Blogature

Part of what characterizes the Web 2.0 era is the close connection between (and sometimes merging of) creators and consumers. This is part of what makes this era fundamentally different from previous ears. We’ve seen this all over, but primarily on the web. Blogs turn anyone into writers, and readers are only a comment away from interacting with the author. Wikis merge producers and consumers in the creation of written documents. YouTube provided an effective forum for videographers (amateur or otherwise) to spread and get feedback on their work. This effect is visible across media, too. Henry Jenkins has written on this topic in great length in his Convergence Culture book (with respect to television and games, among others), and on his generally excellent (if somewhat overwhelming) blog. Suffice to say that in this era, no matter your media, creators and consumers are always in close contact.

Generally, this has demystified the process of production. I’m always amused to hear Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica and his wife talking more or less directly to fans on the forums on his podcast. I’ve learned more about the process of creating a TV show from those podcasts than from any other source. The same is true for web applications - part of what got Jon and I started was a prevailing belief (fueled by reading about other people doing it) that there isn’t any particular magic to creating a web application. Certainly, there’s a lot of hard work and inspiration required, but it’s something that smart/competent people can do without being blessed by, I don’t know, the King Arthur of web applications. Hopefully we’ve done our very small part in making web application development appear a little less daunting, too.

The creator/consumer connection has also had a profound effect on how design is practiced. This is a well trodden topic, but one that came to mind over the past few days because of an excellent conversation with a journalist on the topic, an article in The Escapist, and being heavily involved in the question of new features with Jon.

As a starting point, I want to talk about The Escapist article and get off my chest what’s so ridiculous about Massey’s position. She argues that the hardcore game players that beta test games provide feedback from a position biased by their extensive experience with other games, lack of patience, and desire to create games for themselves. I certainly won’t contest that - early adopters in any media are a particular subset of an entire market that are not (necessarily) representative of the whole market. I would also agree that slavishly following feedback as it comes in is a bad idea. But Massey takes this one step further, claiming that “developers must learn to stick to their guns and see their visions through. Half-finished products are always going to inspire hate, and no mater how much it stings, making drastic changes in response to community complaints invites disaster.”

… What?

Jon and I will be the first to admit that Thinkature is not a “finished” project. There’s plenty left to do, and it may in fact be only half the application we envision, but that’s not a reason to “stick to [our] guns and see [our] visions through.” Massey is trying to conflate listening to users with “reactionary design”. I agree that good design isn’t about taking a poll among your users and blindly following the results. But I strongly disagree that involving users in the design process any earlier than in the polishing phase is a bad idea.

Good designers have the perspective and maturity to critically consider and integrate feedback. Formal design courses like to talk about this as abstracting tasks to goals and goals to values. For instance, I worked on a mailing list project a few years ago and it quickly became clear after talking to people that subscribing to mailing lists helped satisfy a few desires like “feeling connected to the community” and “showing off what I know”. A mailing list is just one way that they could fulfill those desires. This level of discussion is independent from conversations about where to put the “subscribe to list” button in the interface, but critically important to providing context to design decisions. Most generally, the question designers (should) ask themselves is “what does this person really want?” If you follow through on that thought, you might find that they want exactly what they’re asking for. Sometimes, though, it’s something else entirely. Maybe what they want is at odds with what your vision is. If that’s the case, listening to users doesn’t mean you have to do what they say all the time. Speaking for myself, when I’m in the consumer role instead of the creator role, I’m usually just grateful to have a voice.

That’s not how Massey feels, though.

She recommends lying to users, more or less. I wanted to cut this quote down, but it’s just so juicy and ridiculous I had to include this section in full.

The nefarious trick for videogame developers is to ignore their community without telling them. It’s evil, it’s underhanded, but if you can still fool the hardcore into buying into your brand, so much the better. In order to get them, they need to think they were only this far away from getting their names in the credits.It can be done. The trick is to have smart community relations people. These are people who can rationally use a message board to talk to players. There, they post, they discuss and they explain. They let the community know they’re reading and that they’re not wasting their time.

In reality, though, the community better be wasting their time. Community management is public relations when it’s at its best and cause for reactionary development when it’s at its worst.

Part of a close creator/consumer relationship is about treating the people who appreciate what you’re creating with the utmost respect. Massey’s attitude is a relic of another era of software design - one mired in the belief that listening to users means giving up on effective, vision driven design. It has no place in modern ideas about web design, and I sincerely hope that no one takes her seriously on this particular topic. We at Thinkature certainly don’t.

This was kind of a long and critical post. I originally wanted to talk more about how Jon and I think about design and feedback, but my distaste for Massey’s article was such that I couldn’t keep it short. Alas. But fear not! I will have a more positive article soon.