this is violence

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
- Anton Chekhov

Let me just get this out of the way: As a devoted Lost fan, even I realize that the last thing the world needs at this point is another word written about Lost. But hear me out – because this isn’t a post about Lost, rather it’s a post about what Lost can teach us about design. More specifically, what it can teach us about the relationship between strategic intent and design.

I’m going to mention a number of specific plot points and events from the beginning of the show through the finale, so if you haven’t seen the entire series and want to go in fresh, you should stop now.

Let’s say I asked you to design a camera – what are the things you’d need to know before you could get started? Maybe format, digital or film. Maybe its intended audience, professional or amateur. What about price point? There are likely dozens, all of them important and it’s the answers to these questions, and the synthesis of these answers that define a successful design. After all, if you’re designing a digital rangefinder, adding a faux film advance lever or a film rewind handle would create a camera that, if viewed as single aesthetic endeavor could be called beautiful, would still be a failure of a design.

This I think is was a core failing of Lost as a designed narrative. While each aspect of the show was nearly perfectly designed, it ultimately failed to work as a cohesive whole. Taken as individual design elements, the numbers, the hatches, the others, the haunted shacks and ring of ash, DARMA, the time traveling; each part was design perfectly, and even as a group, when viewed as a single aesthetic endeavor, it’s beautiful. The problem comes in when trying to actually use the product. As it turns out, each of those design elements was the narrative equivalent of a film advance on a digital camera – beautiful perhaps, but so pointless and distracting that it actually degrades the totality of the product.

The final, stark example of this was the very last scene of the program. As the closing credits went by, the viewer is left with the image of plane wreckage on a beach. Given the nature of the Lost, it’s not surprising that many fans wondered what this meant. Which wreckage is this? Is this the original 815? Was it Ajira 316? Does this mean everyone was dead the whole time? Such a stark image, placed so conspicuously into the show must be there for a reason, right? No. Direct from ABC was this – “The images shown during the end credits of the ‘Lost’ finale, which included shots of Oceanic 815 on a deserted beach, were not part of the final story…”

Hearing the writers speak about these elements towards the finale of the show, they seem almost annoyed that people were trying to piece things together, or applying meaning to elements of the show. But can they really be surprised? This is the lesson I think designers can take from the show – don’t design the path you don’t want people to take. It sounds so basic I feel a little dumb saying it, but I still find myself telling designers not to put visual emphasis on elements they don’t want people to pay attention to. Don’t design elements that don’t express the intent of you or the product.