Chapter 6. The User Is Not One Person: Eight Layers of Identity

The first screen does not speak to one person. It speaks simultaneously to several layers within a person.

The same person turns from viewer into player in ten seconds. The person whose eyes followed a character as it sprang onto the screen tries to handle it directly after a single tap. The screen has not changed, but within that brief interval the ears listening to it have been replaced.

What do we call the person looking at the screen now?

The word changes from moment to moment in the meeting room. A planning document says “user.” A business report says “customer.” Marketing materials count “viewers.” A development meeting maps the “player” journey, while the operations team manages the “community.” They all appear to point to the same person, yet each name sees something different.

This chapter begins from the fact that this is more than a verbal habit. User, customer, viewer, and player are not different names for the same whole person. They are different roles living simultaneously within one person. The first screen addresses all those roles at once. Unless we know which role we are speaking to, we give the operator what belongs to the viewer and the customer what belongs to the operator.

The user exists not as one but across several layers. This book repeats that sentence. The point is not to divide one person into many people, but to see the layers stacked within one. Chapter 5 examined the medium from which that person arrived. This chapter examines the roles overlapping within that one person, while Chapter 7 takes up differences between one person and another.

One Screen, One Person, Five Changing Questions

Enter our hypothetical character-collection game. Someone sees an ad and installs the game. Follow the two minutes in which they pass through the first screen in slow motion, and the question inside the same person’s mind keeps changing.

Immediately before opening the app, they ask, “Is this worth my time?” This question weighs whether the product deserves money and time, so at this moment they occupy the guest—the customer—layer. A character springs onto the first screen, and the question becomes, “Oh, that’s cute. What is this?” Now they occupy the spectator—the viewer—layer, looking for something worth seeing and whether the fun is visible at a glance.

They tap the character, which responds with a giggle. The question changes again: “It reacts when I press it.” They have become someone who presses buttons and wants immediate confirmation that pressing one caused something to happen. If they like the response and begin customizing the character themselves, challenge and control enter the picture. “What happens if I change the ears like this? Can I make it look the way I want?” They have become a player.

The final layer appears when they complete and name the character. “This one is mine. Its name is Moongi.” They are no longer merely a user, but someone who has placed an avatar of themselves inside this world. Within the same two minutes, they changed five times: from guest to spectator, button presser, player, and guardian of a small character. We made only a few screens, but each one was speaking to a different layer.

These layers awaken in sequence within one fan in MEJE Aidong World as well. When deciding whether to install the app, the fan is a guest. They ask whether it is safe, whether the advertising is aggressive, and whether monetization is predatory. When an Aidong—a puppy resembling their favorite idol—springs onto the screen, they become a spectator, following it with their eyes and thinking it is cute and worth watching. When they meet, bring home, customize, and place an Aidong, they become a player. Once they name and care for it every day, the character layer finally joins in: “This one is my favorite.” One screen must reassure the cautious side while exciting the eager side. If it fails to resolve the caution that was weighing payment and safety just before conversion into a fan, that same fan deletes the app first.

Five Visible Layers, Three Hidden Ones

This book sees eight layers: customer, user, viewer, button presser, player, console and operator, character, and resident. Moving upward generally means going deeper, with one exception. Console and operator are less a layer that arrives late from insufficient depth than an operational mode deliberately awakened later. A detailed table appears in Appendix A.

Only five layers awoke during the two-minute story: the customer weighing value, the viewer seeking something to watch, the button presser checking the response, the player trying to manipulate the game directly, and the character naming an avatar of themselves. These five awaken in order on their own as long as the screen flows smoothly. The problem lies in the three layers that never appeared in the story. The success or failure of the first experience is usually decided by these invisible three.

First is the user: the layer that cannot tolerate friction. The two minutes went smoothly because sign-up, settings, and permission requests never stopped the person. The user layer remains invisible when everything is smooth, then leaps out first and turns away the moment a cumbersome sign-up window intervenes. In a well-designed first experience, this layer should remain unseen to the end. If it becomes visible, something has already caught. The user is thus the only one of the eight layers revealed not by a screen but only by numbers. Seven layers can be seen with the eye; one appears only in funnel numbers such as sign-up-screen drop-off. Chapters 22 through 25 continue this discussion through dashboards.

Second is the console and operator: the layer that wants to survey and operate the whole. It is fortunate that this layer did not awaken within the first two minutes. Unfolding a dashboard, figures, and options all at once for a newcomer is like dragging someone who came to look around into the control room and making them sit down. This layer is deliberately awakened later. Only after people have grown sufficiently fond of the world do we place the controls in their hands.

Third is the resident: the deepest layer, which wants a world and relationships in which to stay. This layer awakens not after two minutes but several days. The tourist finally becomes a resident when they open the app again because they miss the character they named yesterday. The furthest destination of the first experience is to turn the tourist brought in through Chapter 5’s prior analogous experience into a resident.

The five visible layers awaken on their own; the three hidden layers are where people are lost. We overlook the user hidden by smoothness, wake the console too early out of ambition, and, by obsessing over day one, fail to take the person as far as residency. Once separated, each layer breaks in a different direction. User and console are layers whose visibility during the first experience signals a fault: when they appear, something has caught. Character and resident are layers whose invisibility signals a fault: if they never awaken, the first experience has failed to take the person deep enough.

Before Designing the Screen, Decide Whom It Addresses

Memorizing eight layers is not the objective. This classification performs one practical task: when designing a screen, it makes us decide first which layer the screen is addressing now.

Common failures begin here. One is pouring operator information onto a screen meant for a viewer. The user has only just entered the viewer state and thought, “Oh, what’s this?” If the screen shows stats, resource gauges, and fifteen buttons at once, the viewer wanted a spectacle but received an operational dashboard. The opposite failure also occurs: a person has already entered deeply and wants control, but the interface keeps repeating “Tap here” with finger-shaped guides. The player wants to handle things, yet is forced to continue doing only what they are told.

The same game convention reads differently depending on the layer seeing it. Consider an HP bar above a character’s head. To a viewer who has only just begun looking around, it is screen noise. They do not know what it means, so a shrinking bar and changing color merely create clutter. To a player seeking control, that same HP bar is not noise but a dashboard and information: it tells them how long they can endure, whether to withdraw, and whether to press forward. When viewer and player sit together before one screen, the HP bar becomes a promise for one and noise for the other. Every time we place a game convention on screen, we must first determine whether the layer currently being addressed is one that can read it as information.

Gestures crossing over from outside games work the same way. The left-right card swipe acquired the meaning “separate what you like from what you dislike” after a dating app spread it. It is widely reported that the gesture traveled beyond dating into shopping, recruiting, pet adoption, and more, even producing the phrase “the [dating app] of X.” For someone who already knows the gesture, swiping means “choose.” To someone seeing it for the first time, a viewer who merely came to look, even the reason the screen is moving is mysterious noise. The same gesture is familiar grammar to one layer and a riddle to another.

The first decision in a first experience, then, is not screen design. Decide the order in which the layers will be satisfied. Usually, move from lower to higher. First reassure the customer asking “Is it worth it?” Erase friction for the user. Give the viewer something to see. Return a response to the button presser. Only then give the player a challenge, the character a name, and the resident a reason to return. Reverse the order, and we thrust an operations dashboard at someone who has not yet decided whether the game is worth trying. Exceptions exist. If a hardcore genre targets core gamers first, it may be correct to satisfy the player layer’s hunger for challenge before offering reassurance to the lower layers.

Deciding this order also determines measurement points. Each layer has its own failure signal. Failure in the customer layer appears as installing without opening. User-layer failure appears as drop-off on the sign-up screen. Viewer-layer failure appears as watching the first screen for a few seconds and closing it. Button-presser failure appears as stopping without a first action. The upper layers have distinct signals too. Player-layer failure appears as no self-directed action after the guide ends. Console-layer failure appears in reverse: the layer wakes too early, searches settings and menus, then leaves. Character-layer failure appears as skipping naming. Resident-layer failure appears as failing to return the next day. Seeing the layer where people leak shows which layer we addressed incorrectly. The eight layers are therefore not merely categories but coordinates for locating drop-off.

▶ Three Questions to Apply to Your Screen

Does this first screen speak to one person, or to several layers within a person?

Does a single screen care for both the L3 viewer and the L5 player?

Do we know the beat at which the layer changes? Can we identify the moment when the person who was watching tries to take control? When one screen speaks clearly to one layer and postpones the others to later screens, we can finally see at which layer people leak.

Reference Content

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

Video Games

Bartle’s player types: achiever, explorer, socializer, and killer are divided into quadrants across two axes—acting versus interacting, and world versus players. We can refer to the idea that these desires mix in different proportions within one person.
MMO tutorials that flood the first screen with stats and gauges: operator information is pushed at someone who is still a spectator, creating a collision of layers.

Board Games

The alpha-player problem in the cooperative board game Pandemic: because everyone sees the same information and can discuss it without time pressure, one person often acts like an operator and directs every decision, depriving the others of control. It is a case where spreading all information equally allows the console layer to crush the player layer.

General Apps

Separating buyers from users in B2B collaboration tools: the person who pays—the customer—and the person who uses the tool every day—the user—are different, so one screen must persuade both.
YouTube’s viewers, creators, and subscribers: the same person moves among different layers, watching, making, and subscribing.

The remaining reference content is collected in the “Chapter 6 Appendix” at the end of this chapter. (In the printed book, it is grouped into Appendix D.)

Design Note ▶ Try It Yourself

Choose one first screen from your game. Ideally, use the very first screen that appears.

Point to each element and write a single letter beside it. Who does it address? Customer, User, Viewer, Button presser, Player, Operator/console, Character, or Resident. If the upper-layer labels feel abstract, think of them this way: a name field is “Ch,” while a preview of tomorrow’s attendance reward is “R.” Count the labels when finished.

In practice, when four or more layers are mixed on one screen, it speaks clearly to none. Choose the one layer the screen must capture first and postpone information for the others to later screens.

Mark one more thing for each element: Is this a convention only gamers can read, or a sign ordinary people can read immediately? Turn on HP bars, cooldowns, minimaps, and other conventions only gamers read as information when the layer that reads them as information has arrived at the screen.

Detailed decomposition continues in Appendix A’s “User Layer Sheet.” Choose the one layer to persuade first and postpone the rest to later screens. Do not draw the screen until that one layer has been chosen.

In one sentence: User, customer, viewer, and player are not different people but eight layers stacked within one person. The first screen addresses all of them simultaneously, so before designing it, decide which layer it speaks to and which layer to satisfy first. The layer where people leak is the point of drop-off. Next chapter: Here we divided the layers within one person. Next we divide one person from another: the novice who knows nothing and the false novice who arrives knowing the wrong thing. Which is the more difficult counterpart?

Chapter 6 Appendix: Reference Content Collection

This collection extends Chapter 6’s argument beyond games: a user is not one but eight overlapping layers within one person—customer, user, viewer, button presser, player, console and operator, character, and resident—and the first screen addresses them all at once. The examples are grouped into six areas: video games; board and tabletop games; video and content; performance and publishing; mobile, apps, and services; and offline and everyday life. Keep the chapter’s five visible layers—customer, viewer, button presser, player, and character—beside the three hidden ones—user, console and operator, and resident. For each example, identify which layer has awakened, which awoke incorrectly, and which never awoke.

Video Games

Animal Crossing: in Nintendo’s life-simulation series, the same person switches roles from a player decorating a house and village, to a village resident living by store hours and seasonal events synchronized to real time, to a guest who visits a friend’s island and looks around without freely changing things. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) adds the role of island representative, adjusting terrain and rules and awakening a layer close to the operator. What to examine: how one work gives different permissions and screens to the player, resident, and spectator layers, especially at the moment permissions decrease on somebody else’s island.
Creative and Survival in Minecraft: in the same world, Creative mode offers infinite resources and no death, so blocks are viewed through an architect’s eyes. Survival mode adds hunger and monsters at night, so the same blocks are viewed through a survivor’s eyes. Changing one mode replaces the desire layer within the same person. What to examine: mode choice is effectively a choice of “which layer to enter as,” and different layers require different information and tension on the same terrain.
Asynchronous cooperation in Death Stranding: in this 2019 game, the same person becomes a guest using ladders and bridges left by others, a helper who builds structures for others, and a builder who contributes materials to complete someone else’s unfinished structure. Because players connect only through “likes” without meeting directly, the burden of socializing does not intrude on role changes. What to examine: a design that deliberately lowers connection intensity so the guest and helper layers can remain alive simultaneously within one person.
Multiplayer roles in Elden Ring and Dark Souls: the same person changes roles among a host asking for help, a cooperator summoned through a sign, and an invader entering another person’s world. Through floor messages visible to everyone, they may hint at traps and treasure or deceive with lies. Cooperation, hostility, and observation overlap within one world rather than separate modes. What to examine: when contradictory roles are permitted to one person, their entrances—summon signs and invasion items—are separated.

Board Games / Tabletop

One player serving as game master in a tabletop RPG: at the same table, one person runs the world and makes rulings while the others live within it as characters. The game master occupies the console-and-operator view, while participants occupy the character view. At the next gathering, roles may switch, and yesterday’s operator becomes today’s character. What to examine: how differently the operator and character layers see information—the whole scenario versus the scene before their eyes—and how that asymmetry becomes a source of fun.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes: this 2015 asymmetric cooperative game places people in the same room and game, but one becomes the defuser who sees only the bomb on screen while the others become experts who see only a paper manual. The defuser cannot see the manual and the experts cannot see the bomb, so two layers holding different information connect through speech alone. What to examine: an extreme case in which layer separation becomes the game’s skeleton, forcing cooperation by giving each layer only the information it needs.

Video / Content

Family viewing programs: one living-room screen must give children something to watch while simultaneously giving the parents beside them reassurance and interest, or one of them changes the channel. Speak to only one side, and the other takes the remote. What to examine: the basic form of double address, where one scene sends different signals to two audiences when the viewer layer overlaps at the household level rather than within one person.
Sesame Street’s co-viewing design: the program intentionally includes humor and parody to entertain parents while teaching children, encouraging them to watch together. This design is said to rest on the judgment that a parent watching beside a child improves the child’s learning. What to examine: retaining the guardian layer not as decoration but as a means of assisting the original goal, the child’s learning.
Shrek’s dual-layer direction: on the same screen in the 2001 film, children see a fairy-tale adventure while parents read movie parodies and topical jokes passing above the children’s heads. The Magic Mirror introducing brides as “Bachelorette Number One, Two, and Three,” parodying dating shows, is one example. What to examine: the craft of stacking two messages without interference, so a joke legible to one layer passes without obstructing the other.
Twitch Plays Pokémon: a 2014 Twitch stream in which commands typed by viewers in chat directly controlled the game. Hundreds of thousands of people controlled one character together and reportedly finished Pokémon Red in a little over two weeks. The instant a viewer typed one line, they became an operator; releasing the keyboard returned them to viewer. What to examine: how thin the border between watching and operating becomes when the threshold between viewer and button presser is lowered to one chat input.

Performance / Publishing

The immersive performance Sleep No More: audience members wear masks and silently wander through what is described as nearly one hundred rooms. Following one actor up the stairs makes them more participant-like; staying to watch another scene leaves them as a spectator. Within an audience member who bought one ticket, spectator and participant layers divide according to personal choice. What to examine: the balance that lets people choose which layer to remain in while ensuring either choice produces a complete experience.
The musical Hamilton: almost entirely sung, it lets a first-time listener follow the plot, while historical and literary references embedded in rapid rap lyrics become legible only to core fans after repeated listening. What to examine: placing a second reading for the core-fan layer inside the same lyrics without blocking comprehension for the light-audience layer.
Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth: in this 1961 children’s novel, children read an adventure about a bored boy while adults read a layer of wordplay that literalizes idioms. A phrase such as “jumping to conclusions” becomes an actual island reached by jumping. What to examine: publishing’s double address, burying several reading layers within one text without blocking progress for readers at the lower layer.

Mobile / Apps / Services

The 90–9–1 participation inequality: a rule of thumb for online communities in which most people only watch, some occasionally contribute, and a tiny number create directly, widely associated with usability researcher Jakob Nielsen’s 90–9–1 ratio. The exact ratio varies by community, but the slope is consistently observed. What to examine: the watching majority is a premise rather than a defect, giving grounds to design separately for people who only observe.
Parental-consent gates in children’s apps: screens that excite children and consent or payment screens that reassure parents appear as different layers within one flow. The parental-verification step may deliberately be made difficult for children to solve, using multiplication or a long press on text. What to examine: a design that clearly changes the layer addressed by each screen, alongside a reverse design that deliberately blocks one layer—the child—from passing.
Netflix Kids profiles: within the same account, a child profile uses a brighter, simpler interface and larger thumbnails while restricting access to settings; adult profiles remain unchanged. The profile-selection screen effectively asks, “Which layer are you entering as?” What to examine: how the simplest device for delegating layer separation to the user—the profile—became a standard way for one service to provide different interfaces to different layers.
Wikipedia readers and editors: the Edit button is always visible on every article, yet most people read for life. The moment a person corrects one typo, the same person moves from reader to editor. Many articles can be edited without signing in to lower the threshold of the first edit. What to examine: exposing an entrance to the operator layer—Edit—at all times on the viewer layer’s screen—the article—while keeping it subdued enough not to interfere with reading.
Switching between guest and host on Airbnb: with one account, a person becomes a guest renting accommodation while traveling, then switches to host mode when listing their own home and becomes an operator managing bookings and settlements. The app replaces the entire first-screen composition between the two modes. What to examine: mode switching that provides entirely different screens to the customer and console-and-operator layers within one person, and how deep the switch button is placed.

Offline / Everyday Life

Presenter, attendee, and staff routes at a conference: in the same venue, presenters move to backstage waiting rooms, attendees to session rooms, and staff across the spaces between them. The same person may be a presenter in the morning and return as an attendee in the afternoon. What to examine: spatial design becoming layer design, with a single badge color labeling layers and dividing permissions offline.
Karaoke: in one room, the same person becomes the star when holding the microphone, an audience member cheering while someone else sings, and an operator arranging the order while holding the song controller. The layers rotate every few minutes without confusion because the microphone, sofa, and controller serve as signs of the layer. What to examine: a layer-transition method that signals role change through the object held in the hand rather than through a screen.
Parent-observation classes: the same lesson in the same classroom becomes a more tense-than-usual class for children and a chance for parents standing at the back to check whether their children are doing well. The teacher addresses the child and guardian layers simultaneously through one class. What to examine: what changes when another layer—the guardian—enters a screen that normally addresses only one—the student—and where the demands collide, such as advancing the lesson versus putting on a demonstration.