Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

i’ve talked about good and bad design, and one of the things that I’ve wanted to point out is that there’s a separation between good design from a purely design-oriented perspective and something good that is designed badly, whether by accident or on purpose. I think it’s easy to stop thinking about good design at the precise moment something works– once it does what it’s intended to, there’s a temptation to say “okay, good design here” and move on. I think that’s an oversimplification, and a potentially harmful one; it leaves us out of looking to continually improve our designs.

Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

That being said, ideal design is not always possible, or even desirable. There are a wide variety of reasons why we might want to intentionally design something less well than we could, or even design it badly on purpose. I want to talk today about a few reasons we might do this.

In Service To A Greater Design

I’ve talked before about friction, and how important it is to a variety of (notably interactive) experiences. Friction is attained by intentionally slowing things down, making them less efficient, less direct, and in general, more frustrating in small ways. Friction in games tends to take the form of one feature being designed inefficiently to make the overall game’s design better; we make decisions about one area to improve the whole.

Outside of games, there are things like speed limiters or manual transmissions on cars. A car with a speed limiter is not as well designed as one without that kind of hardcoded restraint, but those cars help make the roads safer, contributing to the overall design of the transportation network. Similarly, while cars with manual transmissions are more efficient and give the driver finer control, they’re also more difficult to use and require more training to operate– cars without them, while less efficient and offering less control, allow more drivers to use cars without needing to overcome the training hurdle, and allowing a driver to pay attention to a wider variety of things while driving without compromising safety quite as much.

Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

Catering To A Specific Audience

Sometimes, the specific audience for something lends itself to otherwise bad design. Whether it’s a niche crowd that prefers a very specific sort of content, an enthusiast who is either intentionally pursuing older or less refined hobby materials, or a group of hardcore gamers that wants their games excessively punishing and challenging, catering to these groups will require sacrifices on the design side.

In a lot of these cases, people will just be “used to” something, and even if a superior design exists, the transition or new rules are so uncomfortable that the improvement in design gets lost. Inertia is a powerful force, and it’s often a lot easier to continue using what’s already known than attempt to improve a system, even if that system is poorly designed. The saying usually associated with this is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but I tend to think that this misses the need to continually self-improve. That having been said, incremental improvement is a solid way to shift, and that often requires intentionally bad design just to ease the overall transition.

Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

Creating Art

Put simply, there is a line where the science of design meets the art of design, and these two facets of the whole tend to clash. People’s reactions to design are often emotional, rather than practical, and an objectively good design may still inspire negative emotions, and vice-versa. Art is doing this intentionally, evoking emotional responses intentionally, and in the service of creating art, design can and must be sacrificed.

Everything science has to say about aerodynamics may make it clear that curved shapes are more capable of flight, but an artist creating a beautiful painting of a flying machine for a culture that despises curved shapes is going to give up the superior curved design in favor of the desired emotional response.

Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

Not Enough Resources

Sometimes, something needs to just be “good enough”. It’s a reality of pretty much every creative industry, and realistically the vast majority of designs are going to need to settle, rather than get continually refined to near-perfection. It’s just too resource-intensive to pursue ideal design constantly, so corners often need to get cut (or rounded, depending on the tools you’re using).

While a necessity of staying sane in a creative field, I think it’s still important not to conflate “good enough design” with “good design”– settling for poor design is fine, but convincing oneself that the “good enough design” is actually intended and is therefore above criticism or improvement is something of a dangerous trap. It leads us to stop thinking about how to improve, and I’m firmly of the opinion that we should never stop pursing improvement.

Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

To Teach

AI shouldn’t run into obvious traps. Systems shouldn’t obscure parts of themselves or mislead their users as far as their functionality. Games shouldn’t be wildly unbalanced or turn on cheat codes for the player. All of these are useful in the context of teaching people how things work. The AI that runs into a trap shows you that the trap is there, so it isn’t an unfair surprise. Systems may obscure parts of themselves or lie about their capabilities to break themselves down into more manageable chunks. Early levels in games will often make you invincible, or otherwise have an overwhelming advantage, just so that you can learn the controls and the basic functions.

Inflatable water wings make you a less efficient, less capable swimmer, but they’re GREAT for teaching children to swim and generally be comfortable in the water. They’re a temporary measure to be shed later on, like many teaching tools. Once we’re capable of understanding how to swim, we tend to automatically understand why floaties are unnecessary and really just hold us back. Similarly, once we’re capable of seeing the traps, understanding the systems, or competently playing a new game, we no longer need the teaching tools.

Again, it’s important to understand that the teaching tools aren’t indicative of the good design of whatever is being taught, in the same way that putting scaffolding around a building isn’t a good design for the long term, but is useful for short-term construction until the building no longer needs it. Much like things that are in service to a greater design, teaching tools aid the overall work, rather than necessarily being good design in and of themselves. A game that never sheds its tutorial cheats, or whose AI consistently runs into obvious traps gets savaged in reviews; the game needs to shed those constructs because while they’re useful for the short term, they’re bad for the long term.

Design Philosophy (Part 3: Why Design Badly on Purpose?)

Design is a really big concept that’s often treated like something much smaller. Part of my inspiration to write this series stemmed from a discussion I had about free-to-play games, that lean heavily on randomness as a skill equalizer / spoiler and are in some cases explicitly built to draw money out of players at the cost of the game’s overall design quality. Candy Crush is a well-loved game but it frequently supplies you with unwinnable boards and carefully constructed design failures to drive you to make purchases. These things aren’t good design for the game, but they serve the product as a whole.

I find the distinction between “good design” and “justifiably bad design” to be a really important, really interesting one, which is why I’ve spent so many words over the last few days talking about it, both here and elsewhere. At a philosophical level, I don’t think being able to justify something makes it right, and that philosophy extends to things other than moral imperatives for me.

Hopefully this was interesting for some folks. Thanks for reading!

AggroChat #90 – Star Wars Spoilers Show

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Firstly let me lead off this post with a quick note…  I screwed up.  We had a discussion last week about potentially switching to the Season/Episode format for our show numbers.  After the discussion we decided to go with continuing the bigger numbers is better format.  Before the show I go out and double check to make sure what episode we are on… and apparently I look at the wrong episode.  As a result I absolutely announced this week as 89 when it should have been 90.  I feel strange about edits… largely because the format of our show is intended to be like listening in on an existing conversation.  So for the time being I’ve decided to let my screw up stand…  feel free to mock me.

On the week of Star Wars the Force Awakens release we actually had planned on recording a show on our feelings about the movie.  The thing is… that we all for the most part loved the movie so much that we did not want to add to the spoilers on the internet.  As a result we put off the show until a point where we felt it was “fair game”.  Upon coming back to work after New Years it seems like the internet has declared Star Wars spoilers open season, so as a result we decided to go ahead and record the show.  What ended up happening is a show really unlike what I expected.  It was far more critical than the hour and a half gush fest that I expected…  but still from the point of fans talking about fandom.

Tonight we also welcome back Dallian and Neph for yet another “big show” which are starting to seem far more common this year.

Design Philosophy (Part 2: Why is there Bad Design?)

I made an attempt yesterday to define “good design”. By extension, I tend to think that things that don’t fit the definition fall somewhere on the spectrum, where some omissions might make “great design” merely “okay design” or “passable design” and flagrant violations would start to fall into the realm of “bad design”.

Design Philosophy (Part 2: Why is there Bad Design?)

Some things are badly designed. This can be a result of omission or ignorance or error on the part of the designer, or it can be intentional. What I want to look at a bit more today is why some things are designed badly. Something can be designed badly and still be “good” on the whole, and it’s important to remember that good design isn’t the end-all-be-all, nor is something good necessarily well-designed. Design isn’t the only consideration in the creation of something, but I think it’s important to be able to tell the difference between a good thing with good design and a good thing with bad design.

So, definition of good design again:

Good design is when the thing in question accomplishes what is desired in an efficient, reliable, intuitive, thorough, positive, and inspiring way without contradicting its own goals, being dishonest or misleading, or being unnecessarily obtrusive or overwrought.

Let’s take an easy example: air travel. Getting on planes is inefficient and a generally frustrating experience. It contradicts its own goals of getting people from place to place effectively, it’s often misleading, and it’s certainly obtrusive.

Why?

The easy answer, and the one you hear a lot from frustrated passengers at airports, is “because the people running things are idiots”. This is rarely actually the case. A process that huge and with that many people involved that runs for decades does not continue that way because the people in charge aren’t good at their jobs. Air travel is specifically designed to be unpleasant in a variety of annoying but not enraging ways. It is intentionally designed badly.

Design Philosophy (Part 2: Why is there Bad Design?)

Again, why?

I’ve talked elsewhere about follow-the-money problems, and air travel is a pretty clear one. Most of the additional purchases you can make beyond simply buying your ticket involve removing the various annoyances that you have to put up with. The markup on these is huge, and involves relatively low overhead for the airline. Loading the plane is inefficient and obtrusive, and so you can pay money to get on sooner, ensuring that you don’t have to deal with the annoyances of waiting in line or worrying over whether you’ll have a place to put your bag. Seats get increasingly uncomfortable to encourage you to upgrade your seat to something a bit more comfortable. Sitting closer to the front of the plane means you get off sooner, and are more likely to get your connecting flight. All of this is *designed*.

There are other considerations as well. You can board earlier if you check in ahead of time on most airlines. This is another designed thing– the airlines don’t want no-shows, so they incentivize you to check in early, so they have an accurate headcount and no empty seats on the flight. If you help them get an accurate headcount sooner, they will remove a layer or two of annoyances from your trip.

So, that’s how we get bad design in things we don’t like. What about bad design in things we do like?

Since I was already talking about flying, it’s time for me to get controversial. World of Warcraft has flying mounts. They effectively function like cheat codes– you press a button and you can fly like a GM does. Because the flight mechanics are very simple and offer no opportunity for gameplay (there’s no combat in the sky), flight simply allows you to go up in the air and bypass whatever you care to, skipping mobs and obstacles to get to a particular goal. It’s probably the single most damaging thing to WoW’s gameplay that they’ve ever done, and it’s extremely telling that they “take it away” for every new expansion. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this happens– with flight enabled all the time, there’s very little game to play, just fly down, click, fly up.

Design Philosophy (Part 2: Why is there Bad Design?)

“But players love it!” you say. “I love it! Don’t tell me flight in WoW is bad design when I’m having so much fun with it!”

Here’s where it gets interesting. WoW’s flight model is bad design– it contradicts the goal of players playing the game instead of bypassing it, it creates a situation in which you’re (unintuitively) better off not playing the game than playing it, it misleads players into thinking the ground game is boring (it is, in fact, the only game), and it forces the rest of the game to be significantly overwrought just to accommodate flight. As above, it’s a cheat code, there’s little to no skill involved in flying, there’s no associated gameplay, it’s effectively an invincibility code and terrain hack all in one, with a pretty wrapper and nice effects.

It is, however, fun. Cheating is fun. Create an item that can be used to instantly kill any target and everyone would flock to it. In Destiny, the “loot caves” were immensely popular. Cheating is even more fun if it’s apparently sanctioned by the game. How can flight be cheating if it’s something the designers put in there? Well, everyone makes mistakes. Consider the outcry when Destiny shut down its loot caves, how angry players were. Imagine that multiplied ten thousandfold, if Blizzard were to come out and say “hey folks, you know what, flight was a mistake and we’re removing it to make the game better”. Pandora’s box is open, there’s no going back, even if in every interview where it comes up Blizzard devs all but say outright that flight was a terrible mistake that they wish they’d never put in the game.

I mentioned that good design inspires later design. It’s very, very telling that nearly no major MMO has implemented WoW-style flying mounts, with the exception of FFXIV (which operates on a slightly different content model anyway). Other games have included flight, but it’s been more limited, and generally included more gameplay. WoW’s flight didn’t inspire; it was a cautionary tale.

But, it’s fun, so it stays. For some people, WoW is a better game for including this feature; good design or no. It trades good design and the game’s mechanical integrity for player satisfaction.

Design Philosophy (Part 2: Why is there Bad Design?)

Another, more common example of bad design in WoW, and one that they changed: the old talent trees. These were badly designed because they were unintuitive, not very thorough (depending on the class), EXTREMELY misleading and dishonest, and very much overwrought. Talent trees presented a set of options that the game portrayed as equally good, when the reality was that there was a “right answer” and a whole lot of pitfalls along the way. For a long time, players and designers alike considered this “good design”, as being able to separate the wheat from the chaff was considered a skill.

The problem was, the optimal builds were posted online and if you weren’t following one of those, you were probably playing badly, or at the very least noticeably sub-optimally. The choices were illusions, there was a right answer and then a lot of mistakes, not a genuine series of choices. If the talent trees had been permanent and unalterable (as similar things were in earlier games), the problem would have been exposed FAR sooner. MMOs preceding WoW often had extensive “build planners”, so you could figure out what permanent choice you made as you levelled up and didn’t ruin your character by making an incorrect choice. Also bad design, and while WoW’s talents improved upon it, it still only went from “appalling” to “not great”.

But, all of that being said, up until the point Blizzard specifically came forward and said their talent system was bad design and they were removing and replacing it entirely, players would argue that it was a demonstration of skill, a sign of knowledge and expertise, and a way of separating the “good players” from those players who foolishly thought that because a game presented them with apparently equivalent choices that they could feel comfortable picking any of them.

I’m picking on WoW here, but a lot of games fail at this. They present a bunch of choices with similar costs or requirements, but the efficacy of those choices is wildly uneven. Sometimes games will be honest with you and say that this choice will make the game harder; more often they do not.

Design Philosophy (Part 2: Why is there Bad Design?)

These last two were good (or well-loved) things designed badly by mistake. What about something designed badly on purpose that we like?

It’s hard to find good examples of this, because things that we like tend to cloud our vision as far as good design goes. Microtransaction games are extremely popular, and often sacrifice good gameplay design in order to squeeze more money out of players. The ones that do this more acceptably are largely just better at hiding it, though they’re still making the same design sacrifices.

I want to look a bit more into why we might design something badly on purpose in the next part of this.

 

Design Philosophy (Part 1: What is “Good Design”?)

Design is important. Not just in games, but in everything. Design is how we make whatever is happening in our minds into reality, and it is also how we consciously improve. It’s an important part of things being functional, of things working, and of things being fixable when broken. It helps things work and it helps us understand what’s wrong when things don’t work. Design is important, and because of this, good design is inherently worth pursuing, and bad design something to be avoided.

Design Philosophy (Part 1: What is “Good Design”?)

But it’s not enough just to say that something needs to be designed well. If we don’t know what good design is, we can’t recognize it. Good design is not simply “does [thing] do what it was intended it to do”, because there are reasons to intentionally design something badly. It’s worth recognizing the difference between something that is designed well and something that is intentionally designed badly, because they’re ultimately very different things. So, what is good design? Here’s an attempt at a general statement:

Good design is when the thing in question accomplishes what is desired in an efficient, reliable, intuitive, thorough, positive, and inspiring way without contradicting its own goals, being dishonest or misleading, or being unnecessarily obtrusive or overwrought.

It’s a mouthful; I’ll break it down:

  • Good design accomplishes what is desired.
    • This is pretty simple. If an gorgeously artistic spoon does not hold liquid, it is not a well-designed spoon, no matter how pretty it is.
  • Good design is efficient.
    • Efficiency is a big part of what separates “design” from “good design”. A user interface that requires you to navigate fifteen layers of menus to find what you’re looking for is a design, but a UI that is more carefully arranged or predictive is a superior design, because it helps you get to what you’re looking for quickly.
  • Good design is reliable.
    • It’s not enough that a designed thing should accomplish its goal. It needs to be able to do so repeatedly, in such a way that it can be trusted. A game might be fun, but if it crashes constantly or behaves erratically, that is a problem.
  • Good design is intuitive.
    • Watch a child pick up Legos for the first time. They fit together in an obvious way, pegs up, and as you add more pieces the complexity level rises, but each new piece works off of the same principles introduced already. Similarly, certain doors that open only one way have a horizontal “push” bar across the width of the door, and a vertical “pull” handle on the far edge. These make it obvious how to interact with the door, because the horizontal bar is easy to push, and the vertical handle is situated to provide maximum leverage for pulling. Even without signage, it is clear whether one needs to push or pull the door.
  • Good design is thorough.
    • It’s important to address the various ways in which a thing can be used. A game that provides features for deaf or colorblind players is naturally better designed. An automatic door that only triggers from one side doesn’t take into account people approaching it from unexpected directions.
  • Good design is positive.
    • What I mean by this is that the experience of interacting with something should uplift and please the user. A well-designed set of controls is not only usable, but a joy to use; the new PS4 controller is comfortable and pleasing just to hold and use, compared to the original Xbox controller that was equally functional, but not satisfying or pleasing to hold for most players.
  • Good design is inspiring.
    • By this I mean that it sets a standard for future design. The iPod’s interface had a massive impact on mobile device interfaces, inspiring the iOS interface which in turn has had a huge impact on other mobile devices. Compare the experience of the system interface on a Nintendo DS with the system interface of an iPhone; one you want to see everywhere, the other feels dated and clunky.
  • Good design does not contradict its own goals.
    • A fairly obvious one that tends to only come up with more complex designs. Altering a business process with the goal of saving money is not a good design if it requires enough additional overhead to run that it obliterates the money savings. More controversially, a diet plan that rewards good behavior with “cheat days” in which the good behavior can be eliminated on the “cheat day” is poorly designed.
  • Good design is neither dishonest or misleading.
    • If a design suggests that a choice you may choose to make is just as valid as another choice, then both choices should be equally viable in practice. Similarly, a design should be clear about its own capabilities and neither suggest functionality that it lacks nor obscure functionality that it has.
  • Good design is neither obtrusive nor overwrought.
    • Rube Goldberg machines are amusing, but are intentionally inefficient, take up a lot of unnecessary space, and use a lot of moving parts (with a lot of potential failure points) to accomplish something often very simple. They’re fun, but (intentionally) not good design. Similarly, a door with a recording that shouted “PUSH” or “PULL” depending on which side of it you were on would be obtrusive.

These things, together, set a high bar for good design. Good design is hard, and it’s much rarer than you might expect, especially because so much research has been done to figure out what makes good design, both from a mathematical and from a psychological standpoint. A lot of things fall shy of the mark, and I think it’s worthwhile and sometimes even important to understand the difference between poor execution and poor design.

Tomorrow I’m going to look into that a bit more; if we know what makes for GOOD design, why do we have BAD design? What would motivate us to create bad design intentionally, and why does that happen?