Chapter 26. Can We Entrust the Expansion of Experience to Users?

Part 6 begins here. Chapter 25 finished the question of which numbers to inspect, what to repair, and how to measure again. Chapter 27 awaits with the story of machines constructing a different first experience for each person. Between them, this chapter asks whether part of designing the first experience can be handed to users themselves, and whether what they choose may be read as their taste.

For a newcomer, deep freedom is not a playground but an exam paper.

The first screen opens and presents twenty choices at once. Asked to distribute attributes, choose an appearance, and decide a progression path, the newcomer freezes, unsure what to touch first. The screen we spread out in the name of freedom looks to them like a set of problems to solve.

Until now, we assumed that we design the first experience. The designer placed the first screen, first reward, and first choices, and users merely walked the route we built. Yet inviting people to make the path with us often binds them more deeply than laying every piece of it for them. Let them customize a character with their own hands, alter the screen to their taste, and determine what appears next through their choices. At that moment, a spectator becomes a builder.

Roblox has pushed this idea to its limit. Rather than having the company make and distribute every game, the world fills with activities and items users create themselves. A large share of the clothes worn and characters customized are reportedly made by users rather than the company, and many people earn money by selling what they create. Someone who came to watch becomes a builder, and that builder's work becomes someone else's activity. This creates a temptation: could even the expansion of experience be entrusted to users? If we let them choose, customize, and build, could each person's experience enrich itself without our designing every detail?

The temptation is only half right. Handing users agency does lead them deeper inside, but agency is also a burden. Giving the freedom to choose also gives the burden of choosing. Entrust too much on the first screen and the user meets not abundance but helplessness. This chapter examines that boundary. It separates what should pass to users from what must remain in our hands, and asks how far we may read what they choose as their taste.

The Moment Users Choose, They Reveal Themselves

Return to the hypothetical game that followed us through Part 5, the mobile game where people collect characters and talk with them. This time, the first screen lets users customize a character themselves. They choose a color, add a pattern, select an expression, and give it a name. On the surface this is merely a customization game, but watch what someone chooses and we learn quite a lot. A person who picks pastel tones, adds a round pattern, and chooses a smiling face will enjoy the same game differently from someone who picks dark colors, adds sharp lines, and chooses a blank expression. One expects a warm and restful experience; the other expects something stylish and keen-edged. Even without saying, “I like things like this,” what they choose speaks in their place.

Choice becomes a signal of taste. Users often cannot clearly explain their own preferences. Ask, “What kind of games do you like?” and their answer may be vague, or their behavior may contradict their words once they begin playing. Words reflect the person one wants to be; choices reflect what actually attracts them. Instead of asking what someone likes, observe what they choose and a more honest signal appears. Customization on the first screen both delights the user and opens a window that tells us who they are.

This signal is especially valuable because we know almost nothing about a newcomer. Someone who just entered is nearly a blank page. We do not know what they like, what experience they expect, or what kind of place they came from. Recommendations made in ignorance miss, and a missed recommendation ruins the first impression. A few things the person chooses resolve the difficulty of having to guess at a stranger. One color, one pattern, and one name draw the first line on the blank page; upon that line, we can build the next screen to fit their texture. The first choice moves us from knowing nothing to knowing at least one line.

MEJE Aidong World can receive this signal from the first customization. When a fan customizes an Aidong, their taste seeps into the color and shape they choose. A fan who chooses pink and adds a ribbon and one who chooses blue and spots may each be drawn to a different texture. Yet that first choice is also influenced by the presented options, their arrangement, and trends. The first customization is therefore a mirror that entertains the fan while reflecting an initial hypothesis about taste, not a certificate that proves it.

One tension must be faced directly. The first customization screen is play to users but a survey to us; the screen that gives delight and the screen that collects signals are the same. Would users choose differently if they knew? Should we tell them? Hide it and we secretly read their play; turn it into an explicit question and play becomes an exam again. This book's answer is neither concealment nor interrogation. Let people know what the collected signal is used for, and let them correct it when it is wrong. Chapter 27 completes that fence of transparency.

How Far May We Read a Choice as Taste?

It is enticing to call choice a signal of taste, but dangerous to believe it literally. What users choose is not always what they prefer. Several traps stand between choice and taste.

First, users choose only among what is offered. If we lay out five colors, they pick one of the five. If the color they truly wanted is absent, the choice is a second-best substitute, not their taste. Because we constructed the options, our hands touched the choice. Second, users are swayed by context. They reach first for what is placed at the top, appears largest, or is labeled as popular, not because it matches their taste but because of its placement. Third, the first choice may be exploration rather than preference. A newcomer taps something while still not knowing what they like. Engrave that first tap as settled taste and we preserve them incorrectly in amber. Confine someone forever as a lover of pink because they chose it once, and we obstruct their freedom to be drawn to blue next time.

Read choice as taste, then, but read it as a hypothesis rather than a conclusion. Choosing pink does not establish “this person likes pink”; it creates an initial hypothesis that “this person may be drawn to a warm texture.” Because it is a hypothesis, verify it with the next choice and correct it when the two diverge. Instead of defining a person with one choice, observe whether choices in the same direction recur in different situations. Do not turn a fixed number of repetitions into an absolute threshold. Confirm whether the behavior on the next screen changed by the signal actually continues more successfully. Keep the door open so users can change their texture whenever they wish. Taste is not a fixed label but something that moves, and our reading must move with it.

The signal becomes useful only when it changes the next screen. For someone who chose dark colors and sharp lines, reorder recommended characters so stylish, keen-edged ones come first; make the first line of dialogue restrained rather than clingingly affectionate. Show a fan who chose pink and ribbons a warm-textured character first and greet them with a little more tenderness. If the next screen remains identical for everyone after reading a signal, we did not read it—we merely stored it.

The Common Belief That More Choices Mean More Freedom

Because this chapter entrusts the expansion of experience to users, let us place one custom of game makers at the checkpoint: “The more freedom, the better the game; the deeper the builds and customization, the better.” More than a screen convention, this is an old piece of common sense about what counts as a good game.

Begin with what the belief takes for granted. The more choices users receive, the freer they are; the freer they are, the more satisfied they become. So attributes are divided finely, equipment combinations multiply, hundreds of appearance options spread out, and classes and progression paths branch widely. This premise grew from the grammar of games designed for deep exploration. Raising one character in a personal way, finding combinations unlike anyone else's, and choosing one's path through countless branches are deep pleasures in themselves. For someone who delights in crafting builds and digging through customization, abundant choices mean a larger playground. Within that promise, more choices mean more freedom, and more freedom means a better game.

A newcomer does not share the promise. To someone who has spent a lifetime swiping through short videos and having the next clip delivered automatically, dozens of options on the first screen are homework, not freedom. They are forced to choose before they are ready. A person accustomed to watching a drama expects the story to flow on its own; if the first screen demands, “Choose your progression path. Allocate your attributes,” they suddenly inherit operational duties in the place they came to watch. Anyone exhausted from comparing dozens of similar products in commerce knows bodily that more choices delay a decision until they close the page without choosing anything. A gamer reads abundant choices as “my playground”; a newcomer reads them as “an exam I must solve.” The same options screen is freedom to one and a burden to the other.

It has long been observed that decisions slow as choices multiply. Two options are selected quickly; twenty take longer to compare. But it goes too far to conclude that “more always causes paralysis.” The burden falls considerably when options are organized into groups or users know the field well. More precisely, many options do not always paralyze people; unorganized options are heavy for someone still unfamiliar with the world. A newcomer is precisely that unfamiliar person. When unorganized abundance flies at them all at once on the first screen, the weight of decision may drive them away before the experience begins. On the first screen at least, choice is a cost before it is freedom. Each option charges the user's attention. When every bill arrives at once, they close the app as they would close a wallet.

The fees this custom charges newcomers are the burden of choice and self-doubt. Being forced to choose without knowing what to choose drains attention and adds the doubt, “What if I choose wrong?” A pleasurable dilemma for a gamer is helpless pressure for a newcomer. Spreading deep customization across the first screen is like handing complete operational authority to someone who does not yet even like this world.

Preserve the essence and change the practice. Keep the pleasure of deciding something with one's own hands and the satisfaction of seeing oneself reflected in that decision. But do not pour every choice onto the first screen. Begin with one small, clear choice: one of five colors, one of three characters—something the hand reaches for without deliberation and whose every outcome is delightful. That single choice turns the user into a builder while giving us the first signal. Do not delete deep customization and broad freedom; postpone them. When users like the world enough to want to go deeper, release the builds, combinations, and hundreds of options. By then, users receive choices as a playground rather than a burden. At first, lay the path and let them choose only one branch. Once they learn to walk, add more branches. Freedom is not a gift delivered all at once; it expands by the amount a user has become able to carry.

Add one more fence. When we construct the next experience from what users choose, do not let the construction become a prison. Show someone only warm things forever because they once picked a warm color, and they lose the chance to encounter a texture they never knew. Infer from choices, but always leave a route outside the inference. Let users see where the inference came from and correct it when it is wrong. The next chapter examines this fence more deeply.

▶ Three Questions to Apply to My Screen

Have I unfolded all the freedom on the first screen?

Have I counted the cost of hesitation for every choice?

Do I give freedom after the first fun? If even one line stops you, the first screen is handing users an exam rather than freedom.

Creative FTUE: Builders Also Have a First Thirty Seconds

Return to the ambition established at the beginning: entrusting the entire expansion of experience to users, as Roblox does. Choosing and customizing remain choices for oneself; making something others will play for the first time is one level higher. Yet the tools of this book apply again at that moment. Someone opening an editor for the first time must understand within thirty seconds what they can do there, just like someone launching a game for the first time. A blank canvas is a heavier exam than twenty options on a first screen, so the cost of experience is charged intact. Viewed through the eight levels of Chapter 6, this person is ascending from the level that moves a character to the level that operates the console. Creative work therefore needs its own FTUE. Start with a half-built sample instead of a blank page. Let people see something they made move within the first thirty seconds. Show save and undo first, reducing the fear of ruining things.

The moment creation becomes someone else's experience, it also needs a quality fence. Super Mario Maker requires creators to pass a clear check by playing their own stage from beginning to end before uploading it. The fence keeps impossible stages from ruining someone else's first experience. In a structure where what one user builds becomes another user's first screen, the designer must keep hold of one fence between them to the end. We may entrust the expansion of experience, but cannot entrust the protection of someone else's first.

Start by Entrusting One Small Choice and Read Its Texture

The answer to whether the expansion of experience can be entrusted to users is: “Yes, but not all at once.” On the first screen, entrust only one small, delightful choice. It turns the user into a builder while becoming the first signal about someone who had been a blank page. Read the signal not as proof of taste but as a hypothesis, verify it through the next choice, and gradually draw the person's texture. Do not erase deep freedom and customization, but postpone them until the user likes the world. Remember that choices are costs before they are freedom. Deciding what to entrust means deciding how much decision weight the user can carry now. When they rise from choosing to building, lay down a separate first thirty seconds for creation and establish a quality fence between what they build and someone else's first.

The decision leads into measurement. Whether an entrusted choice was delight or burden appears in whether people remain or leave on that screen. A high completion rate followed by smooth progress signals that the entrusted weight was appropriate. Many people hesitating for a long time and leaving signal that we entrusted too much. Then observe whether people remain longer in the next experience constructed from their choice. If we read the choice correctly, retention rises; if we misread it, retention falls. Attach one confirmation event to every inference. On the next screen altered by the pink hypothesis, did the user actually remain longer? Plant an event that measures that one thing and place it in Chapter 25's measurement loop. Personalization as inference then becomes an object of verification. Quantitative evidence reveals whether we gave users freedom or loaded them with baggage, and whether we read their signal correctly.

Do not read time spent alone. A long stay followed by completing the choice and proceeding is closer to interest; a long stay ending without completion is closer to burden. Time spent, completion, and subsequent action must be read together to distinguish interest from paralysis.

Reference Content

Cases from other media and fields that reveal the concepts in this chapter.

UGC Platforms / Games

Roblox: Rather than the company making and sending everything down, the world fills with activities and items users create. Spectators become builders.
Super Mario Maker: Before uploading a stage, its maker must pass a “clear check” by completing it from beginning to end. Only something completable is released as another person's activity.

Games

The gypsy's questions in Ultima IV: Instead of directly choosing a class, players face seven moral dilemmas between pairs of virtues; their choices determine a fitting class. The game reads people from what they choose rather than asking what they like.
Path of Exile's passive skill tree: A giant tree branching hundreds of ways is a playground for people who love builds, but often cited as a source of helplessness and choice paralysis for newcomers. The same deep freedom is liberty to one and an exam to another.

Real Life / Behavioral Economics

The jam-display experiment: People reportedly bought much more when six jams were displayed than when twenty-four were. Numerous options stop people; curated ones support a decision. Later studies have not always replicated the same result, however, leaving debate about the conditions that produce choice overload.

The remaining references are gathered in “Chapter 26 Appendix” at the end of this chapter (collected as Appendix D in the print edition).

Design Note ▶ Try It Yourself

Find the places in our game's first experience where users choose or customize something themselves: choosing a color or character, changing a screen, and so on.

At each place, ask how many things the user must choose among at once. If there are more than five, reconsider whether that many are necessary on the first screen. Postpone deferrable choices until the user likes the world. Then write in one line what signal the user's choice gives us, such as: “A person who chooses this color may be drawn to a (　　　) texture.”

Add one final line. After engraving one choice as the user's taste, where is the door through which they can change their mind? If no door exists, write where to create it. (The precise decision table for designing inferences from choice and deciding when and where to use choice, recommendation, and automation is in Appendix C.)

When everything is written, decide in one sentence: if the choice entrusted on the first screen turns the user into a builder, let it pass; if its weight crushes them into inaction, postpone that much.

In One Line: What users choose is a signal that speaks for preferences they cannot put into words, the first line that resolves the difficulty of guessing at a blank-page newcomer. Yet read a choice not as proof of taste but as a hypothesis, verify it through accumulating texture, and leave a door for changing one's mind. The common sense that “more freedom and deeper customization are better” is a playground to gamers but an exam to newcomers. Choice is a cost before it is freedom, so entrust only one small, delightful choice on the first screen and open deep freedom by the amount users become able to carry. When users begin building for others, lay down a creative FTUE and erect a quality fence where their creation becomes someone else's first. Next Chapter: So far, we have read users' texture from what they choose and built the next experience. What if a machine performs that reading and building instead? The work of observing what users choose and automatically constructing a different first screen for each person has already begun. If first experiences differ by person, whose “first” is it? And is the tailored experience truly better? The final chapter begins with that question.

Chapter 26 Appendix: Reference Collection

The main Reference Content section retains only a few examples directly tied to the chapter's argument; the rest are collected here by medium. We begin with UGC platforms, mod communities, and creative tools where users become builders; continue through games that read people from their first choices, behavioral-economics experiments, apps and commerce, offline checkout counters, literature, and video. Read them beside the chapter's three arguments: reading user choice as a hypothesis rather than proof of taste; recognizing that choices are costs before freedom; and providing a creative FTUE and quality fence because builders also have a first thirty seconds. The “point to examine” on each item will show which argument it touches.

UGC Platforms / Games and Toys

LittleBigPlanet (2008): An early case that made “Play, Create, Share” its slogan and put the expansion of experience in users' hands. It showed on consoles a structure where user-made stages become other users' activities. Point to examine: Observe how a game raised the transformation from spectator to builder into its identity slogan.
Dreams (2020): Users make and share the games themselves, so builders become the content. Point to examine: As creative tools deepen, the exam paper facing a first-time user grows thicker; examine how creative FTUE was laid out.
LEGO Ideas: When a fan-designed set gathers 10,000 supporters, it receives company review and may become an official product; selected designers receive part of the revenue. Point to examine: Creation is entrusted to users but the company retains a quality fence before it reaches others, placing it in the same branch as Mario Maker's clear check.

Mods / Maker Communities

Minecraft mods and custom maps: Users expand the world, enriching each person's experience beyond what designers laid out individually. Point to examine: This is the representative gain from entrusting expansion; see how a community crosses the limit of what designers alone can make.
The Skyrim and Steam Workshop mod ecosystem: Inviting people to help make the road binds them more deeply than laying every path for them. Point to examine: Look for the source of a life that continues more than a decade after release in the motivations of people who build and share mods.

Creative Tools / Education

Scratch's remix culture: The children's coding tool created at MIT encourages people to open and modify someone else's project rather than begin from a blank page, and publicly shows the lineage of remixes. Point to examine: It precisely follows the creative-FTUE prescription of replacing the heaviest exam—a blank canvas—with a half-built sample.

Creator Platforms

The YouTube and Twitch creator economy: Someone who came to watch becomes a maker, and what they make becomes something others watch. Point to examine: The staircase from watcher to maker became the platform's business model itself.

First Choices in Video Games

Character creation in Animal Crossing: Immediately after launch, players choose skin tone, hair, eyes, and nose. What they choose reflects preferences they cannot state. A mirror at home lets them change at any time, treating the first choice as a hypothesis rather than proof. Point to examine: See how the device that keeps a first choice hypothetical—the door for changing one's mind—is placed inside the game.
Creating a Wii Mii: “Choose a look-alike” lets people begin from a prebuilt face and edit it, reducing the burden of constructing from a blank page. Point to examine: See what the prescription of reducing blank-page burden with a sample looks like in character creation.
Paragon/Renegade in Mass Effect: Dialogue choices accumulate toward noble or rough directions, forming the protagonist's personality and reflecting the player's inclination. Point to examine: It matches the main text's idea of reading texture accumulated in the same direction, rather than a single choice, as signal.

Real Life / Behavioral Economics

Organ-donation opt-in and opt-out defaults: Registration rates reportedly differ sharply depending only on whether the default is “not a donor” or “a donor.” Point to examine: Much of a first choice is in fact produced by the designer's default, so its contribution must be subtracted when reading choice as taste.
Stated preferences versus preferences revealed by behavior: People often write ideal answers in surveys but behave differently when paying a real cost. Point to examine: Confirm that this chapter's principle—observe choices instead of asking—is longstanding common sense in behavioral economics.
Filter bubbles: Recommending only more of the texture shown once may deprive users of a chance to encounter textures they did not know. Point to examine: This supports the need for a fence that infers from choice without blocking the route beyond the inference.
The IKEA effect: Experiments report a tendency to value a self-assembled box more highly than the same completed object (Norton et al., 2012). Point to examine: Entrusting a small effort creates attachment, but when effort crosses the line of delight, it becomes an exam on the first screen.
The cake-mix egg legend: A marketing legend claims that mixes requiring only water failed to sell until people were asked to add one egg. But the decision to require an egg preceded that psychological advice and was made for flavor and quality, so verification describing the story as closer to myth also circulates. Point to examine: The intuition of leaving one handprint has independent support from the IKEA effect, but the popular anecdote itself remains an object of verification.

General Apps / Commerce

Fatigue from comparing dozens of similar products: More things to choose slow decisions until people choose nothing and close the page. Point to examine: It presents in a bodily familiar form the claim that choices are costs before freedom on the first screen.

Offline / Everyday Life

The chain of questions at a sandwich shop: New customers commonly freeze at a counter that asks them in succession to choose bread, length, cheese, vegetables, and sauce. The questions that let regulars enjoy building it their way become an exam without right answers for newcomers. Point to examine: At the checkout counter too, the same choices are freedom for the familiar and cost for the unskilled.

Apps / Video and Music

Choosing artists just after Spotify registration: New blank-page users choose a few favorite artists, and those choices become the first seeds of recommendations. As listening behavior accumulates, real behavioral signals gradually replace the seeds. Point to examine: This is the standard implementation of reading a first choice as a seed and replacing it once behavior accumulates.
“Choose titles you like” after Netflix registration: A new profile chooses several favorite titles to seed a taste profile, but later behavior—watching, stopping, and rewatching—overwrites those choices. Point to examine: Letting later behavior overwrite the first choice avoids preserving a person incorrectly from a single decision.
TikTok's recommendation feed: Without a survey asking what people like, it reads taste solely from behavior—videos watched to the end, immediately skipped, and time spent hesitating—to choose what comes next. Point to examine: This is the extreme of using hands rather than words as signals, showing both the power to read texture without asking and the danger that the reading may confine a person.

Literature

Gamebooks such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series: Written in the second-person “you,” they make the reader the protagonist and branch endings through direct choices at each fork. Point to examine: This is one of the oldest devices that turns a reader into a builder of the story.

Film / Drama

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018): Viewers choose within ten seconds and send the story down branches; if they do not choose, a default carries it onward. Point to examine: It turns a watcher into a chooser while using defaults to reduce the burden on someone who hesitates, a device for regulating choice weight.