Las Vegas: UX capital of the world?
This is a really quick-to-consume presentation from this year’s SXSW. It views Las Vegas as the ultimate user experience design case study.
It also makes some really poignant comparisons between Vegas and MySpace, then weighing that up against design elitism. I get it, but I’m still a design snob (I know you wouldn’t know that looking at this blog). I’ve been to Vegas once in my life and I’ve promised myself that I will never ever go there again. I don’t feel quite as strongly about MySpace. They may have their place in this world, but personally I don’t want to have any part of it. Having said that, I don’t mind learning some lessons from their success.
In particular, this bit on slot machines has some great insights on designing game play experiences and giving people instant gratification…
Going down to the microlevel, let’s examine slot machines. A well-designed model can bring in $1b
year! Slot machines gross more every year than McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Starbucks.
Combined! Players typically initiate a game every six seconds!
- designed for a specific audience: women over 55 with disposable income
- many small, positive reinforcements and constant feedback. Gives out a variety of rewards: small
pays, medium pays, and huge jackpots
- infrequent random reinforcement or intermittent reward
- built on a flexible platform, games and winner/loser ratios can always be tweaked
- every detail is carefully created. there is even a sweetener to the sound of money falling. some
machines have up to 400 different sound events
- lettering is such that even the legally blind can play
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