Gorgeously Bad Design

I'm a sucker for the classics, I admit. The old school muses rarely fail me. Classic art forms inevitably influence my creations even when I'm designing for tech. (They're also my last line of defense against the trend of stark minimalism.) But sometimes even the muses and I have to concede that too much froufrou in traditional aesthetics can get in the way of functionality.

The traditional designs of opera houses, for instance, are baffling. How could something so beautiful have such terrible seating layouts? Unless you're lucky enough to have dead center orchestra seats, you're probably stuck with the death-defying trek down those steep, steep steps to the nosebleed section, or else you're pondering why your posh box seat has such a clear view of the wing but very little of the stage.  (Specifically I'm talking to you, Royal Opera House of Covent Garden and your Box of Snore and Balcony of Death!)

Back in the day, opera house financiers naturally wanted to pack as many people in as possible, safety and enjoyment be damned. The exquisite adornments distracted patrons from the fact that they were kind of getting screwed over. I imagine that staunch minimalists and functionalists would argue that this is what happens when you cram too much into the UI at the expense of the UX! (You knew that analogy was coming, right?)

Then again, if atmosphere is integral to the experience, who's to say that opera lovers don't have a good time just because they risk missing half the show or tumbling down the Grand Tier? Certainly I don't advocate the create-a-visual-feast-and-hope-users-are-having-too-much-fun-to-notice-the-glaring-flaws approach to design, but there's no denying these architectural gems are incredible to look at.

Check out photographer David Leventi's stunning collection of landmark opera houses from across the globe. The best view in the house is almost always from the stage, looking out into the audience:

Margravial Opera House, Bayreuth, Germany

Palau de Musica Catalana, Barcelona, Spain

Palais Garnier, Paris, France

Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, Italy

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London

War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, California
(I'm partial to this one.  The "user friendly" design is no surprise when you look at the location!)

Illusion Engineers and the Art of UX Design

It's that time of the year again, when the sight of a bloodied hand clawing at me from behind a rosebush fails to alarm me.  I have a sense of humor, I swear, but the excess of cheap plastic fake dead stuff spilling forth from my neighbors' yards is really starting to offend the senses.

Every year, Spirit Halloween makes a killing (no pun intended) manufacturing cheap plastic fake dead stuff overseas and selling them to giddy Americans. I wonder if Romney wants to bring those jobs back to America. Then we wouldn't have to explain to the nice folks in China and Vietnam why on earth we would ever want cheap plastic fake dead stuff.  God forbid foreigners might think we're nuts.

I am reminded of the glory days of fake dead stuff, when the Grand Masters of Illusion took paint and glue, light and mirrors and Imagineered these humble elements into a mechanical wonderland.  These guys (and a particularly notable woman, Harriet Burns) transformed art and engineering into something for the masses to enjoy.  (Sure, their bosses served up the future of consumerism on a Mickey Mouse-shaped platter and the world ate it up.  But in my defense, Disneyland was one of the few normal kid thing I did while growing up, so I reserve the right to get nostalgic.)

The original Haunted Mansion is the paradigm of meticulously designed UX, all created from surprisingly simple illusions that tricked the eye, and subtle nudges (via trick corridors and Doom Buggies on rigged tracks) that steered the observers' focus.  The result was a hauntingly seamless experience that delighted adults and children, especially jaded adults who delighted in seeing children scream and cry.

Unlike our mass produced modern-day fake dead stuff, a lot of heart and soul and ingenuity went into designing those beloved singing robotic corpses and hitch-hiking ghosts.  Anecdotes tell of Imagineers Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump, who had a little too much fun rigging their special effects workshop with motion sensors and scaring the living crap out of the cleaning crew at night.  

The insanely talented Gracey's most famous brainchild is of course the elaborate implementation of the deceptively simple Pepper's Ghost effect in the Grand Ballroom.  Modern illusionist would use this century-old optical technique to create even more frightening specters, like Richard Branson's virtual clone and the resurrection of Tupac.  

If you happen to have a gigantic piece of spotless glass or Mylar on hand, Ars Technica explains how you can summon your very own dead rapper for Halloween.  Just tell the kids to keep their hands off, smudges ruin the effect.

Imagineer Yale Gracey pokes a ghost.

Just another day at work.