State-of-the-Art Experience Design for Experience Nerds — Attending a Battlestar Galactica LARP

Posted on April 2, 2013 by hillel

Let’s get this out of the way at the outset. LARP is an acronym that stands for Live Action Role Playing. Think Dungeons and Dragons, but running around in the woods in costumes and with fake swords. Or at least, that’s what I thought it was. But, it’s way more than that. It’s way more than I imagined anyway. Before I get into the details, let me give some background.

Here at Jackson Fish Market, we live and breathe user experience design. And for us, the highest calling of a great design is making the user feel… have an emotional experience. This is what we strive for in small and large ways. As my co-founder Jenny has said, in some ways, a game is the purest form of user experience design. The person playing the game doesn’t need to get their work done, or get a message to someone, they’re just there to feel something, to have fun. With other software, the user needs to accomplish a task. The software they’re using may be their only option for getting it done. But in the world of games, there are tens of thousands to choose from. And these days, a huge number are free.

One of the common themes in game design circles is the desire to tell a story. Countless failed efforts at “interactive fiction” and games designed with the input of Hollywood folks have left that dream for the most part unfulfilled. But for game designers, software is but one canvas. The resurgence of tabletop gaming is evidence that the thirst for gaming goes will beyond our obsession with our various screens. And for one group, the canvas of choice is the real world.

A LARP is an experience where a group of people enter a situation in character and play out a story. There are other people, the game runnners, who arrange plan the experience, the rules, any props, and any non-player characters. The key is this, whatever the scenario, whatever the environment, the players job is to stay in character and keep the game going no matter what. There are tools to pause the game and discuss how to proceed, but the magic of the LARP experience is to feel like you really are in a dungeon/spaceship/different era. And when someone stops the game, the suspension of disbelief takes a hit.

In a world where the internet is filled with trolls, and online games have griefers — players who like nothing better than to ruin the game for others — it’s difficult to imagine playing a LARP where someone doesn’t try to ruin it for everyone else. But as best I can tell, the LARP community is small enough and tightly knit to the point that this type of anti-social behavior is frowned upon. So for a niche group, a LARP can really be an experience that creates real emotion and transports you to another time and place. Whether this is something that could be reproduced for a much broader audience I wonder.

A few months ago I read online about a LARP that was being planned for March 2013 in Sweden. It would take place in the world of Battlestar Galactica. In in the real world it would take place on a Swedish destroyer that was now a museum. The LARP was billed as put on by the most hardcore and serious LARPers on the planet. Basically, this would be the ultimate LARP. Four six hour “episodes” spread across three days on a Swedish Destroyer. Fascinated with game design, and with extending user experiences beyond the screen, I decided, if I was going to experience a LARP, this was the one to try. I signed up.

To be quite honest, it was fantastic. Like a movie more than a videogame but I WAS IN IT. Maybe it was more like a play? A play that went on for twenty-four hours on an immersive set? If you’ll excuse the metaphor from another fictional universe, it was like the holodeck. It wasn’t perfect, but when everything was clicking there were a few truly magical moments where I believed I was in space aboard an old ship that had just survived the Cylon holocaust that destroyed most of humanity. I was THERE. Seriously. I know that I have a data set of exactly one, but given the reactions from some of the veteran LARPers that were there, I think it’s fair to say my positive assessment is not entirely because of the fact that this was my first LARP.

Before I dive into some of the details, it’s important to note that while there are many reasons why this LARP was so good, the most important decision the team made was to set it in the Battlestar Galactica universe. If you’re going to make a Harry Potter LARP, the players need to pretend to cast spells (and more importantly, pretend to be affected by them). If you’re going to make a superhero LARP you’re going to need to pretend to fly and use superpowers. But while BSG has space travel, and sentient humanoid robots, the technology in the show basically resembles what we have here on earth. In fact, to avoid Cylon infiltration, the survivors in the BSG universe had to go use old tech that wasn’t susceptible to Cylon technology. That kind of technology looks a lot like a Swedish Destroyer from the middle of the twentieth century.

Because the rebooted BSG television show was produced on a budget, many of the decisions they made about the storyline and context of the story were made to save money. In other words, the producers of the show the LARP were trying to emulate tried to use as many real world props, and inexpensive environments as they could. The TV producers’ decisions made it so much easier for the LARP producers to create an environment that really felt like you were in the world of Battlestar Galactica. One of my favorite examples is the octagonal paper and signage present throughout the TV show. Basically, you cut the corners off a piece of paper and voila, it’s from the world of BSG. When I first saw this on TV I thought it was kind of silly, but like most of the little details the TV producers used, it grew on me, and gave texture to that world. And wonderfully, it was pretty straightforward to reproduce in the LARP. All you needed was a pair of scissors.

Who was in attendance at this LARP of LARPs? I didn’t do a formal survey but for the one I attended (they put it on three times) it felt like over half the people (and maybe more) were somehow involved in the business of game design. Video game concept artists, Disney imagineers, tabletop game store owners, video game level designers, and more. Basically, this was an incredibly well-thought out LARP, set in a perfect and immersive universe, run by the most hardcore game runners in the LARP world, and attended by people who design games for a living. In other words, this was a professional game for game professionals. A perfect storm.

Oh, and I was there too.

I played a marine. I was equipped with a backstory a uniform, and some weapons as well. The uniform didn’t fit. And like the food that wasn’t good, it all helped me get into the mindset of being a Colonial Marine. I imagine that Marines just make do. And that the food on some random commercial spaceship that luckily survived the almost complete annihilation of humanity wouldn’t be that great. There was money — cubits they gave us. There were a few card decks with which to play Triad (BSG Poker). And throughout this old Swedish destroyer, octagonal signage, and screens connected to hardware controls that let you actually do stuff that mattered – like fly and repair the ship. Or run scientific experiments that had a bearing on the story. Honestly the level of detail, and thoughtfulness put into this experience was nothing short of amazing.

You didn’t fly the ship with a joystick. You flew the ship in three dimensional space. Planning jumps. Reading sensors. Plotting coordinates. Math and stuff. Apparently the first version of the interface for flying the ship was so realistic, some PhDs in Astrophysics had a hard time getting it right. After some retooling the game organizers came up with some great teamwork inducing mini-games that let a group fo people in the CIC (that’s BSG speak for “bridge”) fly the ship pretty well. Yet another detail that was super well thought out.

But it wasn’t just environment, there was a story too. A good story. Playing with a bunch of game designers meant that not only was nobody trying to ruin the game for anyone else, everyone was almost nervous that they might ruin the game for others. So people played with a light touch, trying to read signals about what others wanted to do. It was actually quite nice. And everyone understood the basic rhythm of a good story, so everyone was content to let the tension and revelations build over time until the end of the experience where things came to a head. Creating a story that 140 people can guide in a freeform fashion is no small feat. The game runners did just that however. Often repeating the pattern of balancing three elements of the story, three choices, three sources of leverage with each other so there were always interesting directions in which the story could proceed. It was never A or B. It was almost always A, B, or C. And when key inciting events had to happen, the game runners were able to deliver those moments to the players either via the technology built just for the LARP or by the introduction of non-player-characters played by the game runners themselves. If you know anything about Battlestar Galactica I can’t tell you how disquieting it is to know that there are unidentified Cylons aboard your ship, and then suddenly see twins. Anyone familiar with the TV show knows that this is the telltale sign that you’re in deep shit.

The other players were really quite great. All of them trying their hardest to really live the experience, never break character, and make the game fun for themselves and others. They were also nice enough to help me with my crazy marine uniform (I would make a super crappy soldier) and advise me on the secret of LARPers — chocolate. When you’re on guard duty on a cold space ship, making sure a Cylon doesn’t escape, and you’re starving, a Caprican chocolate bar tucked away in one of your pockets can be a real life saver.

I want to take a moment to thank the organizers of the Celestra LARP including Martin, Cecilia, and Adriana. They were just one tenth of the team that put this on, but they were some of the folks I got to talk to in more detail at the afterparty over beers. They did an amazing job and I’m super grateful. (There’s also a Facebook page with lots of pictures and videos.) I’d also like to thank all my fellow LARPers — newbies and veterans alike who made it a super fun experience. I heard rumors that maybe this experience will come to the U.S. If they do put it on again, or frankly, if this group of folks put on any LARP again, I urge you to attend. If you have even one of the magical transporting moments that I did, I promise it will be worth it.

So say we all.

An Open Letter to Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citibank

Posted on October 8, 2012 by hillel

Dear Mr. Pandit:

I have been a Citibank credit card customer for 22 years. Honestly, I don’t know why I still am.

Today I received an e-mail and a phone call about potential fraud on my account.

Normally this would be a welcome call as I don’t want anyone stealing my identity and charging things on my account. Except that of the at least one hundred times you have bothered me with a communication like this, you have been right exactly ZERO times. ZERO! You are ALWAYS wrong. Major league baseball players only have to succeed a quarter of the time or more to be considered decent hitters. You’re never right.

As upsetting and annoying as this is, I understand that detecting fraudulent purchases using algorithms is a hard problem. But that’s not even the worst of it.

When the automated call asks me to identify a purchase it literally asked me this:

“Did you use your card at an unidentified merchant on Monday October 8th? If so press 1, if not press 2.”

Mr. Pandit, I design user experiences for a living. Mostly in software, but the principles of the interaction with a telephone are much the same. And may I say respectfully that yours is awful. Some notes:

You have a relationship with the merchant. The fact that your automated machine and the person who I later spoke to have ZERO idea what the name of the merchant is, is ridiculous. You KNOW the name.
And often when they do know the name, it’s some weird name of the holding business, and not a name I recognize.
If you want me to identify a purchase, please have the courtesy to actually use the name of the store that I would know. I don’t know if ABT incorporated (usually pronounced unintelligibly by your automated system) happens to own the store I just shopped at?
And while the human being did know the amount of the purchase, that was a piece of information that was sadly lacking in the automated call.
And to add insult to injury, there was NO option to switch to a human. So I just kept pressing buttons and having the machine yell at me that it didn’t understand what I wanted until it finally offered to send me to a human.

Your user experience is designed to save you money. It’s designed to save you from having to cover fraudulent charges. And it’s designed to save you from having to pay a human being to speak to me. As a byproduct, your user experience is designed to make me miserable. I can now say with certainty and no hyperbole, I hate Citibank. I’m a slow learner, so it did take 22 years, but now I officially hate your bank.

Every user experience can use polish and needs to evolve over time, but I’ve experienced this awfulness from your company for years. And that tells me two things: 1) you have no respect for my time, and 2) you don’t use your own product. I suggest you get a Citibank credit card, and make some online purchases periodically. And make sure that when they detect fraud, they call your personal cell phone. I have a feeling, when you experience this mess a few dozen times, all of a sudden it will become a priority in Citibank’s customer service department to fix this insulting and disrespectful customer experience.

Sincerely,

Hillel Cooperman

The Power of “I don’t know.”

Posted on November 14, 2011 by hillel

So many times, when designing a software user interface, it’s helpful to ask yourself if you would enjoy interacting with a human being who talked to you the way the software did. If the answer is “no” then you have more work to do. Inevitably, this exercise gets turned on its head when user experience experts spend time dealing with actual human beings. Is my call to the sales or support staff of a company any less of a user experience than my interaction with their website or their app?

But often it seems like there is even less care given to the experience customers have with live human beings at a company than the interaction they have with the software. Nowhere is this more evident than the incredible aversion that many customer service personnel have to saying “I don’t know.” – which for bonus points can be preceded by “Good question.”, and followed by “Let me find out for you.”

I don’t think someone is dumb, or a company is awful when someone doesn’t know an answer to one of my questions. What does make me ~~borderline~~ insane is when they try to bullshit their way through an answer that I know is simply not true. And of course, once they start down this path, things can only get worse. If I gently give evidence that their answer is without a doubt wrong, it just makes them stick to their guns even more. Now that they’ve claimed to know, the only course of action is to back up their claim at all costs. And now, for disagreeing with the “expert” I’m the asshole.

Attention customer service departments and any business group that has people speak or interact with customers in any way. Rule #1 should be, it’s ok to say “I don’t know.” The customer may not get their answer immediately, but at least they won’t be subjected to some nuttiness that just wastes their time.

And while we’re at it, Rule #2 should be: if you ask a customer for their credit card number after they just typed it into their phone, you should be shot.

That is all.

Tiny Tower — When did videogames get ruined?

Posted on October 24, 2011 by hillel

I have always considered myself a video game nerd. I grew up with an Atari 2600, an Atari 800, a Sega Genesis, a Dreamcast, a Playstation, and both Xboxes. I also played games on Macs, PCs, and even spent many hours of my youth playing games in actual arcades. Pretty typical for many guys my age and background. Over the last 10-15 years something happened that put me further on the periphery of gaming. I don’t know if it’s the nausea I feel playing first person shooters, or just my lack of interest in blowing shit up, but most games seemed not for me. More recent games that I have loved included SimCity, Age of Empires, Escape Velocity, World of Warcraft, Diablo II, Railroad Tycoon, Torchlight, Lego Star Wars, etc. I know there’s some mayhem in these games, but each of them has an emphasis on collecting things, building things, or exploring things as well. Those are the things I enjoy. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve spent plenty of time playing Angry Birds, Bejeweled, various Scrabble games, and more.)

I have not played Farmville or other games of that ilk. I get uncomfortable spamming my friends (unless it’s something I’m selling), and paying to advance in a game (rather than to unlock new content) feels unfun to me.

When I first saw Tiny Tower I was enamored of the 8-bit graphics, the jazzy soundtrack, and the memories it brought up of one of my favorite games of yesteryear — Yoot Saito’s SimTower. It was free in the app store. I downloaded it to my iPad and started playing. The goal of the game is to build your tower with a mix of residential and commercial floors, keeping your ‘bitizens’ employed in jobs they like and are good at, and keeping your commercial ventures stocked with inventory and making you cash to spend on more floors. There are plenty of artificial delays built into the game that you can skip by spending some of the ‘TowerBux’ you can earn (or purchase via in-app purchase).

I’m no expert on game mechanics and psychology, but I know enough to know that while levels usually require progressively more investment, they also yield progressively more exciting rewards. Not so in Tiny Tower. The only thing that appears to increase in Tiny Tower with each level is the amount of time you have to spend to get anything done. Now… I understand why this is. They’re hoping at some point that I reach my breaking point and give in spending actual dollars in exchange for TowerBux that I’ll use to accelerate my progress. My pain increased exponentially while my rewards moved linearly. A very different dynamic, despite which I achieved 100 floors in Tiny Tower (evidence below) without any in-app purchases or cheating. (I also had 164 of my 182 Bitizens in their dream jobs at this point.

When my wife and I used to play lots of Age of Empires she would invariably look up the cheat codes. Driving her huge American car all over the maps and shooting anything that moved was fun for her. But for me the cheating was a novelty but not fun. And it was only something I chose to do after I’d exhausted the gameplay. She went straight to the cheating. I’m not making an ethical statement (it’s just a video game) but I really can’t distinguish between the Age of Empire cheat codes, and the TinyTower in-app purchases (or buying black market gold for WOW for that matter).

I understand that this is where the money is these days in games. And the number of people who would pay 99 cents (or even 199 cents, or — amazingly — even 499 cents) for a Tiny Tower that was tuned for regular gameplay is probably dwarfed by the number of people who want to pay to get ahead. I wonder what would happen if they made two versions. One for people who like to work/play hard to earn achievements, and another for people who like to pay their way to the front of the line and see which one makes more money over the long term. In my version the developer could even use the in-app purchase system to let me buy access to a second tower, or other cool features.

Here’s my prediction (which of course is worth what you’re paying for it)… paying to advance in games is clearly popular (even though I find it decidedly unfun myself). And while I understand that it’s letting companies like Zynga essentially print cash, I think it’s got a short shelf life. Just as it seems consumers are getting bored with daily deals, I think they’ll get bored with games that are just designed to inflict pain in exchange for actual cash. Well… I hope that’s the case. Otherwise, i foresee even fewer video games in my future. (Maybe we’ll have to make some games just to have something enjoyable to play.)

Creative User Interfaces Aren’t Just for Movies

Posted on October 11, 2011 by hillel

Recently I saw an article about a new startup called Small Demons. The premise was vague, but had something to do with the publishing industry. Being interested in publishing I signed up to be notified of their launch. Today I went to their website and was introduced to their premise of cataloging real world details mentioned in books and visualizing the connections between them. OK.

Cataloging large amounts of data with interesting connections and visual representations is always a fun user interface challenge. There are usually lots of opportunities to do something interesting with the UI. And the video (starring ubiquitous hipster startup video spokesperson whose name currently escapes me) doesn’t disappoint. Well, at least not at first. The video is set in a room full of books with our friend slowly explaining what the site does. Details from books are flying out of said books in 2.5 dimensions. UI is hanging in the air and sliding all over the place. Very creative. Lovely and inspirational aesthetic. On point and well done.

Our friend is grabbing details from the air and using them in real life. Really fancy.

And then the UI of the actual experience makes an appearance. What a fucking disappointment.

Hey there boring grid on white background. Nice to see you… AGAIN! There’s nothing wrong with a grid or white background per se. But where’s all the inspiration from the UI that was in the video? Where’s the aesthetic? (Or any aesthetic?) Where are the small details that reinforce why I’m on this site passionately combing through the “Storyverse” as they call it. The people who made this video clearly understood how to articulate the passion behind the site in a visually expressive and inspiring form. Could those people have not been used to design the user interface that the users would actually use? It’s like the difference between the picture of the steaming, delicious, appetizing, tasty burrito on the box of frozen burritos and the actual mess that comes out of my microwave.

No. I don’t expect the service to deposit me in a 3d virtual world where i can wave my hands Minority Report style and navigate their interface (grabbing items from the virtual world into the digital world in the process). I’m sure there are lovely and smart people working on Small Demons and I wish it nothing but success, but this just seems like an opportunity lost. I would have hoped that the folks at Small Demons would see the contrast between the aspiration articulated in their video and their UI and realize that quite a bit more “special” was called for to deliver on the promise they made.

Perhaps in v2.