Why We Should Design Some Things to Be Difficult to Use


Natural arch of sandstone.

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The first car I ever drove was a bashed Land Rover Defender. I was working at an outdoor pursuits centre in North Wales. Changing gear was like Russian roulette; you stirred the stick until it jammed somewhere, then let out the clutch and hoped you hadn’t selected reverse. There was an art to everything: even opening the windows required a patient chick-a-chick-thunk of the latch.

When you can wrangle an old Landie like that, you become part of a select group. It’s a group that will dwindle from now on, as Land Rover has announced that it is discontinuing its iconic Defender range in favor of more user-friendly cars. I, for one, will be sad to see it go. We should be wary of only designing for ease of use. There’s a lot to be said for designing for difficulty of use. I’d like to say a few of those things here.



Brian Millar


Brian Millar is Head of Strategy at Sense Worldwide, an innovation consultancy that works with Nike, PepsiCo, Barclays and Samsung among others. You can follow him on Twitter @arthurascii.



1. The Pleasures of Mastery


In Dan Pink’s terrific book Drive, he explores the things that motivate us. He concludes that there are three ingredients to a happy life: autonomy, purpose and mastery. When you design the possibility of mastery into an object, you’re designing a happier life for your users.


Great video game creators are geniuses at helping us experience that mastery. Jenova Chen heads up That Games Company, creators of Flower and Journey. He says game design is all about flow. Flow happens, he claims, when you, ‘balance the inherent challenge of the activity and the player’s ability to address and overcome it.’ In other words, when we’re mastering something, our intelligence and our intuition are at full stretch; everything flows.


When you think about it, artificial intelligence in games is actually artificial stupidity. The computer controlled Princess Peach could thrash us every time at Super Mario Kart, simply by completing perfect laps. But she doesn’t. She slows down just enough so we have the chance to overtake her if we really, really concentrate.


Mastery doesn’t just apply to complex products. A fork is about as simple as it gets, but the Edwardians wrote whole books about how ladies and gentlemen should use them. It takes a lifetime to learn to use a sushi knife.


2. Difficulty Makes Things Exclusive


Before the 2007 crash, I consulted for a company that made software that helped banks analyze risk. I can hear your hollow laughter right now. Bank risk software guy, you had one job. Actually, the software did work really well. The problem was, nobody bought it. It seemed like a no brainer; at the time, heads of risk in banks simply waited for their counterparts around the world to email them a spreadsheet, then stitched them together. The process took hours, and the information was a day or more out of date. Our product oversaw every deal made by every trader and gave a real-time assessment of the dangers involved.


In spite of its brilliance, nobody was interested. When we talked to the heads of risk at investment banks, we found out why. They’d spent years learning how to glue all the data together, and had developed a lot of secret Excel wizardry to do so. They were dammed if they were going to give it all up for a dashboard that any fool could read.


If only we’d found a way to make the interface acceptably difficult to use, heads of risk wouldn’t have felt threatened. Banks would have understood the scary mess they were in more quickly, and the global economy might have been saved.


Sorry world, my bad.


3. Danger May Be Safer


Last month, one of the smartest economists in the world passed away. His name was Gordon Tullock. He spent his life studying how people made choices, and that led him to rethink everything we know about risk.


He showed that people have a fairly consistent attitude to danger. If you make an activity safer, people push the limits of that activity to bring the risk back up to a level they find accessible. Take driving. Put ABS brakes in a car, and people just tend to brake later, and less. Traction control just makes us less careful in slippery conditions. Risk homeostasis, as it’s known, has been observed everywhere from football helmets to oilrigs.


Some say that Tullock came up with a fabulous piece of design logic: if you want to reduce accidents, install a sharp spike pointing outwards from the steering wheel of every car, aimed at the driver’s heart.


User friendly? No. But it would certainly make everybody drive very, very carefully.


4. Expert Mode and the Pro Am Phenomenon


What have Linux, Grameen Bank and St John’s Ambulances have in common? They’re world-class brands that are created and run largely by amateurs. The people behind them often have the same skills as professionals, but the work just isn’t their day job. Somebody who regularly saves lives, or builds an operating system that runs on supercomputers or does micro-loans out of their living room, is more than a hobbyist. They’re a pro-am, and their numbers are growing according to Demos, a UK think tank. They’ve charted the rise of pro-ams in everything from sports to astronomy.


‘Pro Ams’…activities,’ says their study, ‘are not adequately captured by the traditional definitions of work and leisure, professional and amateur, consumption and production.’


Pro Am users don’t want things to be made easy. They want to push themselves to perform at their best. Look at camera design. While low-end cameras are being wiped out by smartphones, the growth is in $1500-plus cameras that are infinitely tweakable. Fujifilm is emerging as the new Apple of this breed, taking the controls out of deep menu functions and putting them back on chrome knobs that just beg to be twiddled. I bought a Fujifilm X100 two years ago. It was the first piece of technology I’d bought in 15 years where I had to read the manual. Actually, I’ve read the manual at least four times. Now I’m taking the best pictures of my life, and I love it. By being hard to use, my X100 made me a better photographer.


5. Are You Making It Easy to Do Something Badly?


Doug Englebart and Bill English designed the mouse that revolutionized the ways we work with computers. That’s only half the story, though. They felt it was a waste of time for a user to move their hand from keyboard to mouse and back again. So they devised a 5-button keyboard where you pressed buttons simultaneously to write words, delete, copy and paste. As Englebart said, ‘You can point with a [mouse] I admit…but our system had an indefinite number of nouns and verbs you could employ. There’s no way that clicking at menus can compete with that.’

In the end, the mouse triumphed, as computer manufacturers believed that only hardcore programmers had the patience to learn the NLS key combinations. If they’d had a little more faith, maybe they’d have saved us writers a ton of time and tendon twinges.



Why We Should Design Some Things to Be Difficult to Use


Natural arch of sandstone.

Getty Images



The first car I ever drove was a bashed Land Rover Defender. I was working at an outdoor pursuits centre in North Wales. Changing gear was like Russian roulette; you stirred the stick until it jammed somewhere, then let out the clutch and hoped you hadn’t selected reverse. There was an art to everything: even opening the windows required a patient chick-a-chick-thunk of the latch.

When you can wrangle an old Landie like that, you become part of a select group. It’s a group that will dwindle from now on, as Land Rover has announced that it is discontinuing its iconic Defender range in favor of more user-friendly cars. I, for one, will be sad to see it go. We should be wary of only designing for ease of use. There’s a lot to be said for designing for difficulty of use. I’d like to say a few of those things here.



Brian Millar


Brian Millar is Head of Strategy at Sense Worldwide, an innovation consultancy that works with Nike, PepsiCo, Barclays and Samsung among others. You can follow him on Twitter @arthurascii.



1. The Pleasures of Mastery


In Dan Pink’s terrific book Drive, he explores the things that motivate us. He concludes that there are three ingredients to a happy life: autonomy, purpose and mastery. When you design the possibility of mastery into an object, you’re designing a happier life for your users.


Great video game creators are geniuses at helping us experience that mastery. Jenova Chen heads up That Games Company, creators of Flower and Journey. He says game design is all about flow. Flow happens, he claims, when you, ‘balance the inherent challenge of the activity and the player’s ability to address and overcome it.’ In other words, when we’re mastering something, our intelligence and our intuition are at full stretch; everything flows.


When you think about it, artificial intelligence in games is actually artificial stupidity. The computer controlled Princess Peach could thrash us every time at Super Mario Kart, simply by completing perfect laps. But she doesn’t. She slows down just enough so we have the chance to overtake her if we really, really concentrate.


Mastery doesn’t just apply to complex products. A fork is about as simple as it gets, but the Edwardians wrote whole books about how ladies and gentlemen should use them. It takes a lifetime to learn to use a sushi knife.


2. Difficulty Makes Things Exclusive


Before the 2007 crash, I consulted for a company that made software that helped banks analyze risk. I can hear your hollow laughter right now. Bank risk software guy, you had one job. Actually, the software did work really well. The problem was, nobody bought it. It seemed like a no brainer; at the time, heads of risk in banks simply waited for their counterparts around the world to email them a spreadsheet, then stitched them together. The process took hours, and the information was a day or more out of date. Our product oversaw every deal made by every trader and gave a real-time assessment of the dangers involved.


In spite of its brilliance, nobody was interested. When we talked to the heads of risk at investment banks, we found out why. They’d spent years learning how to glue all the data together, and had developed a lot of secret Excel wizardry to do so. They were dammed if they were going to give it all up for a dashboard that any fool could read.


If only we’d found a way to make the interface acceptably difficult to use, heads of risk wouldn’t have felt threatened. Banks would have understood the scary mess they were in more quickly, and the global economy might have been saved.


Sorry world, my bad.


3. Danger May Be Safer


Last month, one of the smartest economists in the world passed away. His name was Gordon Tullock. He spent his life studying how people made choices, and that led him to rethink everything we know about risk.


He showed that people have a fairly consistent attitude to danger. If you make an activity safer, people push the limits of that activity to bring the risk back up to a level they find accessible. Take driving. Put ABS brakes in a car, and people just tend to brake later, and less. Traction control just makes us less careful in slippery conditions. Risk homeostasis, as it’s known, has been observed everywhere from football helmets to oilrigs.


Some say that Tullock came up with a fabulous piece of design logic: if you want to reduce accidents, install a sharp spike pointing outwards from the steering wheel of every car, aimed at the driver’s heart.


User friendly? No. But it would certainly make everybody drive very, very carefully.


4. Expert Mode and the Pro Am Phenomenon


What have Linux, Grameen Bank and St John’s Ambulances have in common? They’re world-class brands that are created and run largely by amateurs. The people behind them often have the same skills as professionals, but the work just isn’t their day job. Somebody who regularly saves lives, or builds an operating system that runs on supercomputers or does micro-loans out of their living room, is more than a hobbyist. They’re a pro-am, and their numbers are growing according to Demos, a UK think tank. They’ve charted the rise of pro-ams in everything from sports to astronomy.


‘Pro Ams’…activities,’ says their study, ‘are not adequately captured by the traditional definitions of work and leisure, professional and amateur, consumption and production.’


Pro Am users don’t want things to be made easy. They want to push themselves to perform at their best. Look at camera design. While low-end cameras are being wiped out by smartphones, the growth is in $1500-plus cameras that are infinitely tweakable. Fujifilm is emerging as the new Apple of this breed, taking the controls out of deep menu functions and putting them back on chrome knobs that just beg to be twiddled. I bought a Fujifilm X100 two years ago. It was the first piece of technology I’d bought in 15 years where I had to read the manual. Actually, I’ve read the manual at least four times. Now I’m taking the best pictures of my life, and I love it. By being hard to use, my X100 made me a better photographer.


5. Are You Making It Easy to Do Something Badly?


Doug Englebart and Bill English designed the mouse that revolutionized the ways we work with computers. That’s only half the story, though. They felt it was a waste of time for a user to move their hand from keyboard to mouse and back again. So they devised a 5-button keyboard where you pressed buttons simultaneously to write words, delete, copy and paste. As Englebart said, ‘You can point with a [mouse] I admit…but our system had an indefinite number of nouns and verbs you could employ. There’s no way that clicking at menus can compete with that.’

In the end, the mouse triumphed, as computer manufacturers believed that only hardcore programmers had the patience to learn the NLS key combinations. If they’d had a little more faith, maybe they’d have saved us writers a ton of time and tendon twinges.



This Wireless Explosives Detector Is the Size of a Postage Stamp


RFID-inline-ft

A wireless, battery-free RFID sensor tag for detection of chemicals such as explosives and oxidizers. GE Global Research



For public safety agencies, sniffing out explosives and other contraband is a tricky task. Handheld explosive detectors can be as small as a purse, but still must be manually operated. Permanently mounted sensors need to be even bigger. Dogs are useful in some scenarios, but they’re expensive to deploy en masse and must always have a handler.


That’s why GE Global Research is working on a new way to detect dangerous substances, one that costs about a nickel, can be deployed anywhere, and doesn’t need human supervision. The device is a tiny RFID tag that activates only when it detects certain explosives or oxidizing agents. In effect, it could replace gigantic explosive scanners with something a couple inches across.


Developed in partnership with the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), an inter-agency task force dedicated to anti-terrorism, the new RFID tag could dramatically drive down the cost of scanning for dangerous materials in places like cargo ports and airports.


RFID-inline

Conventional RFID tags that have been converted into sensors by applying a sensing material on one side of the tag. The sensing material is white. GE Global Research



RFID tags use electromagnetic fields to transfer data, and are commonly found on things like key cards to open doors and EZPass toll transponders. GE is keeping mum on the details of how they’re being used here, but says it’s developed “a sensing material that responds to explosives and oxidizers” than can be built into the device. Radislav Potyrailo, a GE scientist, compared the tags to a smoke alarm or CO2 sensor. “We have developed sensing materials that are quite sensitive for this type of detection.”


The tags can be placed in cargo containers, shipping packages, airports, and government buildings, to name a few. The team believes they’ll be able to sit dormant for months and still trigger effectively, without any need for power or recharging. Effectively, the tag can be slapped nearly anywhere and only activate once a target chemical is found. The range at which they can be read depends on the strength of the pickup antenna of the reader, typically anywhere from a few inches to a few dozen feet. That may seem limited, because GE believes can cost just pennies each, they can be installed in vast numbers very cheaply, basically everywhere.


Currently, GE’s focus is on explosives and oxidizers (frequently used in improvised explosive devices), but the team believes it can develop similar tags to detect biological matter like spores or bacteria. Commercialization could arrive as soon as the next few years.



While You Were Offline: Jon Stewart Breaks the Internet’s Heart


If there’s one lesson to learn from the Internet this week, it’s that you really shouldn’t interrupt Beck at awards shows. No, wait; It’s that you shouldn’t be like Diplo when it comes to dealing with criticism for doing a crappy thing. No, no, no: It’s really that Twitter hashtags exist to be stolen by corporations… Actually, maybe it’s all of those things. Yes, it’s been a surprisingly educational week online. Here are some of the highlights you might need to catch up on. (For real, though, the must-read thing from the Internet this week is Brianna Wu’s piece about standing up to Gamergate from The Bustle. Go read that if you haven’t already, then come back to this.)


Jon Stewart Breaks the Internet’s Collective Heart


What Happened: The host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show announced his resignation, and people were very, very upset about it. (For the most part.)

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: At the end of taping Tuesday’s episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart revealed that he was planning to step down as host at some point this year. The response across social media was immediate, with messages so upset and impassioned that Stewart later made a joke about feeling as if he’d actually died. (Watch above.) It wasn’t only fans who felt the pre-emptive loss, however; the Internet was immediately flooded with think pieces about what Stewart taught us about politics, his importance to an entire generation, how Comedy Central could replace him (and even whether he could even be replaced), and, of course why he was bad for the left (because, the Internet).

According to one report, Jon Stewart is so beloved that his brand is now worth $100 million, which might explain why Stewart decided it was time to go in search of new opportunities. But as the nation turns its lonely eyes to him for his last few months of being the country’s favorite fake newsman (hey, Brian Williams, there’s an opening!), you have to wonder: Can anyone really be the next Jon Stewart?

The Takeaway: This would be a good time to remind everyone that Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has just started back on HBO, wouldn’t it…?


Imma Let You Finish (Reprise)


What Happened: Kanye West almost interrupted Beck at the Grammys to tell everyone that Beyoncé should have won the Best Album award instead. Almost everyone who wasn’t mentioned in that previous sentence had an opinion about it.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: On one hand, what happened was relatively straightforward: In an incident that weirdly echoed his 2009 MTV VMA encounter with Taylor Swift, West jumped up on stage during Beck’s acceptance speech for Best Album, and looked as if he was going to interrupt, only to turn back at the last second. A joke? It appeared so, but Kanye then told E! News that Beck “needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé.” (For his part, Beck told Rolling Stone , “I thought she was going to win. Come on, she’s Beyoncé!”)

It turned out this wasn’t just the weird, fun music show kerfuffle it initially appeared to be. (Honestly, it’s no Jarvis Cocker vs. Michael Jackson in the grand scheme of things.) Instead, it was a Rorschach test for how people viewed Kanye West.

Garbage’s Shirley Manson complained West looked “small and petty and spoilt,” while John Legend disagreed in a more relaxed manner, writing that Beck is “indeed a true artist’s artist.” New England Patriots’ cornerback Brandon Browner called Kanye a “sucka” and said that, if he’d been Beck, “Kanye would be rapped thru the wire,” although Paul Stanley of KISS would’ve preferred it if Beck had “kicked Kanye right in the nuts.” Unsurprisingly, think pieces followed, berating Kanye for having “lost [his] mind”, although some did wish he’d gone further onstage, and Twitter couldn’t help itself from weighing in:


For what it’s worth, West later took back his comments, saying Beck is “one of the most respected artists, and respects artistry.” Whether this will make people get off his case remains to be seen but, let’s face it, it’s somewhat unlikely. Our favorite comment about this whole thing came on Twitter from critic Sean T. Collins:


The Takeaway: Look, it’s not like West was wrong when he said Beyoncé should’ve won instead of Beck; did you people listen to Morning Phase? We should be talking about that more than reading our own sociological biases into what Kanye “means” on a larger scale.


Diplo Demonstrates What Not to Do on So Many Levels


What Happened: DJ and producer Diplo stole artwork to use as background art for his music. When this was pointed out, his response was … well, let’s go with “unfortunate” for now.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: It could have all gone so differently. Earlier this week, Diplo posted a remix of the track “Take Ü There” by Jack Ü on Snapchat, set against a GIF of a house shaking during an earthquake. The GIF was the work of artist Rebecca Mock, who quickly noted on Twitter that she hadn’t been asked for permission for it to be used.


Diplo responded by adding Mock’s credit on the Instagram version of the video, but that didn’t mean he thought that he’d done anything wrong, as he quickly revealed:


He, wisely, deleted the tweet in which he argued “I credited her what u want me to do? Eat her out and massage her boobs at the same time as well,” but not before it had launched a number of pieces across the Internet about his response, specifically noting the misognyny on display. His response? One of, uh, love (maybe…?):




The Takeaway: Don’t steal other people’s work. And if you do, and you get caught, try to have a better response than this, for obvious reasons.


What’s a Cheap Branding Opportunity in Four Words?


What Happened: With Valentine’s Day approaching, the hashtag #WhatsLoveIn4Words trended on Twitter. Those most responsible for using it? Brands trying to sell you their wares.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter

What Really Happened: You can imagine that the Twitter hashtag #WhatsLoveIn4Words started from, if not a place of purity, then at least a place of “not an invitation to be overrun by companies trying to sell stuff.” And yet, by midweek, that’s exactly what had happened. Wondering what love is in four words? Here are some suggestions:


The Takeaway: Finally, a victory for all those who like to complain that Valentine’s Day has become far too commercialized over the last few decades. Amusingly, of those who aren’t trying to sell you something using the hashtag, there’s a surprising number of people answering “Farting On Each Other.” Is this a new fetish we’ve missed?


Who Needs Journalism School When You have the Internet?


What Happened: Inspired by an online piece telling young journalists how terrible their futures are going to be, the Internet decided to offer some helpful tips on their future careers.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Following Felix Salmon’s open letter to new journalists warning them that “life is not good for journalists… Things are not only bad; they’re going to get worse,” the hordes on Twitter took it upon themselves to offer some more advice to those starting out in journalism. Some were genuinely attempting to help, and others… not so much.


The Takeaway: No, really, young journalists: The Internet really does respect your chosen career path. Honestly.


Now You Too Can Be Victimized by ISPs Without Having to Deal With One


What Happened: What’s that, you say? You wish that you’d been given one of those fun nicknames by Comcast’s customer service department? Well, someone has come up with the next best thing.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: This is one of those times when a remarkably simple idea turns out to be a stroke of genius. Now that we know that at least two customers have had their names changed to insults by Comcast’s customer service department, The Verge created an automated name generator to help you discover what the Comcast CSD is secretly calling you.

The Takeaway: This writer got named Ultra Assclown, but that should come as no surprise to those readers who email week after week to dispute our take on events.



The Internet of Anything: The System That Pays You to Use Less Electricity


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Getty Images



We all know we should use less electricity. It would save us some money each month, and in the long run, it just might save the planet, reducing our collective carbon footprint. But sadly, that’s just not enough incentive for most of us.


Ohmconnect hopes to provide more. Launched about a year ago, the service doesn’t just help you save electricity. It pays you—or your favorite charity—when you use less power during volatile times for the electrical grid. And if you have the right gear—such as a Nest thermostat, Belkin smart switches, or a Tesla car—Ohmconnect can automatically manage some of your power consumption so that you don’t have to do anything yourself.


“Users typically earn between $50 and $150 per year, depending on how much electricity they typically use,” says co-founder Curtis Tongue. So far, the service is only available in California, but Tongue says that company will expand into other states, such as Texas, as they adopt the regulations that enable Ohmconnect to sell energy on the open market.


At least in theory, this can not only cut down on emissions—the power plants that operate during peak times tend to have bigger carbon footprints—but also help make the electrical grid more stable by reducing activity spikes, which could it easier to make the transition to cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind power.


The Energy You Don’t Use


The process is simple. You sign-up for Ohmconnect and authorize the company to access your home’s smart meter and any supported internet-connected devices. You don’t have to buy or install any special equipment. A few times a week, the company will alert you to energy spikes and ask you to cut back your power consumption, or it will dial-it back for you through the Nest and other devices. Then you get paid for the energy you don’t use.


Where does this money come from? It’s complicated.


It starts with California ISO, the organization that manages the state’s electrical grid. The ISO creates forecasts of how much energy each customer is expected to use during different periods of time. And when too many customers exceed these forecasts, additional power plants have to be activated to meet the demand.


dashboard

Ohmconnect





Firing up these “peaker” plants is expensive, so utility companies would rather pay people to use less electricity than pay to turn the plants on, so they buy unused power through energy markets, even though no new power is actually being generated.

Ohmconnect monitors these energy markets, and when prices spike, it can text you to let you know to wait to run your dishwasher or dry your laundry for a couple hours. Or it might tell your Nest thermostat to turn down the heat or air conditioning for an hour. Or it could tell your Tesla to stop charging until prices go back down.


If you manage to use less than your forecasted amount of electricity, you earn money that you can either collect via PayPal or have donated directly to a charity of your choosing.


Energy Bundles


On your own, you’d never save enough energy to make money selling on the energy markets. But Ohmconnect can help large groups of customers save energy, and sell their energy as a bundle.


There are companies that bundle energy sales for commercial properties, but Tongue says Ohmconnect, which takes a 20 percent cut of the earnings, is the first to do this for residential consumers.



This Immersive Michael Jordan Simulator Is the World’s Coolest Basketball Court




If you’ve played with the Wii, the Kinect, or PlayStation Move, you’ve already blurred the line between games and real-life action. But you’ve never experienced anything like the immersive, genre-bending installation called “The Last Shot”—unless you’re Michael Jordan.


Even Jordan himself hasn’t experienced some aspects of this amazing setup.


Here’s what happens when you step inside: your actual surroundings transform. You find yourself on a basketball half-court. At first, the walls around you are white as the THX 1138 set. But then those walls come to life. Suddenly, you’re surrounded by a realistic-looking crowd, because the walls are actually massive LED displays.


But wait, there’s more: The floor beneath you morphs into parquet. Which arena’s parquet? It depends what you selected while you were waiting in line. On wall-mounted iPads outside the scene you choose a scenario, and two of them are storybook moments from Jordan’s career.


You can either try to replicate his game-winning shot in the 1982 NCAA Championship game versus Georgetown, or you can replicate his final shot as a member of the Chicago Bulls in 1998: a top-of-the-key jumper against the Utah Jazz that boosted the Bulls to their sixth NBA championship.


When the experience kicks in, it’s like a video game augmenting real life. A path lights up on the ground to show you where to go. On each wall, 4K footage of a real crowd cheers or boos depending on whether you deliver. In the Utah scenario, the “home crowd” cheers when you miss—a nice touch.


A real play-by-play announcer calls out your every move, and real players on the court deliver that key assist, play defense and act as stand-ins for Byron Russell who plays along when you push off.


This jaw-dropping immersive environment was a collaboration between creative agency AKQA, video-production company Stardust, and Nike’s Jordan brand, and it’s part of a bigger suite of interactive experiences made to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Air Jordan. It’s on display at the Jordan All-Star Weekend exhibition, which runs through Sunday night right across the street from Madison Square Garden, where this year’s NBA All-Star Game took place. It’s open to the public for free, but the lines are predictably long.


One of the keys to The Last Shot’s immersive ways is the amazing level of detail. For the 1982 crowd scene, some of the 250 actors wear throwback fashions, big mustaches, and mullets for an extra dose of ’80s authenticity. Using RED 4K cameras, Stardust captured those scripted crowd scenes in the Honda Center in Anaheim to cover different reactions, the wall angles, and clever wardrobe changes.


“It was all about the distance from the camera to the crowd matching the distance from the court to the LED screens,” says Stardust Managing Partner Dexton Deboree. “Just straight tripod shots. We did eight different scenes.”


Behind the walls of the 1,200-square-foot room, a group of video producers and editors pull some of the strings. Watching participants on video monitors, they play the appropriate crowd reaction when they make or miss a shot. They also edit each clip and send you a highlight video, which is emailed based on information stored on an RFID bracelet you get when you register.


The Last Shot didn’t fully come together until six or eight weeks ago, according to Brian Facchini, Global Communications Director for Jordan. But months before that, AKQA and Stardust began collaborating on the idea.


“We pitched it (to Jordan) around October,” says Eamonn Dixon, Associate Creative Director at AKQA. “We knew the 30th anniversary was coming up, and All-Star Weekend is a tentpole moment for the brand each year. Because it’s the 30th, it’s the time to do something truly innovative and historic.”


From there, AKQA contacted Stardust, Jordan’s content-production partner for the Jordan brand.


“The key was a really tight feedback loop,” says Deboree. “(AKQA) came to us with the initial idea, and we came in and further developed the narrative. Once we had the narrative set, we specced out the technology to pull it off.”


That technology includes thousands of 54-by-54 LED tiles on the walls and the floor, all combining to display 10 million pixels. The mesmerizing experience has certainly been popular. Jordan Global Digital Director Harshal Sisodia estimates more than 10,000 visitors will have come through the space by the end of All-Star Weekend.


Those visitors include All-Star Game competitors. L.A. Clippers point guard Chris Paul visited and coached a kid through a reenactment of one of his own game-winners. Facchini says Carmelo Anthony, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia have also dropped by to check out the installation.


If you need any proof that Jordan was good, consider these numbers: According to AKQA’s Dixon, roughly one of every ten participants actually sink the shot.


Once the installation closes Sunday night, it’s a mystery as to what will happen next. There are no concrete plans to bring The Last Shot to other cities, but Facchini hints it’s probable. He wants to “find a way for everyone to experience the court.”


“The 30th anniversary is a look forward, to inspire the next generation,” says Dixon. “This installation was a way for us to educate people about the man behind the brand, to show the situations that made him who he was.”


And depending on your age, your definition of Jordan’s legacy may vary.


“We were playing in a game in Charlotte, and my (five-year-old) son was sitting court-side,” Chris Paul told the crowd during his visit. “He saw MJ and said ‘Daddy, that’s the guy from Space Jam.’ He relates more to Space Jam and the shoes.”