Let’s talk about Design Intention Bias
I want to talk about a trend I see where designers and developers expect technology to be used only within their stated intentions. Every usage outside this scenario is not considered at all. This is especially bad in Social Virtual Worlds design.
User-centric design has a design flaw
Let’s overgeneralize user-centric design a bit: Designers create a feature by first exploring and then defining use cases for a given audience. They create a narrative about who a feature is for, how the feature is useful and start exploring how this audience can utilize the feature best, eventually leading to an (evolving) implementation.
A direct result is that designers applying this methodology don’t usually think about how a technology can be actively misused within the given scope. They introduce a bias that the feature or technology is only used in the intended way, with the identified goal, by the observed audience.
The problem is that just because you design a feature with intentions & motivation of one defined group, other groups might have different intentions while also having access to the feature. The result is not about usability and avoiding usage error, but people using the feature as designed while deliberately weaponizing it for abuse or personal profit.
Let’s talk about Horizon Worlds
I’m sorry to single out Meta here. They are only the most recent example of an extensive list of people being too optimistic about their users. We all did these mistakes.
But it’s a good example because social virtual worlds have some hard-earned rules when it comes to design.
One such rule is that it doesn’t matter how many degrees you abstract a virtual representation — if you allow proximity between characters because you want to incentivize socializing, there will be abuse by invading somebody’s personal space. This is widely known because this form of abuse is so common in games that there is a specific term for it.
And if you have articulated hands or any other form of near player-to-player interaction to incentivize collaboration, there will be groping and other form of body abuse. We know this because the first case was documented in 1993 and we have had many, many cases since then. Here is one from 2016:
So absolutely nobody in the virtual world design space was surprised that Meta’s Horizon Worlds had this problem. We knew it by just looking at the announcement videos. It happened during Beta:
Meta’s answer was unfortunate: “Meta’s internal review of the incident found that the beta tester should have used a tool called “Safe Zone” that’s part of a suite of safety features built into Horizon Worlds”. No, you don’t get to victim blame somebody that was sexually harassed on your platform just because you didn’t read the history.
Horizon Worlds is also a good example as they still think that users and audiences are behaving as intended — because this is their solution:
This seems like a clever idea, right? “A personal boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space. If someone tries to enter your personal boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary.” No more proximity, no more groping!
Here is why MMOs have done away with player collision decades ago:
Players started camping narrow architectures like doors or entrances, effectively blocking other players from leaving / entering, blocking key features, or holding them hostage.
If you enforce minimum distances between players to create “safety bubbles” around them, you just gave people the means to intentionally block others. We have seen this as early as Ultima Online (1997) where abusers would wait for new players to spawn, to then trap and shoot them. The worst abusers were individually responsible for driving away thousands of players.
If the feature is developed as described, then my best guess is that on day one, a player will start blocking & trapping other players. Within week one, a group of players will surround & harass a victim to prevent it from walking away and escaping their abuse.
You want collaboration based on proximity, which is a good intention, but you need to consider that some people don’t care about “what they are supposed to do” and that they will weaponize the feature. Because this is well inside your design parameters of being 4ft apart:
Weapon-centric design
Especially when designing social virtual spaces, every decision must be intentional. Social norms in virtual spaces need to be designed intentionally, not considered emergent behavior, and players need to be aware of the overall intentions and norms that are acceptable within your space. Otherwise, history tells us you end up with rogue-like hardcore worlds that are incredibly toxic.
It’s fine to have competitive spaces, even to the point where violence is encouraged (first person shooters), but they need to be clearly separated from safe spaces for friends & family. There cannot be crossover.
And you cannot design virtual spaces from an inclusive, user-centric design perspective. You need to start from the assumption that you are creating weapons that need to be crafted in such a way that they can only be wielded with the least amount of harm. Treat them like knives that are incredibly useful, but also dangerous.
Every feature must be primarily looked at as a weapon.
You must not assume that what you identified as a desirable feature based on a specific intent of a chosen audience is only used as such. Image other uses. Imagine other audiences. Imagine other intentions and incentives. Get a Red Team of designers to think about the most horrific things you can do with a feature. Then assume that actual abusers will be even worse.
I am sorry, it’s a dark, dark way to look at design. But you need to do it. You cannot argue your way out of this because: “This technology / trend / hype is still something new”. It’s not. We know a lot about how this works, and we have the scars to prove it. This is not about a single company or product. We all need to be better if we want this space to be diverse, inclusive, safe, and fun.
Where to start
Some references to get you inspired:
- Richard Bartle’s “Designing Virtual Worlds” is an excellent start.
- “Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games” by Edward Castronova is a good follow-up.
- Then read “My Tiny Life” and “Play Money” by Julian Dibbel to understand the player-side.
All these books were written before 2010 and are still relevant. They show the history and best practices we have uncovered. They will still answer most of your pressing questions and open the way for modern interpretations.
If you want the cliff notes, watch Raph Koster’s talk “Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs” at GDC 2016. Then read his books.