#5 Mastering Emotional Design in Gaming with Nicole Lazzaro

Omer Frank (: 00:00

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the juicy patterns podcast. In today's episode, we're navigating through the complex landscape of design evolution from web two to web three, and we couldn't have found a better guy to help us navigate through all this join us is none other than Nicole Lazzaro a legend in the gaming and design world, founder and president of XEO design Inc. Her work has not just shaped, but transformed the way we play and interact

with digital spaces. She's got over 30 years of being a pro in player experience, design leading the charge in making our digital experiences super immersive, engaging, and just plain fun. Nicole has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the 100 most influential women in high tech, quoted in the New York Times and voted by Gamma Sutra as one of the top 20 women working in video games.

le's design workshops back in: 2015

We're here to pick her brain on what the shift from web two to web three means for us as designers. How do we adapt? What challenge challenges will we face? And more importantly, what new frontiers of creativity and innovation will this shift open for us? Nicole has worked with giants like EA, Ubisoft, and Disney, bringing to life franchises that have touched the lives of billions players.

And now she's here to share her insights with us. Nicole, it's an absolute honor to have you join us today.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 02:02

Awesome, awesome to be here, Omer Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to this.

Omer Frank (: 02:08

So I'm curious to know how did you start interacting with emotions and action? How did you figure out that this is the right thing for you? Or how did the initial spark started?

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 02:25

Great, well, I think that moment, that aha moment, had to be when I was standing on top of a temple in Egypt, believe it or not. It was this hot, dry, dusty day, and the sun was beating down, you know, parching my lips, and I looked down to grab my canteen for that last sip of water when I stopped and stood at amazement because there at my feet, someone had carved a game board.

And I thought, wow, you know,: 2000

in the year: 2020

And so that's when I really began my life's work, which was studying the relationship between emotion and games. What was that, what kind of game mechanics, what are the things that we do in games that players really like, and what are the emotions that they really love feeling?

Omer Frank (: 04:10

And how did you combine that? Like, how did you study that? What was your process like? It's it's I think it's psychology, right? Through psychology.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 04:15

Yeah, so, right. Yeah, yeah, so I have a degree in psych from Stanford and I used that background to design a study that we self-financed because I couldn't get any publisher to finance it. None of our clients would finance it, so I self-financed it. And I measured emotion on people's players' faces while they played games using Paul Ekman's facial action coding and then created this model called the Four Keys to Fun.

mes. And so that's when I, in: 2004

For all the amazing number of designers from Will Wright to Jesse Shell to Raph Koster, a number of really amazing industry giants were actually in there in the audience and that's where it all began.

Omer Frank (: 05:28

But you're saying 2004, but were games and there were emotions in those games. So how did it change?

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 05:38

the big process and why I was like very nervous walking on stage that day was that the dominant narrative, the industry, I mean, a good designer is going to design what affects the player emotionally. So Miyamoto-san and even Will Wright, they do it intuitively. However, the dominant narrative in game design at the time was that games did not create emotion.

And if they did, they did three emotions, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and maybe they could make you cry. But most game designers of the time had nothing to do and they thought games had nothing to do with emotions. However, because I had a player lab and we were testing games like Myst and The Sims and Star Wars, lots of different types of games, we knew, because we saw these moments of emotion that were happening regularly.

in different parts of the game. So we knew that games were creating emotion. And not only that, it wasn't just the story, it wasn't just the art, it was the things that the players were doing. They did something and then they felt an emotional response. And so we knew that game designers love psychology, but the literature at the time really ignores, the whole field of psychology really ignored emotions. Paul Ekman was, and his research was pretty out there.

at the time. It wasn't really widely adopted. So it broke ground in that way where it brought the idea of emotions into the language of game designs. And that's why you see it in the evidence of that in books that came out later like Raph Costor's book and Jesse Schell's book.

Omer Frank (: 07:25

So you wrote the four keys of fun, can you explain about it? Yeah.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 07:31

Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, we found that games that people played games really for four reasons, and that best selling games and people's favorite games tend to have at least, you know, three out of four. And so they play for novelty, they play for challenge, they play for friendship, and they play, you know, for meaning, value, creating value. And that's those are the four keys. So it's first, it's curiosity, it's the hook that pulls you in that exploration.

role play, you know, and story, the creative fantasy that you can have, and that's what we call easy fun. And it is a balance between curiosity, wonder, and surprise, those emotions. And there are, you know, that exploration, role play, and stuff like that, really just, you know, just pushing the button. It's kind of like the bubble wrap of game design. And that's where players often start.

But then after a while, the novelty of that runs out. And so people want challenge, player wants challenge. So dribbling a basketball is great, but eventually I want a hoop that's like high overhead, some sort of goal that's hard to accomplish. And that's where the second type of fun kicks in, which is more hard fun. And it is all about, you know, it's all about challenge and obstacles and reaching a goal.

And if you go emotionally from frustration to the feeling of what we call Fiero, the feeling of, yes, I just won. And you can't just push a button and win, right? You feel like you won the Grand Prix. You have to be so frustrated, you know, in Forza or whatever, so that you're gonna like throw the controller through the window. And if at that moment, right before you throw the controller through the window, if at that moment you win, then that's when the arms go up. But if you're easily lapping, you know, all of your friends and you know, there's nothing, there's no fun really in that.

So it's that balance of failure, of being able to, it's making failure fun. That's actually a really good Will Wright quote. And it is that frustration pushing your psychology to that point. And then when you win, you feel really, really good. Then the third key is all about social interaction. It's more fun to win in context with friends. So communication, cooperation. We're seeing a lot in the XR space now that the social XR experiences are getting the most use and it's not surprising.

And it's all about, you know, laughter is a really good emotion to measure because it's really obvious. And when people are laughing together, they are social bonding. So it's all about creating that feeling of social bonds. And it is the, you know, it can be, it can be Naches, it can be Schadenfreude, it can be all kinds of different emotions. In fact, there's more emotion in PeopleFund than the other three combined. Then lastly, we have, after people fun we have...

the serious fun, which is the ability of a game to create value or meaning for the player. So if after you win, you feel that you created something of value, then that's even more reason to play. So that's why we call that serious fun. It might be that you learn something, so the whole serious games movement, or most of gamification applied outside of games has a lot of this. It can be repetition and rhythm.

It can be collection and completion. And the idea of basically creating a desire to achieve something and then getting it and acquiring that. So that's where badges and buttons and coins and stuff amplify the win. Because the feeling of winning up in hard fun is like, it's fleeting. It's a big emotion. The Fiero is like, oh, yes, I won. But then it drops down really quickly. So the serious fun elements then come up and make you feel more like,

you are winning or that you've won and reminds you of that as you go. That's why we have trophies and plaques we put on the wall and stuff like that. That's why we hand out medals at the Olympics, is to capture that moment and remind people.

Omer Frank (: 11:30

a bit about the movement, of gamification around those days?

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 11:40

Sure, yeah, those take me back. I would say that back in the day when we used to click on cows, milk cows instead of clicking on them, because Farmville was this big thing that blew up a game on Facebook. But back then when we actually milked, yeah, when we milked real cows, the engagement was baked into the work that we did. So instead of like on a mouse, whatever, but you would, basically you would...

Omer Frank (: 11:55

Or remember that.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 12:06

You could milk the cow, you could pet and care for the animals, you could see the progress of the pail filling with milk, and then you could carry the heavy milk pails back to the barn at the end of the day. And that actually touches all four keys. That process in real life, that touches all the four keys. And so when we boil it down to just clicking, we want to really bring in more of the psychology, so human being, the human being.

hat's still, that was true in: 2011

increase attention mechanics as opposed to deplete attention mechanics. All of those things are really important for game design and they're really new tools that come out of that original thinking about how to create these interactive systems that have generated motions and keep them people-centric. And I think that's a really important way. We talked about gamification

But the mechanics and the simple application is like, well, let's make it look like a game. So a badge or a point or a coin, those are the most obvious visuals in a game. And so let's just spray paint those on. But that really ignores why people are really there. It is, has kind of a, it's usually can be connected to marketing, KPIs, so whatever the KPIs of a marketing team might be.

So user engagement, you know, what are our DAUs, daily active users, what are our lifetime, what's the lifetime value of our customer, those sort of things, which are important mechanics for sure. But if you want to think about like is your, if your application is an email program, what are the emotions that your player base, your user base could feel that would make them better at email or make them, or allow them to accomplish more since we know they're human beings for the most, at least for now.

We know that they're human beings on the other side. And that's a level of thinking that has to go, you have to go a lot deeper than placing just these extrinsic outside reward systems on, like the badges and the points. The Four Keys at its core is really more about what intrinsically motivates people because intrinsically they're feeling emotions from the actions. And it seems very backwards to me, if you look at a typical website or,

or tool, software tool, and like I'm gonna do some photo editing. And at the beginning of the project, I need to feel creative. I need to feel like out there. I need to feel emotionally. I need to feel like that. I need to feel very positive and wacky. It just like all kinds of crazy ideas. So I need those emotions to help me generate more. And then in the middle of the project though, I need to winnow those down, those crazy things. I need to put two and two together. I need to like...

cut away the fluff, find and evaluate, like what's the best part of all that early work that I did. And then I need to get feedback from social feedback from other people. And then at the end, I need that deadline or whatever to, you know, okay, now it's almost a very negative emotion so that I get in there and I really narrow it down and I make that deadline. So the emotions at the start.

The emotions in the middle, the social interaction, the emotions at the end are all very different. They have what we call a different emotion profile. And so since the emotions are different, the emotion architecture underneath it needs to be different so that emotion architecture will generate those different emotions. But most tools now offer me the same user interface, you know, at the beginning, at the middle, at the end.

And that makes them not as human centric as it might be. Now maybe you want to have the ability to adjust as the user. Well, I need to be more social. So I'm going to add, I'm going to expose this part of the UI and then I'll be more social interaction. And then I'm going to feel more, you know, Nakas and Cavell and all these fun things or more wacky at the beginning. But right now it's just the same interface all the way through. And

Real gamification is going to take into that real emotion design for software. It's going to take into account where you are in the process and what are the emotions that you need to feel. Kind of like Google, they do those doodles, you know? And some of them are major events, but some of them are little are like, what? What is that? Creates curiosity. You know, like, curiosity. And that's the curiosity is a perfect emotion.

because it goes hand in hand with research. When you're researching something online, you want to feel curious so that curiosity helps support the effort that you're doing as a researcher. So each activity, each kind of activity has very different emotions because emotion and action, cognition, emotion and cognition are really, they go hand in hand on the psychology side.

Omer Frank (: 17:38

But does it change between cultures? Because it's very different how people from different cultures react to specific things. It's like a joke. You are supposed to create an emotion event, and people understand that in a completely different way. So how do you, first of all, how do you plan for a specific emotion? Are you planning for a specific culture? Or if you're like,

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 17:42

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 18:06

designing the game that will go globally, what is the process for that? And another thing that I wanted to ask you before that is how do you plan for emotions? How do you mix user needs and let's say pains, for example, because everything starts from a pain and what they wanna achieve, what they wanna achieve it's gamification. I'm...

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 18:23

Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 18:36

bits, I don't know if to call gamification, because it feels like very, you know, a bit flat to call something, to gamify something. But how do you, the first question is, how do you, how do you point, how do you, what is the direction that you take the design towards a specific culture, if there is such?

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 18:44

Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 19:03

And the second thing, how do you plan the... Do you have like a specific method to mix pains and jobs to be done, the specific functionalities that people need to achieve with their emotions? Am I... Do you... Yeah.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 19:25

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I think, well, what I did at the very, very start, because I've grown up in many cultures. My family moved around a lot. They were in the service. And so I was in the Middle East, I was in the Midwest, all kinds of different places. And I've traveled to Japan and China and India, Turkey, Egypt, lots of places.

And so, but what I did at the beginning is in designing the initial experiment is I wanted to go after universal emotions. So emotions that anyone would recognize, which is why I started with Paul Ekman's facial action coding, because those six or seven, you know, there's some debate about how many well, his primary emotions have expanded a bit over the years.

And then I took some from developmental psychology, because you see in babies, curiosity, for example. So I use that. These are all emotions that universally, everyone from New York City to Paris to Papua New Guinea can recognize in a photo, in a photo of someone's face. And so those are the ones that I'm the most interested in and have done the most research on and the most designing and advising on.

because they are universal and they're connected with different processes in the body. Surprise, you raise your eyebrows, you open your eyes, your nasal cavity and your mouth open, so those cavities open, all to allow you to, it opens your senses. So all of those biology, all of our sensors in the human face here, they're open.

And so the Motion Surprise universally does this. Now it's not to say that there are not cultural differences. I also did gender, you know, I did gender, both genders for the original players that we looked at. There are emotions that are dominant and really part of the culture and valued more in the culture. So, you know, Japan can be, you know, Kauai is super important. You know, it's the land of cute.

Whereas in Sweden, they say that Skål tillade is the best emotion. So schadenfreude in Swedish. It's the feeling of a good feeling when you see a rival, take a misstep or something like that. So the meaning of an emotion can be different. So someone from Northern Europe might like

might like Schadenfreude more than someone from Japan, and you know, cute might switch the other way. But the process by which you get there is at the base is biological and universal. There is a cultural modifier on top of that you have to be aware of. And then on top of the cultural modifier, there's also individual modifier. So somebody, some people will just raise their eyebrows all the time. That's not because they're surprised all the time, but it's because they do that.

Omer Frank (: 22:30

Mm.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 22:34

In Asia, people who aren't trained to present a smile, in working with the West, a lot of business people are trained how to smile. There's a facial mask for emotions there and that's culturally applied to, on the top or on the upper layers. So there are those modifiers.

But if I look at like what with this, whether it's a game or whether it's a interface, like our game Follow the White Rabbit, it's a mystery, XR mystery adventure that takes place in your room. And I want people to feel mystery, curious, those kinds of things. And I want people to be able to feel like they are exploring.

And then they go through, you know, they get curious, they find out something, surprise, and then, oh, now they're curious about something else. So we get that, you know, kind of sawtooth kind of sequence. So I've sequenced things in the world, in the game, so that you feel these different emotions as you go. Some of it's in the art, some of it's in the story, of course, but most of it, what I'm most interested in is in what you do. You know, the things that you actually do are creating the curiosity. So you open things, for example.

or you go from, if you turn, you might, like four points of a compass, at each compass point, there might be something different emotionally so that when you turn, you actually get, you know, again, kind of a rollercoastery cascade of different emotions. And the reason that's important is that's what, in terms of the four keys, that's the emotion from interaction design, essentially.

It's very similar to the emotion from story design. In fact, narrative design and all of the things that go back to Plato's cave and beyond, even older, Gilgamesh and that sort of thing, those are all, those, all those techniques, those story techniques are all aimed at creating emotion in the audience and engagement in the audience. And so is this interaction design. So we're just sort of two paths in.

If you go from the interaction design standpoint, though you don't need as much structure as you do in the story, there's not as much, it doesn't require as much linearity. So what it does with the four keys is allow you to create deeply resonant experiences that don't have to have that linear component that a cut scene might have in a game.

Omer Frank (: 25:13

Amazing. So, so if I take this approach for figuring out the things that we want to achieve emotionally, how do you mix the, the user needs, the, the right, you know, there's the, the old school, the process, the right process of understanding user needs, the functionalities, the user stories. Do you have like.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 25:28

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 25:42

a specific way to mix functional jobs with their emotion, the emotional state that they need to be.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 25:55

Well, I think like we do without going into the full workshop, you know, which is beyond the time we have for this podcast, it really boils down to identifying on one hand, what are the core accomplishments? So you can say, like, here are the user needs, right? They hear the needs that the users have, or these are the pain points. But also,

Omer Frank (: 26:16

It's very cold every time that I like the user needs. It's very, it's very cold.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 26:19

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I don't like the word need actually in psychology in general because there are very few actual needs other than air and water and food and some kind of social interaction. You get kind of weird if you don't for most people, not everybody, but most people, and sleep, those kinds of things, physical safety. But there is a concept of something that pleases me as an individual. And that's.

Omer Frank (: 26:27

exactly.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 26:53

And then it's a positive, it's a positive, net positive inside internally, either at the moment, you know, hedonistic, easy fun kind of pleasure, or it is helping me accomplish a goal, which is more hard fun. Or it's, you know, bonding me more with social, you know, those. And so those are like, it's intrinsically, I'm going into an emotional state, and I'm getting, and that is a net, that's a net positive for me.

But what I'd like to do is to think about, what are players' priorities? What are they trying to accomplish? What would make their lives better? And that's one of our mottos, actually, which is unlocking human potential through play. And play is simplified work. We always play to invent our future self. So when I think about that user, how do we want to change? How do we want to change?

that experience to change that person, or how does that person wanna change, or what does that person want to do? So rather than need, it's like, what do they wanna do? Why are they here? What would be a net win for them? What are the victory conditions for them? And then what are some of the process, and then under that, what do they want? And then what are the processes? What are the steps that might be required to get there? And then coming at the...

from a brand conversation and a competitive landscape and those sorts of things, what are the emotions? Like what are the key pillars of emotion pillars of this particular piece of software? So, you know, you know, Land's End is gonna be very different than old Navy and, you know, Amber, you know, and, you know, Laura Ashley or something like that, you know, very different Liz Claiborne, those are very different.

brands. Those are very different. Each has a different, what we call, emotion profile. And so then we look at these are the steps they want to do. Here is the architecture. These are the emotional architectures, the emotional events, the interaction events that could create the emotions that are in that brand profile. And then we sort of mix them together that way. If you go, well, we're just going to satisfy their needs and they're going to feel emotions, the emotions can be all over the map

of your brand and so you won't have a real unified brand experience. The other thing that might happen is that the emotions that you are creating in the product might put the player into an emotional state that's orthogonal to where they need to be emotionally. So for example,

In games, fear is a very well used tool, right? So if I push things towards you like a bullet or something at eye level, you're gonna feel fear. But if you, and this happens a lot in our workshop, we do a lot of exercise about this. If you are afraid, you're not gonna come up with, and your goal is to come up with new ideas. Those two are like oil and water, they totally don't mix. Facebook had to figure out friendship and money, cause friendship and money don't mix very well at all.

So how do you get an advertising platform to run on a social network? It was very challenging, especially at the beginning. And so that can be another kind of mistake that people make.

Omer Frank (: 30:23

Wow, that's inspiring because it's it reminds me the right approach that I need to take with everything that I do. It's not looking at things in a cold way and strategic right way, but to think about people behind the pains and the needs and all those cold words. OK, so

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 30:51

I was thinking about, like I mentioned one researcher, you know, Paul Echman, who's amazing. He has a book called Emotions Revealed. A second book is called Descartes Error by Antonio de Mazio, which was another highly influential book when I started the research. And it is that we are, Descartes Error was that, the essence was that we have a cognitive rational brain, Descartian, you know, Cartesian coordinates and all kinds of good stuff there.

which is good for science, very objective. But then there's also this wishy emotional side of us. And again, they are both required for decision-making. So when you go at it with just the cold stuff, the emotions, which are the motivating part, they motivate attention. Both are components, have different parts to play in attention and motivation.

So you can actually have damage to your emotional brain. And if you're cognitively, you can tell the difference between three options, like what the consequences are, but are unable to make the choice itself because the emotions aren't there to guide you. So that's why it's super important to not just language hot or cold, but it's important to say, what you really look at that language, the...

the language that you're using and really look at those emotions and wrap those into the process. And that's what best designers do intuitively. And then with models like the tools like the four keys allow anyone to improve their designs.

Omer Frank (: 32:32

So you recently started to work on a game, Follow the White Rabbit, which is a game for the metaverse. So I would like to learn about the process that you did for this game and how you transitioned from the web 2.0 to web 3.0 and all the things that you learned along the way. Well, part of them.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 32:55

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Awesome. Yeah, yeah. So our game, as I mentioned earlier, is Follow the White Rabbit. We're soft launched on the Apple Vision Pro, so we're up there on the store. It's called Follow the White Rabbit Tales. And it's about a magician whose magic one day suddenly works and the rabbit disappears wearing a diamond bracelet. So now everyone wants to follow the white rabbit. And so it's a series of escape rooms around the world based on all of the different cities that I lived in when I was a kid.

So before I went to that temple in Egypt, I had lived in a number of different countries. And so the initial process was, like, if you think about what XR is, is that, so virtual reality, augmented reality, whatever you want to call it, metaphors, spatial computing, it really is about Wonderland. And I had grown up in Wonderland, right? Riding camels, exploring fire temples, climbing pyramids, as a little kid.

And I want to go back and feel those emotions, that full body, especially that full body wonder I had as a kid, and then share it, be able to share it with my friends. So that's my emotion profile, right? So I have, I really love that cross-cultural experience that I had. I really wanted to bring that, you know, with VR, because you could visit anywhere you wanted to. And I thought that would be really good for unlocking human potential through play.

And then if wonder is that key emotion, wonder, and then wonder comes from, you know, magic is also is a practice. So the verbs and stuff of magic often create wonder and surprise and awe and all kinds of great stuff. So really examining that practice of magic. I've been a fan of magic, you know, ever since I was a little kid and I would do little magic shows for my birthday, for birthday parties for my friends and stuff like that. Poorly.

executed for magic, but it was still fun to do. And so then if you then think about like, well, what would create mystery? What would create wonder? So how do I do in terms of like, you know, the four, like I have a diagram here, the four keys, you know, like in terms of easy fun, I guess there's easy fun, hard fun, people fun, and you know, serious fun. So an easy fun, like what would be, this is exploration and role play. This is curiosity, win and surprise.

So what are the mechanics can I put into Fall of the White Rabbit that would do that? And then, you know, then having goals, you know, so that's where the puzzles come in, in the room, you know, in the scape rooms that we're designing, and making it multiplayer for people fun, and then making sure that you feel really good. So there are moments in the game, for example, like you overturn a teapot and it just suspends in the air and it, you know, it just spins, and you can just sit there and look at it, and it's very, it moves very slowly. It's really wonderful.

backlit, you're in a cafe in Paris, and then you just, you could just be at this zen moment. And you can be there as long as you want to. You don't have to like, you know, or you can just like quickly move on. But there's a puzzle involved there. It also generates a puzzle. So you go again from that easy fun into like, okay, well, how do I use this, you know, tea that's spilling out of this pot that's suspended in midair to, you know, solve that, solve that puzzle. Big changes happen in the room. So again, you get that, that surprise. And then the

the story beats that come out of the puzzle. So again, I want that interaction to generate emotions and for you to be able to use and uncover the emotion, the story in many different ways, you feel that agency. We did it that way. I mean, it all goes down to the sort of two important things about XR. So going to web three or going to immersive computing or spatial computing or metaverse.

is that the first one is that we've always had as designers for web 2 and, you know, flat screen pancake games, websites, is that we've had three crayons, you know, a red, a green, and a blue. And we make wonderful art with them. We make Pixar, makes amazing movies with them. But with what's happening now is we actually now have depth, you know, a fourth crayon. And so what you need to do with web 3 or XR or AR is you really want to use depth.

the going in and out, that depth or that layering, everything that you do, every layer of that experience. So as a designer, you wanna think, where is it that I can use that? And you wanna be sure that you don't slip back into your old habits as a 2D web designer, where you stick a UI in front of the person's face and it feels like a wet newspaper, as if it's tracked, headlocked, and you're tracking like that. You don't want that. So that's the second point, is that you, in addition to be sure that you use depth,

you really want to transition. You're going to need to learn a new practice of design. Because like I say, there's like no wimps in spatial computing. There are no wimps in cyberspace. And by that, I mean there are no windows, there are no icons, there are no mice, there are no pointers, and there's no solo play. All of these are great for 2D design, interactive 2D design, which we've been doing for 50 years or 100, not quite 100 years. But.

quite a while for, I forget when the Xerox Star was anyway. But all of that language then has to be replaced by something else. So instead of like windows of content, we want worlds to explore. We want to be able to interact objects, not with icons and mice and pointers, surrogates. We want to be that avatar, right? Our avatar is me and I'm the 3D cursor and I'm interacting with my hands, interacting directly with my hands. I'm directing.

acting with objects and have an avatar. And then of course, I'm inviting all of my friends. So instead of wimps, we kind of want to be like Neo in the matrix, which is we want to go, whoa, right? So we want, you know, W-H-O-A-S, you know, we want windows, hands, object interaction, avatars, and social play. And the audio is super important as well. We really want to be sure that we have voice interaction and at least spatialized audio.

because otherwise it won't feel immersive without that. And I guess probably the third point is we want to be sure to keep it people-centric, because it is just like we do user interface design or human factors design it in the next generation of integrating objects into our worlds, whether it is a completely virtual one or one where we can see the world around us.

is we want to be sure that it is designed so that people accomplish their goals because they will feel emotionally for that and they will be able to tell their friends. And so it's a very positive cycle as opposed to a more oppressive view of a future where it is mind control and it's trying to eliminate, eliminate jobs and all of that stuff with where AI might go.

So bringing up AI, I think that it's really important again to keep it people-centric. So the 3D design and AI design, really, these all have to be tools for humans to use. So AI really is a tool for humans to use. And we'll be able to integrate AI in every level of our process. We've been trying it out for the first ball of the White Rabbit. But it is the user, the user, the human still needs to feel in control. At least that's our design philosophy here.

Omer Frank (: 40:30

So what would you suggest to new designers that just starting their design journey and they're asking themselves if they want to design for the web 2 or web 3, how would you suggest to start their journey?

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 40:48

Awesome. Well, I think the first step for just design in general in tech is read a lot of science fiction, because that's what I did when I was growing up. But I read like the entire science fiction set section of the St. Louis Public Library, you know, I like to say. And because that gives you the ability to think about the future, to think about worlds that don't exist right now. And, you know, that's true, whether it's, you know, the whether it's the abundance in Star Trek, for example, there's no money.

Or it is Snow Crash or his other book, Diamond Age, which I think is actually a much better view of where we could be. It's about the young ladies illustrated primer. It's a book, a nanotech book that creates these games that educate a young girl. And the inventor makes a copy.

One goes to a nobleman and one falls out of his possession into a street urchin. And so the story follows both of these women as they play these games that are very much like what we would think about a metaverse being, at least for me. But so for specifically though, that's inspiration. And then the next step is to again, like challenge yourself with that fourth crayon, like how can I use death?

in the design. How can I do the design that has no icons or no mice, no, it's more direct, kind of more direct interaction? And in the prototyping, we use design models, like the four keys to talk about the emotion. And then also though, we use like paper and cardboard and Legos to create 3D models of things. In fact, I've got, yeah, in fact I have one. I don't know if it's, I don't know if I can grab it.

Omer Frank (: 42:37

Sounds fun.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 42:41

I haven't gotten this out in a long time. But this is an early paper prototype for our game, Follow It Rabbit. And so there was a black and white version of this too. But here you can see it's kind of a concept sketch. And you can see literally it's, I've taped together a bunch of pieces of paper. And what I did, this is the early prototype. And then I folded it like this. So it's kind of like a hollow donut-y kind of thing.

And then I stuck my head inside and I looked around. And so I basically looked around and then I repositioned things as I turned around. And that was like no Unity, no Blender, no Maya, no Unreal. That was just paper and a little bit of Photoshop. That was an early concept from...

Omer Frank (: 43:13

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 43:40

the first artist on the project, Brandon Jones. And that helped a lot. I put in like folders, I paper clipped four file folders to make a box shape and then put that circle inside it and then put it on the edge of a table and then like had my head underneath the table and then, or by side table and then moved it like this and then stuck my head up or I stuck the phone, my phone in and recorded video just to see how that looks. So those kinds of...

prototyping really help for designing, thinking about three space. Cause a lot of 2D design doesn't recognize the depth in the scene and then a lot of 3D design, even for 3D pancake games, they don't, they do a lot of cheats, right? That background is just a skybox and there's actually no backside to that desk. It's just a front. Whereas, you know, if your player is gonna be able to walk around, then you want that to be interesting.

Puzzles often are 2D. I see a lot of VR stuff where it could have just been a mobile game. There's no real use of the depth. So think of really amazing games like Monument Valley. Not only do they use depths, but they are each one, each literal. You have to get basically the character from point A to point B. And not only is it like a 3D navigation on the iPad, very simple.

But it's Escher-esque, right? So sometimes if you look at it, the stairs are up, and then sometimes the stairs are down. It's the same, your mind does this flip back and forth. So those, they did, I forget what it was called on Quest, but they did a VR version of a new game. But those kinds of thinking about depth in a new way is super important for going on to web three.

Omer Frank (: 45:30

Amazing stuff. So thank you very much for this conversation. Again, super inspiring. I really love chatting with you. It's always inspirational. And I have things to think about for tomorrow, how I convince my managers to start thinking about emotions instead about KPIs and OKRs and all that kind of stuff.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 45:49

Yeah.

Well, it's new. Yeah, it's new. Basically, it's new KPIs, right? And it's new OKRs. So how do we put new emotions into that? So I think that can help. That can help.

Omer Frank (: 46:09

It's so important, but I wouldn't, I don't think that they will take it seriously, not because they're not serious people. It's because they don't understand the fundamental, um, aspect of it. You know, about how important.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 46:23

They don't understand the fun in the fundamentals, that's for sure.

Omer Frank (: 46:27

Exactly. And I just talked with a friend. I talked about the previous episode of the juicy patterns podcast. He said that he's a very successful musician, like globally. And he said that everything should be fun. Everything that you do in life should be fun. It doesn't matter what you do. It should be fun. Also, I meditate a lot and I listen to Alan Watts. He was a.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 46:40

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 46:58

He said a lot of things about everything that you do, no matter what, it should be fun. Otherwise, there is no purpose in living.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 47:07

Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 47:09

So again, it's like understanding how to do everything in life without...

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 47:15

Mm-hmm. And even if it's just taking an attitude or doing it in a fun way, like I was before this broadcast, I was at a cafe, and just to mix it up, that was fun. That was fun for me, where I was doing something that was very repetitive and would have been boring otherwise, so at least I could listen to their fun music and do something a little bit different. And it's, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 47:20

Exactly.

It feels like a super skill. It feels like the super skill that everyone needs and don't know they need it.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 47:47

Emotion and intelligence and emotion design of your own life is super important because with, you know, depression and isolation You know feelings of that, you know on at epidemic levels a lot of that Could well a lot of that could be addressed not all but a lot of it could be addressed with better emotion design You go into the average workplace. Of course now everyone's work Why do people work from home is because you go to the average workplace and it's like if that was a humane society I mean if that was a zoo the humane society would shut it down because it's the office

The typical office, at least in America, it's just not designed for the people, the creatures that live there. In terms of their attention, and then they're needing to feel the reward, they're needing to be feeling fun, you know, it's so many of them are really so poorly, poorly designed. So no surprise to me that people don't wanna go back to work at the office anymore. Hopefully though we can get, whatever we do is hopefully that our new work processes coming out are going to be much more human-centric, people-centered.

Omer Frank (: 48:23

Yeah.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 48:46

and give us superpowers. Because not only can it be more fun, it can actually give you superpowers. Again, like thinking about generating curiosity if you're a web search engine.

Omer Frank (: 48:56

Yeah, it's like, again, I'm thinking about meditation and being aware to what we're doing. So it's not just about being aware, it's being aware and designing the way we listen to everyday things and everything that we do and make them worthwhile.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 49:01

Mm-hmm.

Awareness is the first step, right? It's the first step. And then the action that you take with that awareness, with that intention, the intention for your attention, those things, that's the key. That's the key to take it to that, your mindfulness practice, whatever. That's how to apply it practically.

Omer Frank (: 49:45

It's not easy. I'm doing two sessions a day. Each session is around 15 minutes. And I feel that after each session, I have a period of time around an hour that I'm super aware to everything that I do. And I'm feeling that I'm much stronger in life, because I'm very aware. And as...

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 49:50

Mmm.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Omer Frank (: 50:10

time, you know, as the day goes on, I feel that I get into all the routine stuff and I need to, oh, whoa, I need to, to say to myself, wait, like you need to be aware again. So it's being aware and not judgmental.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 50:28

But yes, yeah.

And there are billions of dollars being poured into systems to get people into non-aware states. And I'm talking about social media and other things, right? And so you're just like these attention seeds, right? They're just like sucking all, so you're doing these things, right? So this interaction is changing the emotions and the chemicals in your brain and even the structure of your brain. To get you to KPI, to get you to be there,

that social side or that video side or that whatever longer that and it's not helping you accomplish those goals. So having those, like I have a technology break over the weekend. I mean, I choose very specifically what I'm allowed what I allow myself to do and just so that I can settle. And then it's kind of a weekly cleanse, if you will. That really helps my attention and mindfulness so that I am.

doing things that I wanna do so that I accomplish my goals, not what some platform that I happen to be on, what their goals are for me.

Omer Frank (: 51:40

care I totally agree

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 51:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a whole other talk about mental agency and the importance of getting, the importance of, yeah, of mental agency and being, and protecting that, you know, not only privacy, but being able to protect our mental agency. Because these platforms can actually, you know, choose your friends, they can generate specific emotions to get you to queue up to an action, they can.

you know, do what you choose, what you think about even, depending on how often you use them. So I think it's really important to be aware of that too.

Omer Frank (: 52:20

So thank you again, and I really enjoyed talking with you. It's always a pleasure. And for our listeners and our viewers, thank you for your time. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation and that it was insightful for you as it was for me. And thank you, Nicole, again. And I'll see you next time in the Juicy Patterns podcast. Thank you so much.

Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign (: 52:24

I was likewise.

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here.