Magic & Mental Models

Jared (Spool) is saying it's the first time he's done this presentation, and trying something new, expects it to be challenging.

One skill we don't talk about that often, and it plays a role: magic. Magic conferences are a lot like developer conferences.

The user's model is different from the designer's model. Traditional tech comm is all about explaining the designer model to the user.

Google complexity hidden in the background, the foreground simple experience makes users feel empowered. Company creates an illusion. The illusion has to be maintained.

It's hard to do this, and not everyone does it well.

Perception of time turns out to be a difficult thing. We perceive time differently, depending on what's going on.

Perceived performance doesn't measure the actual speed of a site. It measures the success of the user.

The role of delight, the Kano Model, has to do with performance. Some features, as the features go up, you get a payoff, the payoff grows as you add more features. But some things, you can't get above neutral satisfaction. Take a calculator, at some point, you can't improve the multiplication function. Idea of delight, of creating excitement. Items you can add, don't have to be great quality, but if you do it the right way, you get a sense of delight.

You can create delight by paying attention to the user.

Delight by functionality is just doing the right thing. Can;'t begin to do the delight stuff until we understand the basic stuff we want to do, else the delight stuff doesn't matter.

People want magic in their lives.