User Enchantment...

The best user experiences are enchanting. They help the user enter an alternate reality, whether it's the world of making music, writing, sharing photos, coding, or managing a project. Even a spreadsheet has the potential to be as engaging as a game.

Until the interface comes crashing into your virtual world, throwing you back to the real one. That intense feeling of being engaged--the flow state--is interrupted. The spell is broken.

Work or play comes to a grinding halt while you fiddle with controls, interact with the man behind the curtain, or--worst of all--refer to a manual. Every moment spent d***ing around with the interface, equipment, or bureaucracy is a moment spent outside the thing that interface, equipment, or system is meant to support.

One of the themes I heard over and over at ETech and SXSW (Jason Fried, Craig Newmark, and others) was the developer mantra of "get out of the way." In other words, build the thing so that it stays the hell out of the way and lets the user get on with what they really want to do.

Getting out of the way means not breaking the spell.

If your product is like a movie in a theater, ask yourself what parts of it force the user to be aware of the interface rather than the story?

What breaks the spell?

UI means User Interface, and UE means User Experience, but there's nothing in the UE label that suggests the experience is engaging. We tell our co-authors to always be thinking of ways to charm and enchant the reader/learner, so we're recasting the "E" in UE to "Enchantment."

Sometimes...we even use the word seduce.

Is this unethical and manipulative? Not if the user is a co-conspirator. When I go to the theater, I want to be swept up in the world of the film. Anything that drags me back to the fact that I'm in a physical theater is an unwelcome interruption.

We go into a theater ready to suspend disbelief, but as filmmakers know--if at any point the movie "breaks character", the spell is broken. Disbelief now puts the rest of the story at risk.

Our readers pick up one of our books because they want to learn Java, Design Patterns, HTML, AJAX, etc. We know it, they know it, and we're not trying to trick them into something they haven't acknowledged they want. They are complicit in this "hero's journey." So no, we see enchantment and charm as a way to make the experience as engaging and flow-inducing as possible.

Whatever your product or service, your users/members/guests are interacting with what you provide for a reason. And remember, that reason may be VERY different from, say, "using your tool." I don't use a camera to "use a camera". I use it to take photos. I want your tool (camera) to stay out of my way so that I can focus on the flow of composing and capturing shots, not working out how the hell to change the shutter speed. I don't use Basecamp to "use a project management app." I use it to manage my book review. I want the camera and the Basecamp app to fade into the background so I can focus on what I care about most.

Most people claim that the times they spend truly in flow are among the happiest times of their life. I ended my SXSW session with, "As developers, we are so fortunate to have the opportunity to bring more joy into people's lives."

Go kick some user experience enchantment butt : )

(And god help us if Microsoft takes over Hollywood)

[Bonus link: fun video of a real-world interaction with the paperclip. NOT SAFE FOR WORK (uses the "F" word)]