The Public Is Not a Tester
Designing for the public means designing for someone who hasn't read the docs, hasn't seen the demo, hasn't been briefed. They arrive without warning, interact for 20 seconds on average if nothing happens, and leave.
First rule: the invitation to interact must be immediate and visible.
5 Common Pitfalls
1. Hidden interaction — Visitors won't find unmarked sensors. Make affordance visible: pulsing circle, arrow, large text.
2. Imperceptible latency — No response within 100ms breaks causality. Provide immediate acknowledgement even if the action takes time.
3. The installation that crashes — Auto-restart, watchdog process, clean error recovery. No human intervention needed.
4. No clear ending — Define a duration with an end signal, or design for continuous engagement that remains interesting.
5. Works alone, breaks with 10 people — Test with simultaneous users. Design graceful degradation.
3 Design Principles
Quick reward: first interaction produces something satisfying in < 3 seconds.
Robustness over performance: a simple effect that always runs beats a complex one that crashes hourly.
Body accessibility: design for children, elderly, wheelchair users. If interaction requires bending, raising arms, or two hands, you're excluding significant portions of the public.
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