Thoughtfulness makes for great design

Last week I was watching a talk from Daniel Benmergui at NYU Game Center about his design process for Fidel. If you haven’t played Fidel, it’s a fun little puzzle game. He talks about all of the decisions he made and all of the thought and deliberation that went into creating it. As I was listening, feeling super inspired, something clicked for me. Like finding a missing puzzle piece that brings everything together. Hearing about how much thought went into every single thing, it became clear to me: thoughtfulness is what makes something great.

This was my first realization: the broader thesurface area of your thoughtfulness — the more things you think about — the better something feels. (i heard something about chatgpt abusing these dashes. this email is 100% handcrafted by me.)

Most of the things I admire or am drawn to (products, experiences, games) are far more thoughtful than others. when someone has put more thought into more parts of something, it shows. They think about what the unboxing experience is like. They think about how important it is for a book to lay flat for reading without having the spine crack and deform. They think about accessibility for their website and what happens if someone is colour blind or has impaired vision. They just spend a lot of time thinking about elements that most people skip over.

The next thing he talked about what some core principles he had during creating the process such as respect the player’s intelligenceand no grinding. these aren’t necessarily better or worse than alternative or inverted principles (design for your grandmother, the grind is part of the game, etc) but they were guideposts for how he made decisions.

My second realization was that using principles as constraints leads to better design.

Constraints are one of the key ingredients for creativity. it’s when you’re up against these constraints that you’re forced to be creative. But when these constraints are resource constraints (time or budget), they are boring. They result in decisions around what you can or can’t do because whatever resource you need is in scarce supply.

But what about what you will or won’t do? The things you won’t even consider because it goes against what you’re trying to achieve. That’s where principles come in. Born through your taste or a desired feeling, you can create something that feels more cohesive and ultimately more thoughtful. You’re applying thoughtfulness about the constraints you’re putting on your work. For Daniel that meant skipping a standard tutorial and assuming players can figure things out as they learn. Ironically, this was something he regretted and was a mistake. But it was still a principle he stuck to. And as a result, the game feels more like him and his vision.

I spend a lot of time thinking. Sometimes about design and what makes it great, other times just letting my mind wander. I was telling a friend about this idea and I had a moment of insight in our text exchange. If thoughtfulness can play a role in making something great, that means there’s a clear arena for me to play in.

My design skills are decidedly not great. I feel like i’m forever stuck in Ira Glass’ taste gap. But. When thoughtfulness is a key component of a great design, I can have a pretty big impact. I can help set clear principles to follow. I can consider more parts of the experience. I can be thoughtful. And that’s my entire product philosophy.

Like Teller once said, “Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”