When two businesses have the same idea at the same time, what determines the "winner"? Often the greatness of the idea alone is not enough to predict success, and being first to market can be overrated. If you can connect your idea with the lives of your customers and craft an experience that's useful and enjoyable, you can create something that's truly unique. In this session Carolyn Chandler, Experience Design author, consultant and instructor, will discuss moving from idea to design. You'll learn about design principles that can help you both realize your vision and impact the lives of your customers.

1. DEEP IMPACT OR
ARMAGEDDON?
Moving from Idea to Design

2. Hi, I’m Carolyn (Chandler)…
@chanan
Author, & UX Design Instructor for:

4. Almost every quarter there are
common problems people want to
address.
• How can we use new technologies
to engage students in the
classroom?
• How can we help people find well-
fitting places to live?
• How can we make the everyday
commute less painful?

5. Sometimes the general product idea
is very similar as well.
IDEA:
Make the everyday commute less
painful by integrating data from
multiple sources
(schedule, location, weather, traffic) to
proactively alert users of travel
issues, recommended schedules, or

6. Which leads to the question…
When the idea is essentially the
same, what differentiates one
experience from another?
Differences may come out in a variety
of ways, but differences in experience
design can be be crucial…

8. EXPERIENCE DESIGN considers…
Who the primary users are
Why they care about your product
NOW
How it fits into their lives
How they feel when using it
…which drives decisions about
platforms, features, and density of the
interface

9. To illustrate the difference this
makes…
Let’s talk about disaster movies.
Which are kind of like start-ups.

10. When talking about movies that
execute against the same idea, not
much beats Deep Impact and
Armageddon.

11. When a “planet-killer” sized comet is
discovered to be on an imminent
collision course with Earth, an
international space effort - led by the
United States - sets out to deflect the
object by setting off nuclear weapons
deep inside its core so that it will miss
Earth and, therefore, save humanity.
Bryce Zabel. movie smackdown
SIMILAR IDEA

12. SIMILAR RELEASE DATE
MAY 1998 JULY 1998

13. SIMILAR “ZEITGEIST”
What inspired the killer comet idea?
Hale-Bop
Spotted in 1995 by
amateur astronomers
Passed “near” Earth in
1997 – 212, 236, 887
miles away

14. SIMILARLY PANNED BY CRITICS
Deep Impact
Armageddon

15. BUT NOT SIMILAR BY AUDIENCES
Deep Impact
Armageddon

16. DIFFERENT BOX OFFICE RESULTS
$75,000,000
$41,152,375
$220,623,306
$67,422,722
$140,000,000
$36,089,972
$553,709,788
$104,806,521
Budget (est):
USA Opening
Weekend:
Gross
worldwide:
Rentals:

17. Armageddon went on to beat
Saving Private Ryan as the highest
grossing film of 1998.

18. How are Deep Impact and
Armageddon different when it
comes to the experience?

20. WHY ARE BIG DISASTER MOVIES
POPULAR?
• Intensity of “it could happen”
• Thrilling action with killer special effects
• Familiar actors having intense emotions and
relationships
mindlessly
thrilling
deeply
thought-
provoking

21. What criteria should we use when
comparing the experience of the
two movies?

22. Based on research I picked:
Emotion
Action
Humor
Character
Plot

23. EMOTION SCALE
minor
fight, touc
hing
moment
1 2 3 4 5
sobbing
(joy or
sadness)
slight
tension

24. CHARACTER SCALE
intro to A-
lister, grea
t B-lister
moment
1 2 3 4 5
super-quotable
moment, esp.
for A-list
character
mediocre
intro or minor
character

25. ACTION SCALE
1 2 3 4 5
something
minor
blows up
cat
jumps
out at
actor
something major
blows up, A-lister
gets killed (or do
they?)

26. Then I watched both movies and
rated them, minute by minute.

27. EVERY MINUTE…

28. DEEP IMPACT
0
1
2
3
4
5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Emotion
Action
Humor
Character
Plot

29. DEEP IMPACT
0
1
2
3
4
5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Emotion
Action
Humor
Character
Plot
0
1
2
3
4
5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Emotion
Action
Humor
Character
Plot
ARMAGEDDON

30. DEEP IMPACT
ARMAGEDDON
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

31. Critics of Armageddon dinged, among
other things, the frenetic pace.
But differences between critics and the
primary audiences seem to show here.
CRITIC AND
INVESTOR, DIVIDED FROM
AUDIENCE

32. “Deep Impact attempts a realistic response to a
cosmic threat.
“Armageddon is just a warm-up exercise in loud
stupidity from the patron saint of the loud and
stupid, Michael Bay, who would take this
practice run and get much, much better at being
even louder and more stupid…”
THOSE WHO PREFER DEEP
IMPACT – WHAT’S THE
DIFFERENCE?

33. “Have you ever
seen Michael
Bay? It's the
face of abject
stupid mediocrity
and the blank-
eyed stare of the
never-grown-up
slow
adolescent.”

34. “The difference? Maybe that [Armageddon]
wasn't, you know, boring as hell?”
– user review
THOSE WHO PREFER
ARMAGEDDON- WHAT’S THE
DIFFERENCE?

35. WHY ARE BIG DISASTER MOVIES
POPULAR?
mindlessly
thrilling
deeply
thought-
provoking
FANTASY
TRAGEDY
DOCUDRAMA
ARMAGEDDON DEEP IMPACT

36. Big-budget blockbusters generally
target the theater-going crowd.
AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHICS
• Adults18-29 are 71%* more likely than
all U.S. adults to have seen a movie at
a theater on opening weekend in the
past 12 months.
• Action movies also play well overseas.
*Scarborough USA + Release 2 2011

37. For a lot of heavily marketed
Hollywood blockbusters, the pitch to
investors doesn’t even include a
script.
It includes an IDEA and some kind of
UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

41. For a lot of heavily marketed
Hollywood blockbusters, the pitch to
investors doesn’t even include a
script.
It includes an IDEA and some kind of
unfair advantage.
• A box-office A-list actor
• A director with a proven track
record
• Access to material no one else has

42. Mimi Leder
TV, The
Peacemaker, TV
…
Morgan
Freeman, Robert Duvall
Tea Leoni, Elijah
Wood, Leelee Sobieski
Michael Bay
music videos, The Rock
Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck
Liv Tyler
Owen Wilson, Billy Bob
Thornton, Steve Buscemi
Director:
Big Box Office:
Draws:
Semi-Known:
HOW THEY COMPARE

43. AND ROMANCE?

44. Critics aren’t your target audience
for DESIGN.
Neither are your investors or
stakeholders. They depend on the
person with the design vision to be
the director.

45. Emotion
Action
Humor
Character
Plot

46. Emotion
Action
Humor
Character
Plot
You FEEL Bay has design principles
at work
Character introductions
must include humor or
action, preferably both.
Maintain a constant high
through plot twists
(surprise), relationship drama
(happiness/sadness/anger), or
explosions (fear)

47. WHAT IS YOUR SCALE?
Emotion?
Action?
Trust?
Pleasure?
Meaning?

48. A CHALLENGE
If you’re working on a project and you
don’t feel you have a scale, or design
principles – hold a brainstorm with
your team and start finding them!

49. DESIGN PRINCIPLES ARE…
Guiding statements that intentionally
constrain design decisions in a way
that help you meet your team’s vision.

50. An activity that helps you
communicate the power of
constraints, like design principles

51. You’re an event planning company who specializes in designing
interesting, custom events for sales professionals who want to
spend quality time with their customers.
Your client is an athletic footwear company. They want an active
event to engage buyers from retail stores.
Spend 5 minutes designing an event with only the info above.

52. Activity
Context
# of Attendees
Music
Water
Museum*
Competing*
Finding hidden
things
Making something
10 customers
50 customers
200 customers*
Randomly Pick 1 of each and
design for 5 more minutes

53. The results were much more
interesting and real. Participants were
also much more excited about them.
Then we told them about the power of
constraints.

54. Trust
Your Accountant
Your Mom
Spock
Use your scale to explore
constraints
A customer calls about a billing issue. How
would Spock respond?

55. Designing with design principles makes
it more likely…
You’ll have deeper impact than Deep
Impact.

56. Adventures in Experience Design: Activities for
Beginners (December release)
A Project Guide to UX Design (available on
Amazon)
Carolyn Chandler
@chanan
carolyn@admci.org
ADMCi: admci.org
THE END…?