{"id":6552,"date":"2022-04-29T10:26:19","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T10:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/?p=6552"},"modified":"2024-01-16T14:17:09","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T14:17:09","slug":"fun-side-of-ux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/fun-side-of-ux\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring the fun side of UX"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trends are a dominant force in the design world and the latest rising trend in UX is fun. You may have noticed that some everyday apps and websites have added more colourful and somewhat silly features to help brighten up their service and add some joy into the user\u2019s experience.\u00a0 While it\u2019s not a new phenomenon by any means, the fun side of UX is out and proud and here to stay.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To some people, design can be a very serious thing. Using sombre colours to demonstrate professionalism and practically using a template approach to images, it used to be difficult to distinguish the homepage of any websites from the other if their logos and names were removed. In the same way that we can see gentrification affecting cities and towns, UX gentrification<\/a> means that all products face the danger of looking the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Be we can be serious about the fun side of UX. How can we make a product usable <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> entertaining?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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What is fun UX?<\/span><\/h3>\n


\n<\/span>Perhaps we could credit Clippy or Clippit, the paper clip Office Assistant who first debuted\u00a0 in Microsoft\u2019s Office 2000, with being an early example of fun UX. Created to be helpful to people who were unfamiliar with the workings of letter writing in Office, as people became more fluent in tech and computers, Clippy soon became a nuisance and was <\/span>drastically killed off in 2007<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Clippy<\/p>\n

However, from puppy-eared filters on Instagram stories to celebratory animations on project tools, fun UX is now everywhere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Where did it begin?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Emoji<\/span><\/h3>\n

The origins of emoji – or emoticons, as they were known for a time –\u00a0 can be linked back to three starting dates. In the 1960s, the Russian novelist and professor Vladimir Nabokov suggested in\u00a0 The New York Times that \u201cthere should exist a special typographical sign for a smile \u2014 some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket”. In 1982, the computer scientist Scott Halman suggested that we could use : – )\u00a0 and : – ( to replace text, which would later influence the Wingdings Microsoft font.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it was in and around 1997 that emojis that most of us are familiar with first appeared. A Japanese telecommunications company released the SkyWalker DP-211SW, a mobile phone that came with, allegedly, the first-ever set of emoj. The 90 black and white images were 12 by 12 pixels and they covered the basics: numbers, sports, time, moon phases, the weather and, of course, the Poo emoji.<\/p>\n

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\"Shigetaka<\/p>\n

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With the popularisation of instant messaging, like MSN and AOL,\u00a0 and the increase in mobile phone use at the turn of the Millennium, the emoji became more commonplace. <\/span>The emojis that we are most familiar today can be traced back to Shigetaka Kurita designs, which first appeared in 1999 on the Docomo mobile phone. Apple wouldn’t introduce their own emoji keyboard until \u00a0November 2008 on the iPhone OS 2.2. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, roughly <\/span>3,500 emojis<\/span><\/a> come pre-installed into Apple and Android keyboards and Kurita’s\u00a0<\/a><\/span>176 emojis are now on display in Museum of Modern Art\u00a0 in New York City as a typographical timepiece.<\/p>\n

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GIFs\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In May 1987, the first GIF appeared on the internet. Created by CompuServe\u2019s Steve Wilhite, the still image of an airplane that appeared to be moving through clouds was the first of its kind; an image file that wouldn\u2019t lose quality when shared.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The first run of GIFs was limited to a palette of 256 colours and could only last a few seconds.\u00a0 As people became more familiar with them in chat rooms, instant messaging systems and social media, they could design their own without any time or colour limit. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 2013, Google created a search engine specifically for GIF files and in 2015 Facebook made it possible to use these files on social networks, with Twitter following suit in 2016. In 2018, Revolut, the payment app, allowed users to attach GIFs to their transfers to make <\/span>\u201cthings friendlier, more social and dare we say it, more fun!?\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Filters<\/span><\/h3>\n

While Facebook had the ability to recognise and tag people in photos on their platform since 2010, facial recognition and augmented reality really kicked off with Snapchat. While Snapchat is known as the pioneer of accessible AR, all credit is owed to the Ukrainian startup Looksery, which specialised in face tracking and face modification for real-time videos.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Snapchat bought Looksery in 2015 for a light fee of US$150 million and introduced Snapchat Lenses, which used AR technology to integrate 3D elements into camera phones, and instantly became a hit. <\/span><\/p>\n

By detecting people\u2019s faces and then mapping and digitally modifying them, people morphed into puppies or bearded and tattooed versions of themselves. It became an all-consuming pastime for some users so, of course, Facebook followed suit and launched Instagram Stories in 2016.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Any scroll through Instagram Stories will see that there\u2019s an AR filter for every occasion. When our options used to be limited to a handful of Superzoom effects – the emo-tastic falling leaves, a confetti downpour of love hearts, the flashes of paparazzi cameras and flames –\u00a0 users can now create their own. From simple quizzes to face altering effects that turn you into Yoda.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2020, Zoom has become a staple part of online communication at work and at home. While some of us dreamt of faraway places during lockdown, the <\/span>Zoom filters <\/span><\/a>use Livecam Avatar software that allows us to turn into pirates or, quite famously, a cat. The \u201cI\u2019m not a cat\u201d Zoom call became a warning and a moment of comic relief for us all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n