Chapter 13. What Buttons Symbolize: Dissecting Simulated Experience

Celebration without an event is a firework that deceives the user.

In the previous chapter, we chose three experiences to give on the first screen. Having decided whether users should first undergo ownership, relationship, world, or something else, we now put those experiences on the screen. But a trap awaits the moment we do.

In Chapter 4, we examined the heart button. A heart is only a sign pointing to the experience of recognition; drawing a heart does not create that experience. The sign is the signifier, and the real event to which it points is the signified. Copying the signifier does not bring the signified with it. Here, we bring that discussion down into practice. If Chapter 4 established the principle that “a sign and an event are different,” this chapter takes each sign on our screen in hand and asks, “What event does this point to, and does that event actually happen?”

Games use far more signs that simulate experience than social media does. Reward popups, level-up presentations, combo effects, progress bars, and rank badges all point to something. The more spectacular they are, the easier it is to mistake them for the event itself.

The Fireworks Go Off, but Nothing Was Achieved

Enter an imaginary character game. Suppose our team invests heavily in the first-screen reward presentation. When users finish their first action, fireworks fill the screen, golden letters announce “Congratulations!”, a reward chest bursts open, and coins pour out. Grand sound effects ring out, vibration reaches the hand, and numbers race upward. Viewed in a meeting room, it is thrilling and feels like achievement.

Now look at what the first action was. The user merely pressed the Start button once. Nothing was difficult, nothing was overcome, and they do not even know what they accomplished. Fireworks are a sign pointing to the experience of achievement, but the real event they point to—“I accomplished something difficult”—does not exist. The fireworks go off, but nothing was achieved. At first, the user is puzzled. After two or three repetitions, they learn that the extravagant presentation is lying. When fireworks erupt for every trivial action, they lose meaning and become noisy decoration. At the moment the screen erupts without anything happening, users notice that the celebration is empty and begin to doubt the rest of our presentation.

Consider the opposite case. A user genuinely accomplishes something difficult and finally clears a stage that had blocked them for a long time. The screen quietly moves on without any sign. Now there is an event but no sign, so the user passes without noticing that they achieved something. If they achieved it but do not know they did, only half the experience of achievement arrives.

MEJE Aidong World reveals the point of balance, though we did not find it from the beginning. Early drafts spread cheers evenly. Sparkling effects appeared at every step—choosing a color, choosing a shape—and in demonstrations every moment sparkled to roughly the same degree, burying the moment when Aidong was actually completed. We removed presentation from the intermediate steps and enlarged the single cheer at completion. Now the screen brightens and Aidong hops and barks only when a fan completes the dog Aidong for the first time. This presentation is not false. The fan really accomplished something. Choosing color, shape, and name is a meaningful task for a fan, so the cheer points to a real event. We do not launch fireworks every time the fan presses one button. We match the size of the sign to the size of the event: a large cheer for a large event, a small response for a small one. Fans trust the cheer only when sign and event form a pair.

Dissecting the Sign: What Does It Point To, and Does It Happen?

Now take the signs on the screen in hand and dissect them one by one. The scalpel consists of two questions: what experience does this sign point to, and does that experience actually occur on our screen?

Begin with the reward popup. It points to achievement and to the event “compensation for what I accomplished.” Whenever we show one, we must ask whether the user truly accomplished something just now. If so, the popup is a genuine sign that confirms the achievement. If not, the reward breeds suspicion instead of a sense of achievement. When freely scattered rewards repeat, users learn to regard every reward in the game lightly.

Next, the level-up presentation. It points to growth and to the event “I am better than I was yesterday.” When a level rises, ask whether the user genuinely became more capable or whether only the number rose with the passage of time. As Chapter 4 showed, engraving the number Level 30 does not fill someone with a sense of growth. That sense comes from the actual event of crossing a wall they once could not cross. The level number has meaning only when that event exists. A level-up that raises only a number without an event is an empty sign.

Next, the combo effect. It points to mastery and to the event “I am getting better,” the event of the hand catching the flow. When the combo number rises, ask whether it reflects the user's real skill or rises no matter how they press. If any random pressing builds a combo, the combo no longer points to mastery; it is simply a rising number, and users soon know it.

Next, the progress bar. It combines two experiences: the control of knowing how far one has come and the desire to finish because one is almost there. Whenever we place a progress bar, we must ask whether the progress it represents is meaningful to the user. Wrap meaningless work in a progress bar, and it only ties users to empty spaces they must fill; it does not give genuine control. LinkedIn's profile-strength bar lasted because the progress it represented was tied to real benefits. Behind the bar lay a promise: filling more fields would improve visibility in searches and increase opportunities to connect. The closer the bar came to completion, the more people accelerated to finish, because the progress was meaningful rather than an empty number, though the shape and wording of the bar have changed over time. Without a promise behind it, the same bar remains only an empty space to fill.

The conclusion of this dissection is the same as Chapter 4's, but sharper. Spectacle and truth have no necessary relationship. Larger fireworks are not more genuine. A sign is genuine only when an event stands behind it, and the more spectacular an eventless sign is, the sooner it is exposed.

An attentive reader may think of a counterexample. Candy Crush praises even a single match in a rich voice, and slot machines make losses sound like wins. Have both not worked on countless people for years without being exposed? Apply the scalpel to those signs first, and the answer appears. Read through Chapter 12's types, and the signified of Candy Crush's voice is not a certificate of achievement but a sensory rhythm. The praise and sparkle that return with each match do not claim “You accomplished something difficult.” They are closer to percussion keeping time with the tactile pleasure. Users do not receive them as certificates, so there is no deception to begin with. A slot machine's winning presentation, by contrast, falsely points to an actual event of profit. Hence the observation that changing the sound effect to reflect a loss dissolves the illusion. The proposition should therefore be refined: what gets exposed is not a spectacular sign but one whose claimed signified conflicts with the actual event. Before judging a sign, distinguish which experience it points to.

The Game Convention That Lets Spectacle Hide Meaning

Since this chapter concerns simulated experience, let us bring one game convention to the checkpoint: the habit of believing that enlarging the presentation enlarges the experience.

Games have long competed with larger fireworks, more spectacular effects, and grander sounds. Even a single reward receives a long presentation in which a chest glows, shakes, and bursts open. This convention had grounds. A well-made presentation can make a small reward feel like a large event, and the exaggeration can increase pleasure. Gamers understand its grammar; when an extravagant presentation appears, context tells them, “I must have received something important.”

Newcomers do not know this grammar. To them, an exaggerated presentation is initially just noisy. The moment they notice there is no real event behind it, the noise turns into distrust. They read a game that launches fireworks for every trivial matter as “fussy and unreliable.” Gamers read spectacle as “the weight of the reward,” while ordinary people easily read it as “hollow exaggeration.” The same fireworks are satisfaction on one side and noise on the other.

The costs this convention imposes on ordinary people are attention and damage to trust. A spectacular presentation consumes time and attention by itself. Once it is revealed as an empty sign, users stop trusting the next presentation as well. A game caught giving one false cheer is doubted even when it later gives a genuine one. Cheers resemble currency: print too many, and their value falls. Treat the largest presentation of the first session as a budget that can be spent only once, and spend it solely on the first real event the user pays for, such as a first completion or a first overcoming. Just as Chapter 11 budgeted costs, there is a budget for cheers. Keep the essence and change the form. Rather than enlarging spectacle, first create the event it points to. Match the size of the presentation to the size of the event, responding softly to small things and strongly to large ones. Measure event size by the cost the user paid for it: time invested, failures endured, and decisions made are the ruler. Only with that ruler does “a large cheer for a large event” become calculation rather than intuition. Then, when users meet a large presentation, they believe, “I really accomplished something important.” Presentation is a mirror illuminating an event, not a stage inventing one that never happened. When the mirror is larger than the event, users know that it lies.

What Does Not Follow When You Copy a Competitor

The ability to dissect signs is most useful when looking at competitors. Teams commonly take apart the screens of successful games and decide, “They have this reward presentation, this combo system, this rank badge—let's add them too.” Collect only the signs, and the result becomes the empty social-media clone from Chapter 4: an app with a Like button but no liking.

The same thing happens outside games. Google's Google+ launched with nearly all the signs of earlier social networks: grouping friends, sharing, and wall features. At one point it amassed an enormous number of accounts. But the real event behind those signs—people actually conversing and staying there—did not follow. Its features looked similar, but without conversation it became an empty neighborhood. The consumer service eventually closed because of low usage, ending in 2019. Even if every sign is copied, only empty signs remain when the events they point to do not occur on our screen.

What should be copied is not the sign but the event operating behind it. A successful game's combo effect works not because the effect is spectacular, but because the controls genuinely demand skill and reflect that skill honestly in the combo. Its reward presentation is thrilling not because it is large, but because a real challenge came before the reward. Copy the sign without the event, and on our screen the combo becomes an empty number pointing to no skill, while the reward becomes an empty popup pointing to no achievement.

When borrowing a sign, borrow the experience it points to in its entirety. Its costs, taboos, and rewards come with it. To borrow a combo, design controls that demand skill. To borrow a reward popup, place something worth accomplishing before the reward. Detaching a sign and attaching it to the screen is like taking a storefront sign and hanging it over an empty shop.

This mistake repeats for a structural reason. As long as the standard competitor-analysis template is a feature list, we are designed to record only signs. Change the template first. For every item in a competitor, write three columns: the visible sign, the experience it points to, and the event that creates the experience. For a combo effect, one row would read: “combo presentation; mastery; controls that demand skill and reflect it honestly.” An item with an empty third column will not work on our screen even if copied. Copying becomes benchmarking only when the third column is filled.

▶ Three Questions to Apply to My Screen

Is there a real event behind this presentation?

Is spectacle obscuring the meaning users actually need to know?

Does the world keep the promise made by the button? If any one is misaligned, the sign is deceiving users with a cheer that has no event.

Therefore, Inspect Each of Our Signs in One Line

Once we equip ourselves with an eye for dissecting signs, the first-screen design gains one final inspection: every time we place a sign on the screen, pair the experience it points to with the actual occurrence of that experience.

First, go through the signs on our first screen one by one and inspect what experience each points to and whether it actually occurs. If it does not, there are two options: remove the sign or make the event behind it real. Just as Chapter 4 offered no option to leave an empty heart in place, there is no option to leave empty fireworks.

This decision leads to measurement. If users leave immediately after a reward presentation, it may have been an empty sign. If drop-off often follows an extravagant cheer, users may not have believed it. Conversely, if users pause and look back at a screen in a place that passed quietly, we may have let a genuine event slip by without a sign. Place signs and drop-off side by side, and the signs that were lying become visible. Quantitative data illuminates which cheers on our screen were empty.

Reference Content

Cases in other media that reveal the concepts of this chapter.

Video Games

Idle clickers such as Cookie Clicker: if the rising number is read as a certificate of achievement, it looks like a model eventless sign because it grows with the mere passage of time, without skill or challenge. But read it through Chapter 12's types, and its signified is not achievement but ownership and ritual. The clicker is honest in its own way because it does not disguise those as achievement. The same game appeared in Chapter 11 as a model of “do not charge before giving” and in Chapter 12 as an archetype of ritual and ownership. Here it becomes a case for “distinguish the signified” because the inspection must first ask which experience a sign points to.
Multiline slot machines' “losses disguised as wins”: even when the return is smaller than the amount wagered and is therefore a loss, the machine produces the same lights and triumphant sound as a win instead of the silence used when the entire stake is lost. People mistake it for victory even though the sign, celebration, conflicts with the event, profit. Refer also to the finding that changing the sound effect to match the loss dissolves the illusion.
Candy Crush's spoken praise: the game inspected for its heart limit in Chapter 11 returns here for its praise. Even a single match earns a rich, pleased voice calling “Sweet!”, “Tasty!”, or “Divine!” while the screen sparkles. As distinguished in the main text, the signified is a sensory rhythm, not a certificate of achievement, so it is not exposed as false. Refer to it as a case showing that we must first determine which experience a sign points to before condemning it.

General Apps

Google+: it had all the signs—friend circles, sharing, and walls—but the event of people staying and talking did not follow, so it became an empty neighborhood.
Fake progress loading bars: a bar programmed to fill regardless of actual work often exposes itself by racing to ninety percent, then crawling at the end. When no event of progress stands behind the sign of progress, users soon notice that the bar is lying, and such apps repeatedly lose trust and reputation. Draw one line here. A spinner or skeleton screen that merely says the system is alive and a response is on its way makes no measurement claim and is not false. A bar that fabricates a percentage is false. Chapter 15 will return to this distinction between a sign that announces life and one that falsifies measurement when discussing signals that say “there is a response.”

The remaining reference content is gathered in the “Chapter 13 Appendix” at the end of this chapter (collected as Appendix D in the printed volume).

Design Note ▶ Try It Yourself

Choose five signs from our first screen: things that imitate an experience, such as reward popups, level-up presentations, combo effects, progress bars, and rank badges.

Complete one line for each sign: “The (　　　) on our screen is a sign pointing to the experience of (　　　), and that experience currently (does / does not) occur.” If it does not, add another line: “For that experience to occur for real, (　　　) must happen before this sign appears.” This is the space for inserting an event before the sign: a challenge to accomplish before a reward popup, or controls that demand skill before a combo.

Once all lines are complete, compare the size of each sign with the size of its event. Measure event size by the costs paid by the user: time invested, failures endured, and decisions made. Circle signs that are large despite small events. Reduce a circled sign or create an event of matching size before it. Finally, write one reverse question: are any events on our first screen passing without a sign? If the user pays a substantial cost and the screen quietly moves on, circle that point too. This work will grow into the simulated-experience dissection table in Appendix B.

If no event stands behind a sign, remove the sign or make the event real.

One-line summary: Reward popups point to achievement, level-up presentations to growth, and combo effects to mastery. Yet spectacle and truth have no necessary relationship. A sign is genuine only when an event stands behind it, and the more spectacular an eventless sign is, the sooner it is exposed. The size of the presentation must match the size of the event so that users believe a large cheer when they meet it. Copy only a sign from a competitor, and the event behind it does not follow. Next chapter: Once signs and events are paired, the question becomes how to blend the experiences. If everything is new, users get lost; if everything is familiar, they become bored. In the next chapter, we discuss how to mix surprise and familiarity.

Chapter 13 Appendix: Reference Content Collection

This collection shows that the chapter's dissection of the sign on the screen, the signifier, from the real event it points to, the signified, works the same way beyond games. A sign is genuine only when an event stands behind it; an eventless sign is exposed faster the more spectacular it is; and the size of the presentation must match the size of the event. The cases are grouped by medium, and each ends with an “Observation” describing what a designer should watch. There are two questions for reading: what experience does this sign point to, and does that experience actually happen?

Video Games

Diablo III's presentation for legendary items: in the 2012 game, when a legendary item drops, a weighty sound rings out, an orange beam rises from the floor, and a star appears on the minimap, making the moment impossible to miss. Early after release, however, the “rarity” represented by the sign often conflicted with actual performance, making the beam close to an empty sign. It is often said that sign and event aligned only after the loot system was substantially reworked. Observation: whether the weight of the event is honestly reflected in the size of the sign; the order of fixing the event, the value of the drop, before enlarging the sign.
RPG level numbers and experience bars: a rising number points to growth, but without the event of crossing a wall once impassable, only the number rises empty. Observation: what the user becomes able to do when a level rises; whether number and event are paired.
Peggle's “Extreme Fever” finale: in the 2007 game, when the last orange peg is struck, time slows, the screen follows the ball, Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” erupts, and rainbows and fireworks cross the screen. The presentation is extravagantly exaggerated yet not false, because a real event—clearing the stage—must precede it. Observation: a large event must come first for a large presentation to read as a large cheer; exaggeration itself is not a sin.
PlayStation's “easy platinum” trophies: the highest-tier trophy originally signified accomplishing something difficult. As mass-produced games that award it after a few button presses and a few minutes flooded the market, the sign lost weight. Major trophy-tracking sites reportedly began excluding such games from rankings, and the platform went as far as removing them from the store and issuing guidelines warning that repeat-offender accounts would be penalized. Observation: a badge issued without the event of qualification reduces the value of everyone bearing that badge; the issuance standard is the value of the sign.
The craft of game “juice”: screen shake, particles, and impact effects dress actions with satisfaction, but the craft's guidance is known to say that presentation should echo the game's core play. Observation: industry craft itself states this chapter's conclusion—presentation is a mirror that enlarges a real event, not a stage that invents an absent one.

Live-Action Film

Chekhov's gun: Anton Chekhov wrote that if a gun hangs on the wall in the first act, it must later be fired; if it will not be fired, it should not hang there. Observation: a story itself demands that an event follow any sign placed before us; count the guns hanging on our screen that never fire.
The horror “cat scare”: tense music foretells a threat, but only something harmless, such as a bird crashing through a window, appears. The Resident Evil series uses this sign by deceiving once with a false cue and then releasing the real threat. Observation: repeated false promises of an event make audiences stop trusting the sign itself, though an intentional betrayal that deceives once and then delivers the real thing works within the genre's agreement.
The lawsuit over the Drive (2011) trailer: it is often recounted that a viewer who went to the theater after seeing a trailer cut like a chase-action film demanded a refund and an end to the advertising when the feature proved closer to a taciturn drama, even filing suit against the distributor. Observation: a trailer is also a sign pointing to the event of the feature; when the promised event and the actual product conflict, the cost returns as refund demands and reputational damage.

Literature

Exaggerated blurbs on covers and belly bands: if a sign such as “the book of a lifetime” is not matched by the event of the text, readers doubt the publisher's next recommendation too. Observation: trust in a sign is diminished at the publisher level, not only one book at a time.
Macbeth's soliloquy: Macbeth calls life a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Observation: one line compresses what remains when the signs of loud sound and passion have no event of meaning behind them.

Live-Action TV / Drama

Exaggerated captions and sound effects in reality shows: tense music and giant captions inflate an uneventful scene. Observation: viewers notice the presentation the moment the sign becomes larger than the event; frequent inflation reduces the value of truly large scenes.
Sitcom laugh tracks: beginning in the 1950s, sound engineer Charley Douglass used a “Laff Box” of prerecorded laughter, adding and removing it scene by scene to place a sign saying “this is the funny part.” But when a scene was not funny, the track sounded more awkward. As viewers gradually stopped trusting the sign, its use declined. Observation: directing a response through a sign backfires when it conflicts with the event; audience response is made by the event, not the sign.

Music

Excessive Auto-Tune and crowd-chorus effects: they imitate the event of emotion through sound processing, but when the song contains no such emotion, the effect floats free. Observation: postproduction can enlarge only an emotion that already exists; an absent event cannot be created in the mix.
Milli Vanilli: the sign of singers on stage was perfect, but the event of singing was performed by others. A lip-synced recording skipped onstage and exposed them, and their 1990 Best New Artist Grammy was reportedly rescinded for the first time in the award's history. Observation: when only the sign, the appearance of performance, exists and the event, actual singing, is empty, even the applause already received is annulled after exposure.

Comics

Speed lines and written sound effects: even if signs that something major is happening fill the panel, exaggeration alone remains when the actual event is small. Observation: matching the size of the sign to the size of the event is equally required in panel presentation.

General Apps

Empty social-media clones: they have Like buttons but no people exchanging likes. They copy the sign while leaving the event empty. Observation: when a feature, the sign, is copied from a competitor, the people and activity that made it work, the event, do not follow.
LinkedIn skill endorsements: unlike the profile-strength bar, which works because it is tied to real benefits, endorsements that anyone can give anyone with one click accumulate even from people who have never worked together, blurring what they prove. Observation: even within one service, trust divides between signs with and without the event of verification.
Red-dot notifications with no news: some apps place a red dot on an icon when there is nothing to tap. When the sign “a new event exists” repeats without an event, users soon learn to ignore the dot entirely. Such designs for capturing attention are also discussed as dark patterns. Observation: the speed at which a sign's currency loses value; count the dots and badges on our screen printed without events.
Fake close buttons in ads: some ads draw an X that leads to the advertiser's page rather than closing, or make it deliberately too small to press. The moment the sign “close” betrays the event of closing, users doubt the screen's other signs too. Observation: one sign's betrayal spreads into a cost of trust for the whole screen.

History / General Cases

Potemkin villages: the story says that along Catherine II's inspection route, only handsome village facades were erected, dismantled after the procession passed, and rebuilt on the next riverbank, though many consider the anecdote itself exaggerated. Observation: regardless of its historical truth, the phrase became a universal name for an empty facade because the structure of a sign without substance is so common.

Offline / Everyday Life

Nonfunctioning pedestrian buttons: a 2004 New York City report said that more than 2,500 of the city's 3,250 pedestrian buttons remained disconnected after signal automation. Some elevator Close buttons are often said to share the same fate. They are placebo buttons that accept the sign of pressing without the event of changing the signal. Observation: a false sign left to soothe the need for control works until exposed; after exposure, the sign of buttons as a whole is doubted.
Restaurant signs claiming “the original”: when several restaurants in one alley all hang “original” signs, no sign proves the event of being first. Anyone can hang the sign, while the event happened at only one establishment. Observation: the more common unverifiable signs become, the more the value of the entire sign falls; the alley shares the structure of “easy platinum.”