Designing Meaningful Experiences - Digital Explorers' Diary #44
Welcome to the Digital Explorers' Diary #44!
A curated collection of thought-provoking topics about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.
Executive summary:
- 5 principles to design meaningful experiences,
- Stealing a security key from a device just by recording its power LED,
- Augmented Reality ads are now in Pokemon Go,
- And an old - but very accurate - article about how blockchains will leverage AI Agents.
Designing Meaningful Experiences
If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
— Anton Chekhov
When designing interactive experiences using cutting-edge technology, we must keep this principle in mind at all times. Known as Chekhov’s Gun, it highlights how every part of a story – or, in this case, of an experience – should contribute to the overall storytelling and advance the message we want to give.
Principles
Here are a few principles that you should pay attention to:
- Meaningful Interactions: Avoid adding features just for the sake of it. Reconsider the necessity of every part of the experience; if it doesn’t add value, remove it.
Bad example: having an AI Chatbot just because it’s the trend without real incentive behind it.
Good example: an AI that helps a virtual character to know the real environment (From the Peridot game) - Simplicity, Consistency, and Clarity: Most users are not yet familiar with interactive technologies such as Augmented/Virtual/Mixed Realities. Complex or inconsistent interactions can confuse them, making the experience hard to use, and distract them from the story. The experience should be as simple as possible.
Bad example: user must complete a complex hand gesture to complete the experience.
Good example: Apple’s Vision Pro gaze-and-pinch feature. - Storytelling, Anticipation, and Payoff: Just like the payoff of a gun being fired, interactive experiences should have their own incentives. The satisfaction of completing a task, the enjoyment of an unexpected animation, or the reveal of crucial information. Bad example: an Augmented Reality experience whose sole goal is to see an object in 3D without any story.
Good example: an interactive retail experience that lets you complete a quiz (anticipation) and get a reward if you answer correctly (payoff). - Emotional Engagement: Great stories evoke emotions. Similarly, great interactive experiences often connect with users on an emotional level. The users should be an intricate part of the experience.
Bad example: designing a fit-it-all experience without personalization will leave the user feeling uncared for.
Good example: a mixed-reality tour in a museum that lets you see extinct animals virtually and hold one in your hand. (Check out Revivre, an experience we worked on) - Context: Ensure that the experience makes sense within its context, just like actions in a story should be relevant to the plot or characters. Take into account the user’s environment, demographics, device, etc.
Bad example: designing a complex AR game and forgetting that the target audience is aged 50+.
Good example: a drawing and coloring AR experience designed for kids where parents must approve its usage beforehand.
Remember: in the end, everything will be experienced by a user. Follow Chekhov’s wisdom, and keep the user in mind at all times to create compelling and engaging experiences.
This Week's News:
- Niantic has now enabled ads in Augmented Reality in their blockbuster game, Pokemon Go.
That is an obvious move, and we can expect this type of ad to become a standard in most of the virtual worlds in the future!
Niantic - Sometimes, technology can look like magic. Researchers have managed to get security keys from a device… just by recording its power LED!
For those worried about AI, this is a perfect example. Here, researchers have thought about it, and we can take measures to prevent it, but a future super-intelligent AI could think of so many other things that it might be very difficult to control and prevent.
Picture of their test setup. - «How crypto-enabled AI will transform our economy and what policymakers should do today» It’s an old article, but it’s a very fascinating read, and recent developments of ChatGPT plugins that allow interactions with blockchains are definitely a step towards it.
Basically, he envisions a future where many AI agents are acting together in efficient, traceable, and reliable ways by relying on a blockchain structure.
He gives a perfect example:
«…if in the future many homes have solar panels on their roofs — there will be a need for the smart-home of the future to optimise when to buy, store, or sell electricity into the grid. This will unlikely be over existing payment systems e.g. debit card. Instead, I see a highly scalable cryptographic network being the best mechanism through which the agents, which represent each individual homes’ electricity needs; share data with one another, and optimise when they buy, store or sell that electricity. Individuals will then shop for the best software agents to run their smart-home.»
https://medium.com/@benfar
From the Podcast
Every week, I’m teaming up with Guillaume Brincin and Sébastien Spas on the Lost In Immersion podcast. This week:
- We discuss an amazing - and somewhat terrifying - research paper called «Seeing the World through Your Eyes», where a team of scientists managed to reconstruct an image of what was seen by someone just by looking at the reflection in their eyes. It’s far from perfect, but the privacy implications will be huge when this becomes available.
Seeing the World through Your Eyes - Zappar Zapbox is an interesting device. You can plug your smartphone into it, and it becomes a mixed-reality headset. There is no enclosing around it, making, it seems, a very good impression for its price. We wonder about the usage, though, as the experience will be, of course, less impressive than on a more full-featured device such as Hololens or Apple Vision Pro.
The idea is interesting, though. Is there a future for a device that can be used as a smartphone but also as a headset?
Zappar Zapbox - And again, on the Apple Vision Pro, we discuss this article that speculates the Apple Vision Pro hardware. A few things to note:
Because of the outward-facing screen, the cameras for mixed reality are not placed right in front of the eye line. This might cause depth perception issues.
The field of view seems impressive, but the enclosure might tame the feeling of immersion.
It seems to be heavy, with the majority of the weight at the front and on the nose. That might be the biggest issue with this device; it might be uncomfortable to have it on the head for an extended period of time.
Karl Guttag
Tune in at 10 am UTC on Tuesdays on Twitch, and listen to the replays on Youtube!
Did this newsletter spark some ideas? There are a lot of ways we can work together:
- A quick-fire, 30-minute brainstorm with me - book it here!
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