There are a lot of things that we can learn from the game industry. Chris Dixon recently wrote a really good essay about lessons we can learn from the game industry. One thing that I have been thinking a lot after an unpleasant Lyft Line experience is how we can implement the game leveling system into consumer apps.
Like most great games, game designers won’t drop a new beginner player into an interface that is full of complicated features(mixing magic potions, complex skills tree, etc). A well-designed consumer app should adopt the same approach too.
From beginner driver to advanced driver
When a Lyft driver starts using the driver app, they should start with a relatively simple app with just the most basic feature, picking a passenger up and drop them off from point A to point B (normal Lyft). After certain number of trips (assuming the driver is doing well), the Lyft driver now gains enough “experience” to level up into the second level of the app, they will learn how surge pricing works, “why is it better to drive at certain hours of the day?” After a few more trips on this level, the driver will be exposed to how Lyft Line works. It should start with just one extra passenger along the ride. Eventually, the driver can graduate into a multi-pickups, multi-passengers Lyft Line ride.
Bucketing users into different levels
A more tactical approach is to categorize your users into multiple buckets, from the most amateur users to the most advanced users. Let’s take Medium as an example, the “beginner” users are probably users who just want to read on Medium, the “intermediate” users are probably users who start writing something with the simple tool that Medium provides, the “advanced” users would probably love to use more powerful writing tool when crafting their essays.
- Beginner users: reading, discovery.
- Intermediate users: simple writing tool.
- Advanced users: complex but more powerful writing tool.
Evolving user interface?
It is always a challenging task for designers to design a consumer product that works for everyone. But does it actually make sense to do so? Maybe a evolving user interface can be implemented to cater to users with different levels of experience at different stage of using a product.
Multi-tiers enterprise software
In fact, most enterprise software is designed this way. There are usually different tiers of the same service that a company can buy into. Want more advanced features? You just need to pay more to upgrade to a higher tier. Feature flag is commonly used among enterprise software. Underneath the interface, it is essentially the same piece of software but with different features being turned on or off and the interface reflects it accordingly.
Maybe it’s time for us to start treating the process of designing a consumer product more like the process of designing a game?
