Ever since I first read Vista's UAC security prompt was designed to annoy you at Ars Technica, I've had a chip on my shoulder about it.

User Account Control is easily one of the most hated features of Windows Vista, according to readers. The seemingly endless stream of UAC pop-ups, asking you to confirm this action or that action, just get in the way (and aren't particularly zippy, given the screen redraw)...

At the RSA 2008 confab in San Francisco, Microsoft admitted that UAC was designed, in fact, to annoy. Microsoft's David Cross came out and said so: "The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross.

Microsoft's idea here is that they can transfer the burden of not annoying users to developers. This seems almost reasonable when you say it like that, but the reality is this: In order for users to not be constantly frustrated by these pop-ups, developers are forced to jump through hoops to design their software in such a way that privilege elevations aren't needed in the first place. (UAC is basically a lumbering, graphical sudo.)

This means that Microsoft's best attempt to solve the problem of viruses and malware infection for Vista ensures that a) no extant software is cleanly compatible with installation, b) every software company designing for Windows now has to refactor their installers, and c) also, everyone else has to be creative enough to figure out how to do everything they need to do without requiring elevated permissions (good luck, Norton!).

So, the burden of solving the problem of malware and viruses on Windows now lies entirely with outside developers. Not only does this not seem exactly fair, it's not even expected to work! More from the above article:

One could argue that this approach is incredibly flawed, since the people best in position to make the changes needed are developers, not the end users who are stuck with a cavalcade of UAC prompts.

My grandma, humiliated by the TSA.

I would argue that not only is this approach incredibly flawed, it is downright irresponsible, totally uncreative, and borderline sadistic. It reminds me of the way I am constantly humiliated at the airport ("You can only have 2.5 ounces of shampoo!", "Take off your shoes and belt!", and other experiences that people used to have to pay for in New York S&M Clubs).

Now I am going to offer you platitudes by famous self-improvement guru Dale Carnegie's most famous and popular book.

The three fundamental tenets of How to Win Friends and Influence People are:

1. Make the other person feel important.
2. Frame requests in terms of what others find motivating.
3. Positive Reinforcement works better.

Microsoft UAC: Zero for three.

Here, the United States government subtly reinforces the fact that if they want to X-ray your shoes, they will.

Here, Microsoft subtly reminds you that whatever goes wrong with Windows is your fault for approving this message.

As Paul discussed in a previous post, fun is a powerful way to connect with an audience. But if fun is so important, then we must ask: what makes something fun?

It’s easy to see why games like SSBB are fun. What’s not to like about getting together with a bunch of friends and beating the daylights out of each other in a frenzied orgy of color and sound? Now, contrast that with some gameplay from Grand Theft Auto IV…

"The mobster stuff is fun, but I'm just not looking for a committed relationship right now."

I spoke with one of my friends the other day who said he enjoyed the game, but didn’t like what he had to go through to maintain relationships with his in-game associates. Apparently, throughout the game, the protagonist has to keep his friends happy, or they may not come to his aid or give him new missions. Making them happy involves answering when they call you, going out drinking with them, etc. all while you’re trying to move ahead with the game. To be honest, it sounds pretty annoying. “Is that supposed to be fun?”, I asked.

Playing The Sims is like baby sitting. For stupid, highly flammable babies.

It reminds me of the Sims, who have to continually be told to eat, go the bathroom, and not let the house burn down, or they die. Unlike GTA4, it’s not optional, it’s essentially the whole game. Well, that and buying things. I never found it to be much fun. It's too close to real life to me. It sounds like a job. It sounds like work.

But wait a minute. The Sims is the best selling game series of all time and GTA4 just made a half billion dollars in one week; obviously these kinds of things are fun for some people. It seems that fun games aren’t just cartoony and fast-paced; they can be realistic and downright needy, too. But how can a game that sounds like work be any fun?

To answer this, it might be helpful to examine the distinction between work and play. If grinding Molten Core is fun, then it’s play; if not, it’s just work. I may be grossly over-simplifying here, but I think this is instructive. So rather than ponder what makes something fun, let’s consider the basic ingredients of play. As I see it there are two major components of a play experience:

• Lack of (unreasonable) consequences—One should be able to try and fail as much as they like, without harsh penalties. If there is no way to fail, you win all the time, and that’s no fun (like that episode of Twilight Zone). However, if failure carries too great a price, then trying is no fun. If the consequences are designed just right, it keeps things flowing; it’s motivating.
• Freedom—Play happens with the player’s choosing. This is an inherent property of games: one is never forced to play. In some of the best games, the player doesn’t even have to play in the conventional sense. The open world of Grand Theft Auto is one of the best examples of this. If so inclined, one can just drive around causing mayhem and never advance the story. Sometimes the best games are the ones you make for yourself.

I don’t consider this a guaranteed recipe for interactive fun, but I do think that, at a minimum, these are the requirements a designer must consider. Obviously, there’s more to making something fun than this, but it’s a place to start.

In general, whether designing a video game or a web application, one should endeavor to remove unneeded frustration and increase possibility for the user. Play is working with an unlimited ceiling and a comfy net to catch you. Otherwise, it’s just work-- and that’s not much fun.

I was over at a friend's house last night, doing design research (read: drinking bourbon and playing video games), and found myself momentarily distracted from my pleasant Kentucky-style buzz by the jaw-dropping visual assault Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo draws on its deep stable of characters to create a tightly branded interactive experience.

O! Insidious Nostalgia

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a branding tour de force. Level designers Kazuhire Irie, Takeshi Suzuki, and Kou Arai have situated the game as a living history of the Nintendo product line, adopting a wide range of design styles to recreate elements of Nintendo's extensive mythology in a way that allows the player to simultaneously:

1. indulge in the thrill of recognition
2. have an enormous amount of fun game-playing
3. be spoon-fed nostalgia for the commercial products of yesteryear, or else feel an immense need to play catch-up ("Why would they have a level from Earthbound? I never played that.") as part of a not-so-subtle upsell. All the original games are available for $4-5 directly from your Wii.

Visually meshing the old with the new, you can see the living history of 30 years of Nintendo.

These three things in combination provide an almost narcotic Gestalt effect that all branding and identity designers could learn something from. It's branded fun.

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We all know the scenario. Some movie protagonist is facing some movie antagonist, and the antagonist tells him to choose who dies, his (insert family member) or his (insert other family member). Always, always our good-hearted protagonist offers himself first. Only very rarely does this work.

Donnie Darko, because his enemy is metaphysical, chooses himself. Ontic enemies rarely allow this.

The rest of the time, our insidious villain makes some smart comment, and we're back to square one. The Internet Explorer team's smart response to our valiant attempt to save all our users was to provide us the conditional comments specification. Please note, the villain will never just decide to give up his evil ways at this point. Never.

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