The roller coaster effect

Roller coasters normally take us on an exciting ride, while shaking our steady world and distorting our perceptions. This feeling might be also one of the reasons why people drink too much. They want that the world spins around them, making them feel different. Once this happens, they begin to see and think about everything in a whole new way.

While using a new website, people get a certain feeling of it. Every user interaction—click, scroll, keystroke, etc.—invokes an inside reaction of satisfaction, joy or frustration. Similar interaction metaphors could affect people in a different way.

The roller coaster effect could help thinking in a different way. The idea is to consistently avoid experiences that are already typical or wide-spread and to create a new unique way to impress the audience. Why roller coaster? Because we look at the same idea from above, but from a different angle at every time point during our ride.

Focal point and angle of view

Imagine that the focal point is the idea you want to realize or the product you want to improve. Now we need to estimate from how many angles we see an idea, which are they and which one we miss. And then to identify how many are the properties that could make the experience of our users unique.

Consider the difference in shutter speed of two cameras—one with 2fps and one with 10fps, while shooting at a running player on a football match. With the second camera, we have five times more viewing angles of the same situation and the chance to miss a specific angle of view is considerably lower. We must always strive to have a 360° perspective on what we do.

Propertize

Before we rethink our unique properties, we need to prioritize them according to the weight our users put on them. Not all are equally important to them, but the right ones could significantly improve their experience.