Audience Experience

A dream of escape. Here in the Northeast in America, we are under a cold snap. Since Christmas, we have been suffering with below zero temperatures and into the predictable future (according to the iPhone). And then, with or without a cold (which I have), we are essentially trapped indoors. I've been lucky to have a writing project to take me out of myself. The BEST vacation I can ever have. 

Some aspects of relationships CAN be Gamified. Some already are in ways we think are appropriate.  Measuring marriages in years (1 point per anniversary), kids (1 point per human created).  Artificial numbers which seem to mean something; especially when there is little to no other tangible signifier. Note that the fewer number of relationships is an indicator of "being haunted".  The fewer experiences, the more likely the few have tremendous impact. But the number seems to want to be low-note that we hardly ever confess the truth here in numbers. Beginning relationships can be gamified too-but must be considered in terms of Game Theory-Theory of Mind.  Think of playing a game of chess and predicting your partner's next move and deciding on your moves based on the outcome you predict. The question remains: do people want PREDICTABLE relationships?

The idea comes first.  Something brilliant, that bugs at you until you DO something about it.  (UX at this stage will involve people responding to this idea, is it something they even want? What is closest to it?  How is this different?  How can you iterate before you even begin?) Then there is the planning.  Laying out a skeleton and working your way through it.  Revise and rework. (In software, this stage may be Agile, built 2 weeks at a time.) The final draft, the final blueprint.  Now you have to build it. Program it, cast it, hopefully you'll have enough money to see it to birth. A real prototype of what you want it to be. You can test it out on people before its actual release, the UX testing is equivalent to bringing in your directing mentor for the final dress.  "Tell me its fatal flaws before we open!!" Then finally, its on its feet.   Opening night, the day everything goes live. Maybe its an MVP, Minimum Viable Product. 2 weeks of previews, features add

This is a show from the 1960's, full of youth and culture and fun.  Built to be full of delights, to be commercially viable for kids and teenage girls.  Good music that can stand on its own, and an assemblage of character actors who can act the pants of of the 4 main costars. The boys are young and handsome, innocent and charming, attractive in their own way.  Blank slates that we all can put our minds into.  You want to kiss them or be them, or maybe both. But the references inside of each episode are countless, and I enjoy trying to count them all. It is the ideal medium for a Lesson plan of what America was in the 1960's, or what we thought we were, or what we wanted to be.  There are enough names and old-fashioned props to fill an encyclopedia.  Their pad is similar to the internet, packed full of random goodies that you can stumble over.  Mid Century Thrift Store. It is an easy way to digest history.  It looks like candy, but is actually full of protein.

Much like the stages of grief, a presentation (education, theater, software, ppt, book, etc) goes through the following phases: 1. The initial idea in its purest form 2. The exploration of the idea into a script, set series of words, images, etc 3. The actual presentation, successful or not successful method of conveying the dead words on a page and turning them into something that is comprehensible 4. What the presenter remembers as mistakes or things to change or improve 5. What the audience takes in from minute to minute BONUS: What both the audience and the presenter believe happened when looking back, the next day or the day after or years later

A GREAT play which caters to a VERY small segment of the NYC Indie Theater crowd.  Everyone who was there between 1997 and now. Or then. It's about the man (a culmination of his life's story) and why he became a critic. Now, we can't ALL go to everyone's shows, no matter how much we want to.  I made a point to go, and I was in town.  A good crowd, 30-40, but not a sell out. It left me wondering, what do these playwrights do?  All these artists?  Going from show to show. How do you build a career of moments?  Little by little, and then when you come to the end, you find a lot more to hang on for.

Any performance/presentation can be broken down by POV & MicroAttitudes: 1) What you intend to convey 2)The WORDS, text, images, events that literally get presented 3)The Microattitudes that underlie every moment, including intonations, jokes, facial expressions, etc 4) The interaction between the presenter & audience which evolves the performance 5)What the audience perceives moment to moment 6) What the audience actually REMEMBERS at the end of the night 7) What the audience members take away & REMEMBER about the night going forward into the future The MicroAttitudes are probably the biggest takeaway of all of the above.

If you were actively trying to confuse the medical community, you couldn't do much better than this!

In a city as crowded as NYC, finding a hidden quiet space is like gold. Here are a few I've found that make my life better. Grand Central's Biltmore Room has the old Track Announcement Board, in CHAULK!! On the other side of town, the Senior Engineer, Joe Kinney shows off the old electrical system of the New Yorker Hotel.  There is a secret (closed) tunnel to the subway under 34th street, which is decorated by lovely Aztec inspired tiles. You can find out the other secrets here!!  http://untappedcities.com/2016/09/13/the-top-10-secrets-of-the-new-yorker-hotel/

Freakonomics did a segment about "Sleep No More" and psychological manipulation of people/audiences, There is a long history in psychology of manipulating people/subjects. The Milgrim torture experiment. The Stanford prison experiment. Getting people to torture others. All of it is a bit of theater. A secondary consideration has only been about the researcher's specific manipulation in order to get spectacular results. Allowing the subjects in "control" to ham it up. 

I was sitting at a Conference table when I saw this in front of me. In case you can't see it clearly, there is a built in phone/power jack built into the center of the table. There is a metallic flap to both cover & protect the connections, and to reduce the visual clutter in the surface of the table. However, the phone line has been CUT to accommodate the placement of the phone on the table.  Also, a surge protector with additional outlets has been plugged in. Presumably because there were not enough or they were not easily accessible for placement. The chord does not allow the plate to close properly. The phone line and the chord must be bent properly and do not easily fit into the gap of the plate.  In fact, the plate encourages more damage to both. Better design required, perhaps?

Giant corporations are often compared to giant ships, difficult to steer & even harder to change course quickly. For instance, old telephony & new telephony are competing. The first needs to prove the worth of their old technology (wired lines), while the new can jump ahead and offer many new digital features without having the costs of infrastructure to deal with. As far as the audience/customer is concerned, they just need their service to work. They don't care why things don't work, or about the layers of difficulty you have to deal with to fix it.