Feedback.

Most marketing sucks at feedback.

I spent a nice chunk of time in an arcade this weekend, for the first time in a few years. And it got me thinking about something every person working in game development probably thinks about a hundred times a day; how reliant we are on feedback - constant, clear and enjoyable feedback - to maintain interest in a task.

(No, this isn’t really going to be about gamification. I am tired of having conversations about gamification.)

My current twitter app of choice is TweetBot. And I realized today that part of the pleasure of it, possibly the largest part, is that it’s the feedbackiest app on my iPhone, with every button press rewarded with sound effects that feel like the airlock opening in an sf film, animations that are ever-so-slightly slower than what you normally see in a utility app (I think this adds to the feeling that it’s reacting to you, rather than doing things), and re-reactions (this is common on the iphone, but seeing a dragged panel bounce back, then bounce slightly off the wall upon returning to position is awesome).

I had been classifying these features as polish, in conversation. But they’re really just feedback - I’m consistently aware that the app has received my commands, so I rarely hit the same button again to make sure.

I spent a 2 hour bus ride thinking about the many different ways brands communicate with people, and how many of them are actually feedback-enabled. Unsurprisingly, the answer is very very few.

Imagine if every street-level ad reacted to you making eye-contact with it. The thing is, offering feedback requires the creation of something to be interacted with. And this is the real challenge, re-invisioning an industry that is heavily invested in the idea of broadcast.

For the last couple years, by number one question when thinking about campaigns has been ‘what does the user/consumer get out of this?’ I’m realizing I also need to be asking myself ‘what feedback does this experience offer?’

Because I’m stunned at how satisfying really feedbacky feedback is, even if I’m failing miserably at shooting Terminator robots in an arcade.