Here’s a very common mistake made by experience designers and other creative professionals.
What it feels like to make a thing is not what it feels like to experience the thing. When creating, it’s very easy to get excited about an idea or a tool or a goal met or an insight or an inside joke or one of many things. And that excitement can get projected onto the thing that was made.
But participants come at your creation as first-timers, with new eyes, and with expectations. What they are doing is different than what you did. The excitement and enjoyment that you had and they will have is rarely correlated.
Solving a fun technical challenge as a video game programmer is not the same as playing the game.
Creatively solving an issue with a storyline plot is not the same as reading the story.
Designing an amazingly clever puzzle is not the same as trying to solve an amazingly hard clever puzzle.
Writing a song is not the same as listening to the song.
Designing clothes is not the same as wearing the clothes.
The love of experimentally splattering paint onto a canvas in abstract ways is not the same as looking at the canvas.
For creators, the enjoyment is often in the act of creating itself. The participant, on the other hand is looking for enjoyable engagement in the final product. The journey is not the destination.
How do you avoid this trap? Here’s a few suggestions.
- Be mindful. Check in with yourself while creating. Think about your big moments of elation and enjoyment. Don’t just give them the last page of the book and expect them to enjoy it.
- Put yourself in your participants’ shoes. Try to imagine where they are coming from and what they might be wanting. Try to forget everything you did and know about this experience and run through it in your mind (or in real life).
- Test. Test. Test. It’s tough to overcome the “Curse of Knowledge” so it’s always better to test. This takes the most work, but it’s the best way to see if you are confusing your enjoyment with that of the experiencer. See how the real world reacts to your creation. If you are really doing the work to serve your participants then you will not have problems killing your darlings. (You’ll always have the memories.)