The Design of Westworld
Y’all! We’re just a few weeks from the return of Westworld, the super-crazy wanna-be-a-cowboy TV series from HBO.
That means it’s time to catch up, if you never watched the first season. Or if you’re a nerd, it probably means you’re about to rewatch it.
The web is already overflowing with hot takes on robo-ethics and the morality of man, so I’d like to set aside those serious issues and take a peek at something a little more technical (and fun): the production design of the show and the fictional world.
I won’t pretend there’s some super-philosophical design lesson to be learned here, but since you asked and that is normally what I write about, I do think there are some nice parallels to consider between building a product and telling a story.
A good product is made up of lots of small details, working together to build a complete experience. In Westworld, there were tons of little details and hints along the way, if you were paying attention (or, *cough*, reading the theories online after each episode).
In this article we’ll attempt to catalogue some of the best (and most obvious) things it was easy to miss on a first viewing. Each one represents an individual design choice, being made in concert with a slew of other design choices, to make an amazing whole. In fact, Westworld might be my favorite bit of product design all year.
Oh and first things first: there are serious spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the show yet, you might wanna pause here and go binge watch the entire season in a single sitting. Ok, everyone ready? Here we go!
The Timelines!
One of Westworld’s biggest reveals came near the end of the season, when they finally confirmed the show was working in multiple timelines. It was something astute viewers were starting to predict, but it’s something really astute viewers confirmed in the second episode, through a clever bit of set dressing and design.
We all know the Westworld logo, which we see in the intro of every episode, and splashed all around the Delos offices, looks like this:
In fact, we see that logo so often that it starts to feel mundane. Which is why it was so sneaky that this shows up near the start of William’s adventure:
In an otherwise blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, the camera even hangs on the throwback logo, almost daring you to figure it out. I missed it. Of course, as the story plays out, we learn that there are two timelines in play (actually, maybe more like 4, depending on how you take things).
These logos show up a couple more times, again used to denote periods in time. When Bernard ventures down into the decommissioned floors to look for evidence on the old computer system, this retro logo greets him on the device login screen.
A full 8 episodes after the old logo is first revealed, they finally admit that William’s story has already taken place, and that he eventually grows into the (thus far unnamed) Man in Black.
On the subject of logos, they were used as a tool to reveal even more than timeline monkeying. During the final escape scene, the hosts travel through a floor filled with samurai, complete with large SW logos around the space. All season, folks had wondered if there were other worlds in play (ala Futureworld), and suddenly a Samuraiworld logo pops up and confirms it.
The Ambush!
Even when you’re being presented with scenes from a coherent timeline, it was difficult to predict the exact meaning of some scenes. Anyone that watched the finale knows that things end with… a bang. What I missed the first time around, is Ford planning out his big finale scene, much earlier, in episode 6:
Of course the master designer is sitting around designing his own big exit! He’s even moving the church around, a key building we see in various stages of existence throughout the series. And if you look close, you’ll see the row of rogue hosts flanking the edge of the city, ready to attack.
The screen design!
In lots of movies, on-screen tech isn’t always ready for its closeup. From the spinning cubes of Swordfish to the “It’s a Unix system, I know this!” of Jurassic Park, tech realism doesn’t usually set a high bar.
Westworld, on the other hand, gives us a deep and consistent look at technology in their near-future world. Not only are the devices kinda slick (folding tablets!), the screen design is dang interesting. And it’s used to drive the story! Consider the scene when Maeve first sees her speech tree in action:
A few things. First: the visual chain speech tree is pretty cool. The way you can see it select each following word very clearly explains how these hosts talk. It also kinda reminds me of a chat bot. Second: Maeve’s head dang near explodes when she sees this. Imagine your Slack bot waking up one morning and realizing it only exists to recommend taco joints to your lazy team to lunch at.
Beyond the visual design of Westworld’s interfaces, we get a peek under the hood, at some actual code running a host. In the final episode, we see some of Maeve’s new directives laid bare:
Until this point, it’s seemed like her uprising was spontaneous, the act of a host grappling with consciousness. Instead, we learn, her actions are just as programmed as ever.
The code we see on-screen comes with a few easter eggs, which you can see if you slow down and isolate some syntax:
All season we’ve been seeking the mysterious source of the narrative changes being introduced into the hosts, and the on-screen source code ends up telling us exactly who to blame. One Arnold W. seems to have written the code. What’s more, he did it in React! Feel free to extrapolate timelines based on React’s release date here.
Speaking of Arnold…
Arnold this and Arnold that. We hear about him all season. He’s the original creator. One thing we don’t hear, though, is his last name. It’s so skillfully avoided that it’s got to hide some kind of tell. And then…
That’s Delores walking by an office door labeled Arnold Weber. It’s the first time we learn his full name. It also confirmed a long-running fan theory, that our bespectacled hero, Bernard Lowe, was actually a rebuilt version of the original creator, Arnold Weber. And with good reason:
An anagram!? What is this, some kinda puzzle book to keep me busy on the train? It’s so obvious and absurd it’s clear why they chose to keep his last name a secret by design.
Let’s do one last obvious one, before we go. Have you noticed that William has a mole on his cheek? So does the Man in Black, if you look close enough.
Loop it back
Did I miss anything? Given the above examples, and previous works from the creators, it’s safe to say that a few of the finer points might have been lost on me. If you’ve got em, pitch new clues into the comments! Anything that makes my head explode will be added to the list.
Here’s the part where I again try to connect a neat TV show with what I do every day: design products and apps. People always ask what I do, and sometimes I simply answer “design”, which inevitably leads to a followup. Graphic? Product? Interior? Fashion?
And I think that’s why film and TV are so enthralling — they take damn near every discipline of design available and mash it into something not just coherent, but moving. That’s something worth learning from.
