see page 157. Section 3.9.2 Designing experience
A few years ago Alan and Russell were directors of a (now
sadly closed) internet company called aQtive. It came to one
Christmas and we wondered what to send our contacts and registered
users as a Christmas greeting. We thought of plain electrinic
greetings cards ... passé - everyone sends those and
hardly active.
Somehow or other the idea came - why not virtual Christmas
crackers?
what are real crackers?
Now if you come from Britain or a country that has been influenced
by British culture, you will know what Christmas crackers
are (although possibly under a different name, called Christmas
Bon Bons in Australia). If you don't we should explain ...
Christmas crackers are small paper tubes, usually around
20-30cm long (8-12"). Inside there is a cardbioard former
that keeps the centre section firm as the ends are pinched
in (see above). At the Christmas dinner table, crackers are
arranged at each place and before you eat you offer one another
the other end of your cracker and pull.
Although the crackers are usually made of quite thin paper,
often crepe paper, it is surprisingly hard to pull them apart.
When eventually they break there is a sharp 'bang!'. Inside,
along the length of the cracker is a small strip of paper
coated with gunpowder in the middle, as the cracker breaks
the paper strip snaps and thee gunpowder explodes!
From the inside of each cracker falls three things:
- a small plastic toy (or, if the crackers are really posh,
something better!)
- a paper hat
- a piece of paper with a bad joke on it
Of course, describing it doesn't sound much fun, but at a
party it is - really. (see the Italian students below :-)
In addition, if you live in a country using Christmas crackers
they will evoke nostalgic memories of childhood Christmases.
students in rome discover real crackers!
what are virtual crackers?
Virtual crackers are web versions, a bit like electronic
greetings cards. In fact our earliest design ideas (quickly
rejected) were very close to electronic cards - just a page
with a picture of a cracker, a joke, a link to a little web
toy (an animated gif or applet) and a picture of a face with
a hat on. Well, different from an eCard, but, not exactly
capturing the spirit of a Christmas cracker.
However, the idea evolved and the final design works as follows...
 |
First the person sending the cracker fills out a web
form - very like an eCard. The form asks for the name
and email address of the sender and recipient and a
short message
|
| |
In addition, the sender can, if they choose, customise
the card choosing the design, the joke etc. However,
with real Christmas crackers you cannot do this, so
we only added this customisation reluctantly ... and
only when we made a Valentine's day version with love
poems and mottos - strangely people really want to know
what they are sending :-)
|
 |
When the form is submitted an email is sent to the
recipient and a confirmation web page and email is also
sent to the sender
|
| |
When the recipient reads the email it includes a link
to a web page (again like a standard eCard)
|
 |
The link takes them to a 'closed cracker' page. This
has a picture of the outside of the cracker and the
greetings message, but not the contents. Instead they
have to click a further button to 'pull' the cracker
|
 |
Very slowly (painfully slowly) the cracker pulls open
(some JavaScript) and the page is replaced with an 'open
cracker' page
|
 |
The open cracker page has a picture of an exploding
cracker ... and a sound file plays ... bang! It also
has the greetings message, the joke and links to separate
pages for a mask and a web toy.
|
| |
In a real cracker you tell the bad joke to one another,
but this is not so good when you recieve the cracker
on your own, so instead just the 'question' part of
the joke is shown and the answer only revealed when
you ask.
|
 |
The sender meanwhile has a link that they can follow.
Initially this just shows the closed cracker and only
when the recipient has opened the cracker can the sender
also see inside.
|
do they work?
Evaluating experience is a difficult area. From a simple
usability metric we might not think this is a very good interface.
Just count the mouse clicks needed to see the answer to the
joke; it would be a lot more efficient to simply show
the joke and answer on the first page ... but not much fun.
In use terms around 20-25% of crackers are never opened.
Whether this is due to incorrect email addresses, recipients
thinking the mail is spam, or simply not getting round to
it, we don't know. It is very hard to study those who don't
use things. We also don't know how this figure compares with
other kinds of electronic greetings cards, but based on personal
use we guess not so different. This still represents a substantial
number of apparently 'failed' communications ... although
the simple reciept of the email, says "She is still thinking
of me", so even a 'failed' virtual cracker may be a successful
personal contact.
If we are designing an information system to be installed
throughout an organisation, or a 'when the next bus is coming'
system to be installed at every bus stop, it is important
that the system is at least usable by everyone to some extent.
However, for an 'experience' product like crackers the criteria
change. If crackers are 'OK' for everyone then they are probably
a failure, who wants to send something that is just OK. Ideally
we'd like everyone to love virtual crackers, but it is better
for some people to love them and some people hate them than
for them to be just 'OK' for everyone.
By this measure virtual crackers come out very well as we
have had a significant amount of 'fan' mail. Typically the
only feedback you get for a product is to complain about bugs!
So positive feedback is not just gratifying, but also strong
evidence that something is working ... at least for some people!
Some of the feedback is quite general, for example these
two:
I love this site!!!!! Thank you, thank
you, thank you!!!
And Merry Christmas to everyone involved!!
I think your crackers are fantastic !!
These are very cool! Well done!
However there is a considerable amount of feedback from people
now living in non-cracker countries, who clearly had their
childhood memories awakened by the cracker.
Thank you for putting a smile on my face
and bringing back some funny memories!
My mother is from England and I grew up pulling the "real"
crackers during the holidays.
This is such a great idea! As an ex-pat Brit' I have missed
Christmas crackers
all the years that I have lived in the USA
These are particualrly significant as they mean not only
that the design was successful in that (some) people liked
it, but also in that it in some way captured sufficient of
the real crackers experience to induce nostalgia.
Of course, one of our aims in producing crackers was as PR
for the company. For this crackers needed to be not only liked,
but also shared. In fact, this was the case and each year
we tend to see a week by week doubling in the use of crackers
in the run-up to Christmas as some of those receiving crackers
decide to pass them on to others (remember useful, usable
and used).
As one email put it ...
your virtual crackers are the bomb!
they are too cool to be kept to myself
If not for the fact that usage drops to near zero after Christmas,
they would probably have been enough to keep aQtive afloat
on their own :-/
why do they work?
The success of virtual crackers was not just happenstance.
In order to understand this success we must see how the virtual
crackers do not replicate the real cracker, but do capture
the crucial aspects of the 'cracker experience'. For example,
it is important that virtual crackers do not give an optimal
path to the users' goal, but instead a more tortuous navigation
route thus adding to a sense of suspense.
Note that experience is as much about perception as function.
In the case of crackers, both real and virtual, the inner
functionality is not significant (a plastic toy), neither
is the optimality of the interface (a flap would allow the
extraction of the toy without damaging the cracker), nor even
the actual physical packaging (crepe paper and cardboard),
but within a particular social context the experience of using
the cracker is deeply engaging. In the case of paper crackers
this may be the result of accident and evolution. In the case
of virtual crackers it is by design.
The design worked because it took the real crackers experience
and deconstructed it into individual elements of the experience.
the table below and on page 157 lists these elements. You
can see how each real crackers element is in some way recreated
in the virtual crackers experience, but it is not a simple
facsimilie of the real cracker (impossible on the web!). Some
mappings are fairly obvious, the bad joke on the paper inside
the cracker becomes bad joke on the web page. However, others
are not so straight forward.
| |
|
real cracker |
|
virtual cracker |
| surface elements |
|
|
| |
design
|
cheap and cheerful
|
|
simple page/graphics
|
| |
play
|
plastic toy and joke
|
|
web toy and joke
|
| |
dressing up
|
paper hat
|
|
mask to cut out
|
| experienced effects |
|
|
| |
shared
|
offered to another
|
|
sent by email, message
|
| |
co-experience
|
pulled together
|
|
sender can't see content
until opened by recipient
|
| |
hiddenness
|
contents inside
|
|
first page - no contents
|
| |
excitement
|
cultural connotations
|
|
recruited expectation
|
| |
suspense
|
pulling cracker
|
|
slow ... page change
|
| |
surprise
|
bang (when it works)
|
|
WAV file (when it works)
|
the crackers experience
The element of sharing in the real cracker is not the same
in the virtual cracker. In a way the sending of the email
has some of the essence of the offered cracker. However, there
is a strong sense of co-experience with real crakers - you
are there together as you pull. With virtual crackers this
is much weaker, but the way that the sender can only see the
open cracker until the recipient has opened it adds a little
of this sense. In an instant messenger variant of virtual
crackers it may be possible to make this stronger.
Why not try to sketch a design for yourself of what instant
messenger crackers might be like?
 Another
example where the real and virtual crackers differ is in the
mask. As mentioned real crackers have a paper hat inside and
our first idea was to have a little smilie face with a hat
one. Cute possibly, but hardly fun!
However, the mask link takes you to a page where you have
a mask that is big enough to print and cut out. Although few
(if any) crackers users may actually cut out the mask to wear,
the fact that you could wear it gives it some of the
feeling of dressing up that the hat does. Even with
real crackers many people do not actually put the hat on,
but would feel hard done by if theor cracker did not have
one. With experience what you could do may be as important
as what you do do!
more ...
The design of crackers is discussed in a number of articles:
Deconstructing Experience - pulling crackers apart.
In Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. M. Blythe,
K. Overbeeke, A. Monk and P. Wright (eds.) Dordrecht, the
Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003. pp. 165-178
more ...
Absolutely crackers.
Compters and Fun 4. York, UK, 29th November 2001.
more
...
... and of course you can try them yourself!
send a cracker
Alan Dix, 2004
|
send