3 Great Classic Movies with UX-Related Lessons
Old Hollywood is my hobby. User experience is my job. On the surface, there might not seem to be much overlap between the two. However, studio-era films are not only consistently engaging and entertaining, but also exquisite examples of subtle craftsmanship that inspire me to do my job better. Working in UX has deepened my appreciation of classic Hollywood, and classic Hollywood films have taught me valuable lessons about communicating with a wider audience.
The dominant style of studio-era Hollywood parallels the UX industry’s preoccupation with effortless clarity. As John Fawell explains in his book The Hidden Art of Hollywood, “The essence of the classical aesthetic is to create films with technique so quiet and hidden that it easily goes unnoticed, a technique that does not call attention to itself or interfere with the drive and rhythm of the story.”
Doesn’t that sound familiar to the objectives of the UX industry? The best user experience is the one that the user doesn’t have to think about; it’s seamless to the point of invisibility. Yet any UX writer or designer will tell you that it can be wildly difficult to create something that’s easily understood. A filmmaker who privileges “the drive and rhythm of the story” is like a designer who eschews showy features and instead puts the user’s needs and goals first.
But I digress! Beyond those similar industry goals, I’m often struck by UX connections in classic movies — whether early forms of UX research or criticisms of appalling UX. Here are three of my favorite examples.
I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks, 1949) and Form Usability
As far as I’m concerned, this late screwball comedy is the funniest movie ever made about poorly designed forms. World War II spawned several madcap movies about the woes of bureaucracy, such as Government Girl and Pillow to Post, but they can’t hold a candle to the forms-from-hell hijinks in I Was a Male War Bride.
Sent on a post-war mission, flirty French officer Henri Rochard (Cary Grant) and wisecracking Women’s Army Corps Lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan) reluctantly travel through the German countryside. Will their sassy antagonism yield to true love? Spoiler alert: of course it will.
But the UX party really gets started when the couple decides to get hitched — and plunges into a red-tape nightmare. In order to marry and move to the United States, they have to seek approval from The Powers That Be through reams and reams of regulation forms… completed in quadruplicate.
The whole second half of the film revolves around the comic frustration caused by those darned forms and the system they represent. In one relatable scene, our unhappy couple sits at a table hunched over a pile of papers. “This is impossible!” Henri exclaims, then whines about the specificity of the questions. “My uncle’s politics, my aunt’s religion, any warts,” he carps. “Any identifying scars on my second cousin’s clavicle?”
The dialogue even evokes a juicy layout problem that will probably elicit a cringe from all you UX designers in the audience. Henri thinks the form is asking for his father’s gender. “No, father’s birthplace,” corrects Catherine, pointing to the form with a pen. “Gender belongs to this question over here.” Yikes, the irritating, detailed questions are organized into ambiguous columns too?
Now, paper forms are their own special slice of pain, but digital forms can be just as frustrating. I once tested an online homeowners insurance application so brutally detailed that I worried I was traumatizing my participants. In other words, the tribulations of Henri and Catherine remain painfully relevant. If you think your company’s forms aren’t that bad, well, have you ever watched a real person try to fill them out? Give it a try sometime.
Lessons for UX-ers:
- Form design can help or hinder real people. It’s important not to lose sight of the human element. Just like a movie editor is shaping time and space, as a UX writer or designer you’re shaping emotions and actions. Not mere words and pixels.
- If there’s a way to reduce steps for users… you should reduce steps for users. What a concept! Don’t ask too many questions if you don’t have to. Don’t ask questions that are difficult to answer; break them down, include visuals, or rephrase for clarity.
- Check your copy and designs for biases related to gender, race, economic factors, etc. Then have somebody from a different background check your biases too. Learn about marginalized groups that you might be excluding, offending, or ignoring. Imagine scenarios outside of your personal experience.
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) and Quantitative Market Validation Research
A star since the late 1920s, Joan Crawford managed a dazzling comeback and took home an Oscar for her dignified, understated performance in this maternal melodrama noir. (Actually, Crawford skipped the Academy Awards ceremony and had the little gold man delivered to her in bed. Now that’s a power move if ever there was one.)
Though dedicated momma bear Mildred Pierce fails to curb her viperish daughter’s worst tendencies, she proves herself a brilliant businesswoman. After separating from her lazy, arrogant husband, Mildred struggles to support her two children by selling cakes and pies. Then she lands a job as a waitress in an L.A. café. After learning the restaurant business from the ground up, Mildred decides to launch her own eatery.
Our dogged heroine visits sleazy real estate broker Wally Fay to ask for help acquiring a certain property for the restaurant. And she shows how thoroughly she’s done her homework about the location: “It’s right on a busy intersection, which means it’s good for drive-in trade. I clocked an average of 500 cars an hour. Do you realize what that means, Wally? And there isn’t another restaurant within 5 miles!”
Surprise, surprise: when Mildred opens her restaurant in that location, it’s a huge hit. Soon Mildred runs a small empire of restaurants.
Given Mildred’s synthesis of data, practical applications of empathy, and customer-comes-first attitude, she’d make an ace UX or marketing consultant. But that wouldn’t be quite as cinematic as a restaurant entrepreneur, would it?
By arming herself with the facts, Mildred intuitively conducted the kind of market validation research that all companies should do as they make plans. Even beyond counting customers in a specific area, now a widely accepted practice, Mildred’s research applies more broadly to any feature or product you hope to develop. A “build it and they will come” attitude might be good enough for Kevin Costner, but it’s not good enough for Mildred Pierce… or your business. Validate your hypothesis before you devote too many resources to a project.
Lessons for UX-ers:
- Carefully gauge demand before building something. Do people want what I’m planning to make? Mildred Pierce counts cars at the intersection. Maybe you should be checking web traffic, looking up the number of Google searches a keyword gets, or doing a false door test.
- Come to a business meeting with numbers in hand if at all possible. There’s nothing executives and department heads love like hard quantitative data. However, numbers aren’t everything. I recently wrapped up a project that focused on qualitative market validation. By interviewing executives in the computer security industry, our team enabled a client to know what they should and shouldn’t pursue in future offerings.
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor, 1941) and Moderated Consumer Research
This melancholy drama, tinged with the regrets of middle age, flashes back through the life of the title character (adorable pre-Marcus Welby Robert Young) as he writes a short biography for his Harvard class reunion. After returning from World War I, chipper young Harry Pulham begins working in an ad agency.
One day, Harry’s boss orders him to accompany beautiful copywriter Marvin Myles (Hedy Lamarr, whom you can thank for your wi-fi) and do some field research on Coza Flakes soap.
“A quick cross-section of reactions! Something warm, something human,” enthuses their manager. “Make it informal! A great big party! Lots of fun! But keep your mind on the consumer’s reaction. It’s the home atmosphere I want.”
The assignment: get prospective customer feedback on the product by demonstrating how it works. As Harry quizzically summarizes the survey: “We’re going to knock on somebody’s door… and ask if we can wash something?”
So Harry and Marvin embark on their proto-UX research project. After ringing a random doorbell, they’re greeted by an alarmed housewife, Mrs. Frenkel. Turning on his sunny charm, Harry mollifies the research subject with a promise to tackle this washing and gains the pair admittance to the apartment. He asks to see Mrs. Frenkel’s laundry room. She scoffs: “The laundry, he says! You mean the sink.”
Soon Mrs. Frenkel brings over a huge basket of laundry and eagerly stands by. In the next scene, Marvin is typing up her notes from the research survey, including quotes from test users. And shortly thereafter a bigwig at the ad agency is praising Marvin and Harry for the slogans and copy they created — presumably informed by their real-world research.
Lessons for UX-ers:
- Get input directly from your users. There’s no substitute from talking to the people who use your product — or whom you think should use your product. No matter how imaginative you are, you will learn something new about how consumers live, think, and express themselves. Seeing users “in the wild” often yields particularly valuable insights.
- Prepare, but be ready to go off-script if necessary. Marvin approaches the housewife with a memorized speech, but Harry’s improvisation prevents the skeptical consumer from fleeing in terror.
- Consider doing research in pairs. At first Marvin doesn’t want a partner, but Harry surprises her. Personally, I try as much as possible to bring a colleague into moderated research sessions I conduct. They always notice something I don’t and often jump in with great questions I didn’t think to ask!
I find that UX and classic movies both remain rather mysterious and misunderstood among the general public. Just as old Hollywood films are often more “modern” than people expect, there are plenty of UX lessons to be learned by studying the media of the past.
