disney's Haunted Mansion. While the user experience of the Haunted Mansion is dominated by ghosts and other frightening encounters, its designers think about trolleys, mirrors, and speakers. Similarly, when a computer user deletes a "file," there is no file, just a bunch of 1s and 0s, a reality that is hidden by designers. The principle of illusion, as it applies to experience design, is focusing on the

division between the simplicity of the user experience and the complexity of what is actually happening.

Most users are interested in simple experiences, so designers should work on hiding the complexity of the processes that make up that experience.

Act II focused on the role of perception. Spool performed a couple of magic tricks that show how our perceptions don't necessarily match up with reality. For example, he shared the result of a study of user experience of site speed. Interestingly, users in the study rated Amazon.com as the fastest page in the study, but in fact it was the slowest site in terms of download times. However, they discovered that Amazon was actually the fastest site in the study when those sites were ranked according to their task-completion time.

His final act illustrated the role of delight. According to the Kano model, a system should have a number of features: some should be basic (a calculator should add, for example), but others should add delight. According to Spool, delight happens through whimsy, attention to detail (such as your iPod loading image on your computer showing the correct iPod color), and functionality. Finally, designers need to remember that what is delightful today will eventually become something that users expect as part of the system, so designers have to constantly find new ways to delight users and provide them with a simple experience that is not the same as the underlying, complex experience.