Chapter 4. What Is Experience?

Adding a heart button does not create an experience people love.

You can copy a popular game’s UI down to the last pixel, putting likes, comments, and follower counts all over the screen, only to feel emptiness come back when you press them. What you copied was the button. The event that made that button meaningful did not come with it.

Is pressing a button an experience, or the shadow of one?

It sounds like a strange question, but follow it through. Social media has heart buttons, and when we press one we say that we “liked” something. But if an app draws the exact same heart beneath a post, does the user thereby have an “experience of being recognized”? A heart is only a sign pointing to recognition. A heart that nobody presses, or one that causes nothing when pressed, is merely a red drawing.

The word to stop and examine here is experience. We claim to design first experiences, but often line the screen with things that resemble experiences and mistakenly believe we have made the experiences themselves. We added a heart, so we delivered recognition. We added a draw, so we delivered excitement. We added a chat window, so we delivered intimacy. This illusion is dangerous because it is both the most common mistake and the hardest to see: every part of the UI appears intact, yet the user feels nothing. This chapter separates experience from its imitation and shows that experience is not a single flat sheet but a stack of layers. Chapter 5 takes up the question of where we borrow real experience, through the concept of prior analogous experience.

An App with a Like Button but No Likes

Picture a team building a new social app. After carefully analyzing Instagram, they reproduce almost the same UI: a heart-shaped like button, a rising counter, follower counts beside profiles, and comment fields beneath posts. Yet when they run a beta test, nobody feels any liveliness. The like button is there, but nobody likes anything. The comment field is there, but no comments appear. It looks like a perfect social app, but it is empty inside.

What is missing? Instagram’s heart works not because of its shape, but because behind it lies an actual social event: “Someone saw and acknowledged the photo I posted.” There are people, relationships, and posts worth seeing. When somebody likes a post, a notification arrives, and the notification excites me in turn. The heart button is only a sign for all those events. Copying the sign does not bring the events with it.

A sharp reader will object that the beta app is empty not because of its design, but because nobody is there. That is true. Even with perfect design, a heart in an empty network is an empty heart, so user-pool size is a confounding variable in the emptiness of a social app. But that point reveals a privilege games possess: because their counterpart can be the system or a character, games can manufacture events through design without first gathering a crowd. Yet even the heart in our hypothetical game is never pressed. Placing only a signifier in a medium capable of making the event—that is the real problem.

Move the scene into our hypothetical game. Suppose a short-form character-collection conversation game places a heart below each character card, intending the user’s tap to express affection for the character. In practice, nobody taps it, because the heart points to nothing. The character does not respond, the user’s affection accumulates nowhere, and nothing returns later. The experience of affection arises from actual events—the character calling my name, growing closer when I visit often, or missing me when I am away—not from a heart button alone.

The difference becomes clearer in MEJE Aidong World. Putting a heart button on an Aidong—a puppy resembling a fan’s favorite idol—is entirely different from letting the fan name, feed, and pet that Aidong every day. The former is a sign of attachment; the latter is attachment itself. A fan does not come to love an Aidong by looking at a heart count, but through the time they spent naming and caring for it. Aidong World’s first experience therefore does not spend time adding hearts. It first creates actions through which the fan can personally do something for the Aidong.

Experience and Experience Imitation: Signifier and Signified

Now let us separate the terms. This book calls a sign on the screen that points to and imitates an experience—such as a heart, draw animation, chat window, or progress bar—an experience imitation. The real event to which that sign points is the experience. Borrowing loosely from linguistics, the experience imitation is the signifier, the sign, while the experience is the signified, the meaning to which it points. The heart is the signifier; the event of being recognized is the signified. Copying the signifier does not bring the signified with it.

Why does this distinction matter? Because copying a competitor’s UI is the most common trap. If we dissect a successful game’s screen and collect only signs—“They have this button; let’s add one too”—we create an app with a like button but no likes. What must be copied is not the button but the event operating behind it. This trap even has a familiar work artifact: the competitor-benchmarking document. Most such documents are lists of signifiers. If one is packed with screenshots and feature inventories but has no column asking “What event happens behind this button?”, it is preparing not to copy an experience but to manufacture an empty heart.

The same sign gains power when an event supports it. LinkedIn places an indicator of “profile completeness” on profile pages. It is widely explained that filling empty fields raises the level, and that the level leads to a real benefit such as greater search exposure. The bar itself does not move people. They fill it because every completed segment is followed by an event: “Other people can see me more easily.” Move the same progress bar onto our screen, and if nothing happens after it fills, it becomes another empty heart.

Every UI element therefore calls for one question: “What original experience does this UI point to, and is that experience actually happening?” If you place a heart, create the event of being recognized. If you place a draw animation, make the thrill of gaining something rare genuinely operate. If you place a chat window, create a progression that produces real intimacy. When sign and event do not form a pair, the UI is an empty shell.

Experience signifiers are not limited to social-media buttons. Conventions games have refined for years—the level number, experience bar, rank badge, draw animation, and quest icon floating above a head—serve as signifiers in their entirety. Merely displaying the number Level 30 does not automatically fill the user with a feeling of growth. Growth comes from the actual event of crossing today a wall that could not be crossed yesterday, not from a rising number. The belief that copying a successful game’s level UI or quest marker will bring its sense of achievement is therefore identical to the illusion that drawing a heart will create recognition. Borrowed game conventions must pass the same checkpoint. What original experience does this convention point to, and is it actually happening on our screen?

One more distinction matters. UX and UI are different. UI is what appears on the screen—the buttons, colors, and layout. UX is the entirety of events the user actually undergoes. Experience imitation belongs to the vocabulary of UI, while experience belongs to UX. Saying that well-drawn UI does not guarantee good UX is equivalent to saying that drawing a sign well does not cause an event to happen.

Experience Is Not Flat: Five Layers

Let us go one step deeper. Even if we create a genuine experience, experience is not a single plane. It accumulates in layers, and those layers frequently collide. This book treats experience as five layers.

The innermost is the world layer: the worldbuilding, story, characters, and the identity the user holds within them. It concerns the question, “Who am I in this world?”

Above it is the system layer: rules, UI, goals, and the in-game economy. It concerns “What do I do, and how?”

Next is the sensory layer: graphics, sound, vibration, and response speed. It touches the fingertips, eyes, and ears directly.

Above that is the social layer: other users, reputation, sharing, and rankings. It concerns “How do others see me, and how do I see them?”

The outermost is the business layer: monetization, advertising, conversion, and operations. This is the layer through which the game earns money.

Each layer seems fine on its own, but they often break one another. The world layer may be building immersion when the system layer raises a tutorial pop-up demanding “Tap here,” shattering it. An effect in the sensory layer may be so spectacular that the essential button in the system layer disappears. Put a leaderboard on the first screen, and a beginner who has just started shrinks after seeing that they are last. The most common and most damaging collision comes when the business layer intervenes too early. If a payment pop-up appears before the user tastes the first fun, the most important foundation—trust—collapses first.

Layering experience is not in itself new; UX and game design already contain many layered models. What this book adds is not the division into layers, but the order in which the layers are switched on at the first encounter. One principle determines that order.

Safety Matters Most at the First Encounter

Not fun. Not spectacle. The most important thing at the first encounter is safety. Industry convention says to cram as much fun as possible into the first five minutes, but when facing an unfamiliar character and screen, the first thing a user checks is not reward but risk. Will this waste my time? Is a payment trap hidden somewhere? Will I feel foolish after pressing the wrong thing? Until this check is passed, the user is not ready to accept any fun.

Chapter 1 said that FTUE designs not the first action but the first judgment. We can now describe that judgment more precisely: the first judgment is a risk assessment before it is a reward assessment. What appeared to be a choice between “This looks fun” and “This looks bothersome” is really an answer to the question “Is it safe to stay here?” A first experience should therefore postpone the business layer, establish safety through world and sensation, then offer a first achievement through the system. The social layer should switch on slowly after the user gains confidence. Turning on all five at once creates only collisions.

▶ Three Questions to Apply to Your Screen

Am I mistaking a copied UI for a copied experience?

Is there a signified behind the signifier on the screen—an actual event to which it points?

Before laying down a celebration sequence, has something genuinely worth celebrating happened?

If the event is empty in even one answer, the sign remains an empty shell.

What Must Be Defined First?

Combining the two ideas gives us one broad principle for first-experience design. Whenever you place something on the screen, first distinguish whether it is a sign or an event. Then determine which of the five layers it operates in.

The first task, then, is to point to each major UI element on the first screen and ask: “What experience does this sign point to, and is that experience actually happening?” If it is not happening, either remove the sign or make the event behind it real. Leaving the empty heart in place is not an option.

Raise this check by one level into a production sequence, and it becomes this: in a first experience, the signifier is a promise and the event is fulfillment of that promise. The order of creation must therefore always be event first, sign later. Make something worth celebrating happen before laying down the celebration. Ship the signified before shipping the signifier. Planning to draw the sign first and fill in the event later is like issuing a promissory note first and funding the account later: it defaults in front of the first user. The question of what promise a borrowed shape brings with it connects directly to the subject of the next chapter.

For our hypothetical game, line up the character card, heart button, collection index, dialogue bubble, and draw animation on the first screen and write down the experience each points to. The index points to “the collecting pleasure of filling empty spaces,” while the dialogue bubble points to “the intimacy of connecting with a character.” Then decide which will genuinely operate in the first experience, and which layer will be switched on first. Switch on the world and system first, which are responsible for safety and the first achievement during the opening five minutes. Postpone social-layer elements such as hearts and rankings until after the user has completed the first character.

The formal worksheet for this inspection—choosing five UI elements and judging their original experience and whether it actually occurs—appears in Chapter 13. Directing traffic among collisions in the five layers is covered in Chapter 19. Here, we go only as far as separating sign from event and seeing that experience has layers. (The experience-imitation anatomy table is in Appendix B; the five-layer collision-adjustment table is in Appendix C.)

Reference Content

Examples from other media that reveal the concepts in this chapter.

Video Games

Minecraft’s hunger and health gauges: they look like ordinary status indicators, but the sign gains power from supporting rules. When hunger reaches zero, health actually falls and can lead to death depending on difficulty, while health recovers only when hunger is high. This is a clear case of an event behind a sign.
Likes in Death Stranding: using the same heart sign, the game automatically accumulates likes when other players actually use ladders and bridges someone left behind, embedding an event of receiving help behind the sign.
Dead Space’s diegetic interface: health appears not as a screen bar but as light along the character’s spine, while ammunition appears as a hologram projected from the weapon. The sign itself dissolves into events within the world so that signifier and signified do not split apart.

General Apps

Mobile games that show a full-screen ad or payment window before the first round: it is widely observed that when the business layer interrupts before the user tastes the core loop, immediate deletion follows. This is a layer collision that destroys the foundation of trust first. The common recommendation is to postpone ads until after a round and payment until after the user is engaged.
Services that put a leaderboard on the first screen: new users see their bottom rank first and shrink back, as the social layer crushes a beginner who has no confidence. Common recommendations include hiding the bottom rank, showing a percentile instead of absolute placement, or resetting the rankings periodically.

The remaining reference content is collected in the “Chapter 4 Appendix” at the end of this chapter. (In the printed book, it is grouped into Appendix D.)

Design Note ▶ Try It Yourself

Choose one UI element from the first screen and complete this sentence.

“The (　　　) button on our first screen is a sign pointing to the experience of (　　　), and right now that experience actually (happens / does not happen).”

There is one criterion for judging “happens”: write down what changes on the screen after the button is pressed. If there is nothing to write, it does not happen.

If it does not happen, add one more line: “For this experience to become real, pressing the button must cause (　　　) to happen.” This field inserts an event behind the sign. The character might respond when the heart is pressed, or the other person might receive a notification when a like is given. Checking whether sign and event form a pair is the entire purpose of the field.

The element you choose may be social-media-style UI or a game convention. Choose one thing your screen uses—a level, experience points, a draw, or a quest icon—place it in the same field, and inspect in the same way whether the experience to which its signifier points actually occurs.

If no event stands behind the sign, remove the button or make the event and fill it in. Do not leave an empty heart in place.

In one sentence: Experience imitation is not experience. A button is only the signifier of an experience; copying the sign does not bring the event. Experience is not flat either. It accumulates in five colliding layers: world, system, sensory, social, and business. At the first encounter, safety matters more than fun, so the business layer must be postponed. Next chapter: Then where do we borrow real experience? Users do not arrive empty-handed. The “prior analogous experiences” they already had on YouTube, in webtoons, and in other games judge our first screen in advance.

Chapter 4 Appendix: Reference Content Collection

This collection examines Chapter 4’s two tools across several media: the signifier-signified checkpoint separating signs (experience imitations) from events (experiences), and the layered reading in which experience accumulates across the world, system, sensory, social, and business layers that collide with one another. It is grouped into video games; video, music, and stage; mobile, apps, and services; and offline and everyday life. For each case, pair the chapter’s checkpoint questions with these: What is the sign here, and is there an event behind it? If there is a collision, which layers are colliding?

Video Games

Visual overload in Diablo IV boss fights: players have repeatedly pointed out situations where particles from their own and allied skills cover the screen, hiding the warning signs for boss attacks that actually need to be avoided. What to examine: a collision in which the sensory layer covers and breaks the system layer—the moment spectacle devours information.
Half-Life’s opening without cutscenes: the story is told through the structure of corridors and scripted direction while the player almost never loses first-person control. What to examine: a case that avoids the collision itself by dissolving system-layer guidance into the world layer, and the conditions under which guidance does not break immersion.
Bot matching in mobile competitive games: some mobile competitive games are said to fill early matches with bots disguised as people to grant winning streaks. The sign says “competition,” but the event of facing a real opponent is absent. What to examine: the deeper betrayal of forging the event rather than merely copying the sign, because the moment the deception is exposed, all prior victories collapse retroactively.
Anonymous cooperation in Journey: the 2012 game Journey lets strangers travel together silently without usernames, chat, or scores. Even after removing almost every social sign, the event of walking together leaves a powerful emotion. What to examine: the exact opposite proof of the empty heart—experience exists when the event exists, even without a signifier.

Video / Music / Stage

Inside Out: the 2015 film depicts Joy and Sadness as characters, while tying the control-console buttons in the mind to actual changes in Riley’s behavior and emotions according to who presses them. What to examine: a model of personification in which the sign of abstract emotion is clearly paired with the event—Riley’s change—and signifier and signified engage one another.
Fake newspapers and news screens in films: props that look like real information but point to no event, leaving a sign without substance. What to examine: a passing prop can survive on the sign alone, along with the limit exposed when the audience pauses to inspect it.
The radio transition in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: music playing like a background score is revealed as sound inside the world the moment a character switches off the car radio. What to examine: the same music belongs to a different layer depending on whether it is sound inside the world or direction outside it, and direction can move across layer boundaries.
Brecht’s alienation effect in epic theater: scene-title placards, exposed stage lighting, and direct address deliberately remind the audience “This is a play” and break immersion. What to examine: the same structure as a collision where the system layer breaks the world layer’s immersion, turned deliberately into a weapon.
Chekhov’s gun: the dramatic principle that a gun hanging on the wall in Act One must eventually be fired says that a sign placed on stage must be repaid by an actual event. What to examine: a classical rule of the signifier-signified checkpoint—prepare the event behind the sign—and an invitation to ask the same question of every UI element.
The Milli Vanilli scandal: the sign of people singing was perfect, but the actual singers were elsewhere. After a recording skipped during a performance exposed the split, their Grammy became the first ever revoked. What to examine: the scale of betrayal that returns when a split between sign and event is revealed, as a model of collapsed trust.
Canned laughter in sitcoms: laying down a sign of amusement feels empty when there is no genuinely funny event, a point reflected in the declining use of audience-laughter tracks in comedy. What to examine: a sign alone does not create emotion, and audiences detect it first when the sign tries to replace the event.
Frankenbiting in reality shows: fragments spoken at different times are spliced together to manufacture a statement that was never made, squeezing out a sign of authenticity. Trust collapses when the event is revealed as assembled. What to examine: the point where fabricating events through editing turns the sign-event checkpoint into an ethical issue.
The MacGuffin: a device placed as a sign that drives the story even though its substance may remain empty. What to examine: a rare exception in which a mismatch between sign and event still works, along with the condition that makes it possible—the object sits where nobody inspects its substance.

Mobile / Apps / Services

An app where a progress bar fills completely and nothing happens: without a reward event behind the sign of completion, the bar becomes an empty heart. What to examine: expectations accumulated while the bar fills default at the last segment; a promise created by a sign must be repaid with an event.
Research on the labor illusion: an experiment on travel-search sites reportedly found greater satisfaction when people were made to wait while seeing which airlines were being searched than when they received results instantly. What to examine: a sign showing that an event is genuinely happening increases perceived value—the amplification produced when signifier and signified form a pair.

Offline / Everyday Life

Active sound design in cars: synthesized engine sound, calculated from engine speed and throttle input, is played through cabin speakers to create a sign of power. Some drivers deliberately turn its intensity down to hear the actual exhaust. What to examine: when sign and actual output diverge, users begin to doubt the sign, so sensory-layer direction also needs inspection.
The heavy tuning of a car-door closing sound: designers exploit the perception that a low, heavy sound signals luxury, constructing a sensory sign of solidity that is known to shape the quality felt during a first test drive. What to examine: when sign and actual quality pair, trust remains; when only the sound is good and quality diverges, the asymmetry eventually returns as betrayal.
Placebo buttons: reports have said that many pedestrian crossing buttons in New York remain disconnected from signal systems, while a substantial number of elevator Close buttons do not operate for ordinary users because of regulations. Pressing supplies only a sign of control. What to examine: weigh the utility of a sign that reduces anxiety against the trust lost when its emptiness is exposed, and consider the ethics of the signifier.
Open kitchens in restaurants: a layout that exposes cooking to customers. Research is known to have found that when customers and cooks can see each other, food ratings and satisfaction both rise. What to examine: the offline power of a sign paired with an event—the experience of the same food changes merely because the event, cooking, is made visible.