Pain as a Tool of Design

From Japanese bonsai masters to game designers. Explore a history of using pain as a tool to shape human behaviors.

I usually go to bed at 9 p.m., but a family member got a health scare last night and ended up in the ER room.

After 3 hours of waiting, I came home and did some mindless reading until I came across this brilliant article about the American bonsai artist, Ryan Neil.

He is the only American who has ever completed the crushing apprenticeship with the Japanese legend – Masahiko Kimura.

Kimura is considered a living legend of bonsai art who creates ethereal bonsai pieces that he sells for as much as a million dollars per piece. He was brilliant at using power tools to shape brilliant, unorthodox designs. His art inspired imitators, followers, Pinterest boards, and students.

But the Japanese master is cold and harsh. His methods to train students are brutal. He specifically advocated for physical abuse to reach “memorable pain”. Kimura berated his apprentices, subjected them to servile work, and did not shy away from endorsing physical torment in his workshop. Senior apprentices slapped juniors, hit them with a stick, and even punched them in the face.

It is not a surprise that very few last until the end of their apprenticeship.

We might criticize Kimura for using pain to shape his students. I by no way condone his actions, but I think this is a great opportunity to talk about the history of pain as a tool to shape human actions.

Humans have long used pain as an impact tool.

Let’s look at all types of pain that humans can inflict on others:

1. Emotional Pain

2. Physical Pain

3. Auditory Pain

4. Visual Pain

5. Olfactory Pain

Let’s take a closer look and use this understanding to observe human behavior and design for them.

Emotional Pain in Product Design

Out of the pain, the most difficult one to describe is emotional pain. I guess this is because we live in a culture that accepts the presence of emotion.

Children are told not to cry. Men are said to man up. Even though, things are getting better with the mental health movement. Few of us are aware of the emotions we carry with us every day.

But the master game designers know this tool very well. The challenge is to design the experience so the users feel invested in the game without being so harsh that they want to give up.

You can see the manipulation of emotional pain in how Mario fell to death in the iconic Super Mario Game.

With the use of sound design, spatial design, and brilliant game mechanics, players are definitely upset and experience emotional pain. This pain creates challenges and makes the game more sticky.

Another fine example of using emotional pain is in Flappy Bird. The game was criticized for its difficulty levels. But the angst it caused was addictive. This design was inspired by many other games and continued to inspire many copycats.

Physical Pain in Product Design

It is hard to imagine designers use physical pain in their design but there are many examples of this in product design.

Amazon is full of toy design, and party games that use electric shock to excite, prank, surprise, and perhaps educate about the danger of household electric execution.

Arguably, haptic feedback in app design is a form of physical pain, a mild physical sensation to highlight a digital experience.

This tactile technique requires a thoughtful touch from designers to implement successfully.

So far, designers have been very creative in using this technology. Haptic feedback is used in gaming, messaging, banking, and fitness apps.

VR/AR apps utilize haptics to engage users in the most immersive experience. They would receive a physical sensation when about to reach their destination or complete a task.

Auditory Pain in Product Design

This technique was very well-used in the early generation of digital product design.

Remember the 2000s? When antivirus programs liked to give us screeching feedback sounds when they detected risk? Or Microsoft Windows gave us the thugging “drummh” sound when we made a mistake or system error.

It was annoying and very much not welcome but it did help the spread of antivirus programs, and users who were willing to pay for the licensing.

Now there is more nuance in creating such kind of Auditory Pain. Sound design for software has gotten more sophisticated since the early day of digital design.

Listen to this failure sound from Duolingo. It gets played when users fail to pass a test. The sound design starts with a trumpet with high notes then gets punctuated with a low register bass. The sound piece depicts a disappointing moment well without annoying users like the 2000s software sound.

Duolingo is a fine example of using the right amount of frustration and pain in hooking users.

Visual Pain in Product Design

I have postponed this article for a while as I could not articulate the usage of visual pain in Product Design.

Until I saw this viral post of a mattress full of pee marks and a thousand likes. Here is the caption of that viral post. You can feel the pain of cleaning up this mattress.

I remember that famous moment when Steve Jobs rejected the color yellow for his Mac, saying people do not want to buy pee.

For a long time, designers have used color and shape to create visual pain and impact user behavior.

I like to keep it consistent and cite Mario's usage of the death symbol to indicate a user failure in the game.

The symbol is a combination of Bowser, the main villain in the Mario games, and design elements of traditional Japanese devil motifs.

left: Mario's death symbol, right: Japanese devil

Designers of action games have used blood and sometimes even gore to keep users engaged. Some fine examples are:

1. The Last of Us

2. Manhunt

3. Blade and sorcery

4. DOOM Series

5. Resident Evil

6. Manhunt

Even the child-friendly game, Animal Crossing has its watered-down version of inflicting pain on users if they fail to pay their rent. Bob would show up and punch you into a blazing explosion.

Olfactory Pain in Product Design

Smell forms an essential part of the human experience. Developers, designers, and marketers have been pushing the horizon to incorporate sense.

With the current technology, we have emulated the smell experience through sound and visual design. However, startups are building tools and tech kits to enrich the smelling experience in gaming and VR. A fine example is the Cillia Developer Kit from Haptic Sol. It contains a fan kit monitored by software that can blow scents from the scent packages into your nose based on your gaming or content experience.

Some fans have expressed their enthusiasm over the incorporation of the smell of real blood and battle in their action games.

As a pacifist, I feel conflicted about these kinds of development and mimicking of real-world suffering. But as a species, we do love violence and war games.

Pain is a powerful tool to shape human behavior and experience. Humans have used it for thousands of years and probably to the end of our mankind.

What do you think? Did you spot any usage of pain in design, films, music, and other forms of human craft?

Let us know in the comments and expand the discussion.