What Is Periscope The App Design

The Addictive Design of Periscope

I just started using Periscope, the live video streaming app, and I'm hooked. The subtle and simple elements of the UX are all cleverly designed to pull you in and keep you coming back.

As we're working on the Tappur app at the moment, we've been thinking a lot about addictive UX and gamification; how to trigger those chemicals in your brain to delight and excite you. Here's my observations on Periscope's design.

A Flurry of Hearts

Me getting a few hearts from my one fan. Ok, actually it was just me. I hearted myself.

The most delightful animati o n in the app is a simple one, yet so effective. At any time, viewers can tap the screen to give the broadcaster a "heart". It's basically a Facebook Like, except that you can heart the same broadcast almost as much as you want. It's like sending a digital smile, letting you interact on the most basic emotional level: a packet of encouragement.

More popular broadcasts have a constant stream of hearts floating up from the thumbs of their fans (or their bots?). And yet, the flood of info is still beautiful and unobtrusive, as opposed to, say, a number counter of total hearts (a ticker-ticker, you might say).

When you tap, you can see your distinctively-colored heart and track it amongst the chaos. Some hearts float up faster than other ones. It is this attention to detail that makes an animation that can stand the tests of constant repetition over time. The delicate animation gives a euphoric feeling of satisfaction to press it, and more so for the broadcaster getting it! Everyone's striving for those hearts at mass scale.

Notification Nightmares

My phone after leaving it alone for 5 minutes.

Live broadcasting requires a certain immediacy that posting to Twitter just can't meet, so Periscope gives you immediate notifications when someone you follow starts broadcasting. I'm guessing the designers spent hours trying to get the perfect whistle noise as the notification sound: just the right amount of hook to pull you in.

However, notifications could work better. There needs to be an in-between state between following and not following, so you can surface certain users' posts in your feed, but not necessarily get a loud-ass notification in the middle of the night when someone in Turkey is 'scoping their breakfast.

Otherwise, you can't follow more than 10–20 people because of the onslaught of notifications, and you end up with just random stuff in your feed. This is a severely limiting factor on the social aspect, as most people will only follow their friends or celebrities, and very few will able to reach that viral threshold.

The other issue with the social aspect is that it's hard to find broadcasters you want to follow. The in-app search isn't great, and there's no way to publicly link to profiles outside of the app, which means it's really hard to find lists of people to follow, or promote profiles on other social networks. Following someone on Twitter doesn't necessarily follow them on Periscope. There is opportunity to merge these in a friendly way.

There's Always Someone Watching

As soon as you start a broadcast, people join in to watch it. It's almost instant gratification, that "oh, someone cares about me!" feeling, combined with the surprise exhilaration of being instantly transformed into a performer for an potentially limitless lava flow of audience.

The first joiners are almost too instant, it seems. Either there are some really dedicated "Knights of New" that just sit by their phones waiting for some rando to start broadcasting, or, they are bots: put there by Periscope to give you that rush of performing for a live audience, even if they aren't real. I have no data to support this, but, at least, it seems the only way to grow from a small network of viewers.

A smart UX decision is that the viewer counter in the lower right corner includes you in the count, so you never have zero viewers. It also updates more slowly/thoughtfully: I did an experiment, and repeatedly the counter said there were at least 2-3 more viewers than appeared in the list of viewers when I swiped up.

To take this further, Periscope could make it so "someone" always sticks around: implemented it so if the last real viewer logs off, it doesn't notify you until after a "new", fake viewer has already appeared. It would be an interesting experiment; broadcasting to no one but bots.

Emotional Robots

Is there a Turing Test for this? Computers may not be able to fool us intellectually — because we can outwit them — but can they fool us emotionally? To trick our brains into thinking we're loved, we're happy, we're making a real contribution to the world?

L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895). *Legend has it* *that it may be the first 3D film.*

Virtual Reality filmmakers are already discovering that, in VR, it's too easy to manipulate the viewer's emotions. VR artists have to show restraint for today's audiences, who are to VR like the frightened people watching the first film ever made — thinking they were being run over by the on-screen train — were to cinema. Should UX designers show the same restraint?

I think designers should definitely show restraint, in order to not overload or exploit the user. Incorporating subtle design elements like these can be beneficial and delightful to your users, but be too heavy-handed and you end up just being annoying (e.g. Farmville). Periscope has almost struck the right balance; once they fix their notifications, I think it will catch on quickly. Design is all about balance and subtlety, so make sure to think about these things (and user test, user test, user test!) when designing your apps.

In any case, the really fascinating thing was, that in these pre-apocalyptic days of shortened-to-the-point-of-irony attention spans, 9 people stayed around to watch me make a sandwich. For 10 minutes.

If you'd like to watch me make sandwiches and play guitar (not at the same time… yet), please follow @odbol.