British Social Wasps, an Introduction to Their Anatomy and Physiology, Architecture, and Gen... Book

There is plenty to criticize about the Disney Corporation and the purely artistic merits of their creations are debatable, but it’s impossible to deny the brilliance in the design of the Disney theme parks. Charles Eames said that “design is an expression of the purpose, and it may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art”. The Disney theme parks undoubtedly have a purpose, and that is to entertain. The myriad ways they achieve that goal has never ceased to be a source of fascination for me - from architecture to illustration to engineering and everything in between.

According to quotes in this book, in both his films and theme parks Walt Disney consistently put the desires of his audience above that of art critics. In that sense, it occurred to me that he was probably one of the earliest practitioners of what we now call “user-centered design”. It’s the keystone of modern software development, and User Experience (UX) has become a critical component in almost all successful consumer products. At its core, it’s the idea that products should work with and for users, rather than against them. But more than that, a product should engage a user; its value is more than just its utility, it’s the delight that comes from using it (think about the first time you held an iPhone). When I read Karal Ann Marling’s description the challenge to Disney designers, it sounded exactly like UX Design to me: “Being a Disney store, a themed hotel, a Disney Park, imposes a burden on the architecture. It must be useable and utterly fantastical, all at once.”

And yet the absolute success of the park’s UX raises a surprising moral question. The better UX becomes, the less critical thought is required of the user. They don’t have to figure a device out, because everything is so clear it’s as though it’s reading their mind. And while that seems an admirable goal, at some point does UX become so good that we turn our users into the hypnotized blob people of Pixar’s WALL-E?

Marling calls Disney park design the “architecture of reassurance”, and there is undoubtedly truth in that label. When a person walks onto Disney property, they know that every person, every thing, they encounter is ostensibly there to make them happy. Tom Carson, a critic from the Village Voice, summed this up in a quote as insightful as it is potentially disturbing: “I know it's this imminent abnegation of all independent will that thrills me each time I cross the parking lot to those heraldic ticket booths. The feeling's akin to the blissful relinquishing of responsibility I experience on airplanes, where I'm still happier than any place on Earth. I may die. But I won't be asked to live up to anything.”

Disney blogger Foxx in Scott Renshaw’s Happy Place: Living the Disney Parks Life shares a similar sentiment regarding the theme parks. “They’re so brilliantly, romantically realized that they somehow short-circuit that part of your brain that calls ‘fake’! In a larger sense, that’s what [a Disney park does]: disarms our credulity with oppressive, overwhelming skill so complete that the only responsible response is to give in. Their fakeness is so pervasive, so conceptually radical, that we dare not find the seams. It’d be impolite.”

Designing Disney’s Theme Parks has left me at a curious impasse. I hadn’t previously thought of the theme parks in terms of the pioneering genius in their UX. But just as I marvel at their brilliance, I find myself wondering about where user-centered design ultimately leads us. I don’t mean to suggest that we should make our technology harder to use, but I do wonder what happens over time the less we expect of our users. In the same way that Disney Parks or iPhones reassure and delight us, do they also contribute to our eventual “abnegation of all independent will”?