Experience is more important than information

Last week I was invited by a friend (thank you!) to a sneak preview screening of A Mighty Heart with Angelina Jolie, about the kidnapping and execution of Daniel Pearl. I don’t usually bother with film critiques but this movie had huge gaping holes where moments should have been and it made me think of a parallel to marketing. A marketing piece, like a film, has three distinct parts: a hook, the message and a call-to-action. The film equivalent would be the premise, the journey and the resolution. The effectiveness of these parts relies on moments – what screenwriters call turning points. My argument is that ultimately, these moments and the effect they have on the audience are more important than the context.

The trap that filmmakers fall into is the same problem that marketers fall into. They worry more about the details than the experience. The content is almost meaningless. It doesn’t matter if he’s been missing for 17 or 70 hours. It doesn’t matter if your product is $5 or $50 off. What matters is how the audience experiences the information. It’s not information that motivates them to buy or tell their friends to see the film.

What’s more enjoyable? Walking out of a movie that moved you, that made you feel something but not knowing exactly what happened and having to sort it out later, or walking out knowing exactly what happened but not feeling anything? You feel even more cheated, you have all the information and yet, you still don’t care. Clarity is meaningless if your audience is not moved.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
What I wanted to see was a story about a woman dealing with her helplessness and inevitable tragedy. I never felt like we got to share her pain. We never even saw the world. There was one instance in which the news erroneously reported that his body had been found but we never saw let’s say, the people of the United States watching it! What about when Mariane is on the phone with Daniel’s mother and she says, “You know it’s not true right?” Is she consoling her? What’s happening on the other end? We don’t know. How powerful would it have been to see Daniel’s mother having a breakdown and Mariane having to be the strong one, consoling her from Karachi? The ironic cruelty of that would have been too painful to watch.

Here are three missed moments and how I would have created them.

1) This movie was like CSI: Karachi. The whole focus was on the chase, the investigation and not on Mariane and her journey. We never see the moment in which Mariane realizes for the first time that Danny might never be found. This is a huge moment, possibly the most important moment of the movie. Where was it? She’s stoic the whole time – and maybe that’s how she really was – but as an audience we need to know why. Is she inside thinking about what it’s going to be like to raise a child without his father but stuffing her grief? Putting on a good face? Or is she in total denial and believes 100% until the end that he’s coming back? We’re not sure.

This should potentially be the most memorable moment of the movie. We already know what’s going to happen, we know how it ends but Mariane doesn’t. The moment should have been when she realizes that the kidnapping was planned and not spontaneous. She gets it, intellectually. She's the one that tells us but did she feel it? She should have changed from that moment on – from matter-of-fact dealing with a situation to suddenly feeling very small or angry, or whatever. The shift should have been dramatic.

2) The film begins with Mariane Pearl’s voiceover from after the event is over. She drives through the city and the camera pans out to show her amidst the chaos and immensity of Karachi and she says something like “How can you find one man in all of this.” Now, that moment is completely wasted. They just gave away the second turning point!

It should start in the details of her life with Daniel. Their work, the pregnancy, the home. We don’t need to know why they were there or for how long or even when. It’s not relevant. What we need is to feel his absence from her life and then see events unfold in a landscape so large and so chaotic that we feel her helplessness.

Thelma & Louise starts small, in the mundane details of our characters’ lives. Geena Davis puts the Snickers bar in the freezer over and over, only to keep taking it out for another bite. Susan Sarandon washes the dishes with inordinate care and attention. As we go on their journey, our perspective gets wider and we are able to see them in context of the world. We gradually come to realize that they are powerless against the big wide world. It ends with a magnificent shot of the women driving off a cliff over the Grand Canyon as a tiny Harvey Keitel runs after them. One man, all that space.

What I would have liked to see is the Karachi scene later in the film. It should be the first time the audience fully realizes what she’s up against and the utter futility of the search. Maybe Mariane spends the night driving around the city in a taxi looking for him. It’s a ridiculous, desperate move but now that we understand the situation, we can be floored by her strength and the fact that she doesn’t give up.

3) When the group confronts Mariane to tell her that Daniel is gone she says, “How do you know?” and someone replies, “There was a video tape.” I feel like I’m watching a movie made for idiots! We know there was a tape. We saw the tape. WE know, see? It’s not the character’s movie, it’s our movie, it’s my movie and what I want is for Mariane to SEE the tape. I want no one to speak but instead someone just hands her the tape. She looks down and realizes that her husband, the last moments of his life, all that is left of him, is her hands.

As an actress, Angelina Jolie should have thought of this and asked for it. All good performers think about their props and how they can physicalize their action, and a director should always be thinking how they can show instead of tell. Mariane takes the tape and goes into the room with it. She can still scream or cry but now she has the tape to react to. She can throw it or talk to it, cradle it in her arms or destroy it. Seeing a woman fall apart over a piece of plastic? That would have moved me.

After the film my friend asked if I would tell people they had to see this movie and I replied no. I thought it was okay. It was well shot, well acted and was reasonably interesting but there was no call-to-action, no takeaway. What was the point? I wasn’t left with an experience. How would I pitch it to my friends? And that’s what I think about in marketing. How will the consumer tell their friends about this? I start with the answer to that question and work backwards to make it happen.

I just read an article in which Asra Nomani, the good friend of the Pearl's whose house they stayed at in Karachi, criticizes the movie. Her critique is different than mine and probably more valid. Mine is that the movie failed at what I think it was trying to do - show Mariane's story. Hers is that the movie failed to do what it should have done - tell us who Daniel Pearl was. I couldn't agree more, it was a film that never found its purpose.

Testing, testing, 1-2-3

There's no substitute for actually testing your product or interface with actual users. You can theorize all day long about how the product should work and how intuitive you think it is, but the people designing something know how it should be used. They focus on their own agenda and needs and often can't take themselves out of the equation to think of the user. This is why these positions have evolved: User Experience Designer, Interaction Designer, Information Architect, etc.

My mom works for the Navy and does most of her work for the DOD. About a decade ago, she was in charge of a project to evaluate the safety across the nation of bases, airports and high-level government buildings that might be vulnerable to attack. What they found was pretty shocking. The safety of our nation relies not on the technology of the machines but on the PEOPLE operating those machines. (Actually, in the worst case, the machines weren't even being used. They had been sitting in the basement of a local FBI building, unopened, because no one knew how to use them).

Turns out, our biggest weakness is that people are being paid minimum wage to operate a half-million dollar machine that's so complicated, they don't know where to start. The machine isn't designed with the user in mind and the user isn't trained properly so the machine is useless.

Apple was one of the first companies to design a product first and build it second. Function follows form. Not the other way around. The iPod was designed that way.

I'm a hobbyist user tester. When I first starting going to a gym that required scanning one of those plastic key chain cards, I tested three different ways to get in the door before I found the fastest.

First I tried handing the attendants the key chain cards BARCODE FACING UP to get in the door quicker. After all, the barcode is ready they just have to scan. But what happened time and time again is that they would take it and fumble around with it to FIND the right one - totally defeating the purpose.

I theorized that it was because they didn't recognize the gym's barcode, most of the time they're multi-tasking, so I starting handing them JUST the gym's key chain card LOGO UP. They took it, flipped it over and scanned it. Pretty quick but still not good enough for me. I did it this way for a time, while pondering a better way.

Finally it dawned on me, maybe the reason the first way didn't work is because I was handing them the WHOLE STACK of my key chain cards. They were thinking with their hands, not with their eyes. They felt the stack and didn't know the one they needed was ON TOP. Why would they?

So I started handing them JUST the gym's key chain card BARCODE UP. And it worked! They take it, scan it, and I'm in seconds later. This is a simple interaction and I'm a fairly smart gal so you can only imagine how many user experience mistakes are made by smart people who think they know. You don't know until you test.