The UI of Comedy

Jerry Seinfeld is a master of stand-up comedy. Many people think they’re funny, but to make a career of it is a lot of work. As Seinfeld himself says, “I’m playing a very difficult game, and if you’d like to see someone who’s very good at a difficult game, that’s what I do.”

Designing interfaces between humans and technology is also a difficult game, and there are some striking similarities between what Jerry Seinfeld does and what we do. Let’s take a look at what helps Seinfeld be as funny as he is.

He’s got a “Movie Theater” bit in which he pokes fun at the “Please pick up any trash that may be on the floor” request that sometimes plays after the credits. Essentially, his stance is that it’s part of an unspoken arrangement between us, the movie-going public, and the nameless, faceless theater owners. They overcharge us for snacks, so we get to toss the wrappers on the floor.

Here’s how you and I might deliver it.

“Movie theaters are ripping us off. We pay way too much for stuff we shouldn't even be eating. And that’s fine! We get it! But in return, when I’ve finished my soda, I’m not going to get up and find a trash can for the empty cup, because the theater owner is overcharging me and I feel like taking revenge. So, I simply drop the cup onto the floor.”

Is it funny? Meh.

Here’s how Seinfeld delivers it.

Now *that’s* funny! Why?

Because he said less words and added a few simple gestures that most of us “get” without even thinking about it. And that’s the secret- he basically offloaded details that would have required us to think by turning them into these visuals;

1. “Seated holding a cup”- In the second image above, Seinfeld has crouched down slightly and is pretending to hold something cylindrical. When we combine this visual with the movie theater context, we can quickly infer that he’s seated in a movie theater watching a movie while drinking a soda. So he doesn’t have to give us these details verbally. He can just set up the joke by saying “In return, when I am done with something”
2. “Smiling, dropping the cup on the floor”- Four words ("I open my hand") and a smile allow us to re-experience that guilty pleasure of littering in a movie theater AND feel good about “getting” the joke despite the minimal information.

OK, so he's creating a very engaging, simple experience through what is apparently a sophisticated understanding of human perception and cognition. But can we really say that Seinfeld is aware of this offloading? In 2012, he gave a fascinating interview to the New York Times in which he discussed the lengthy process of iterating a joke until it’s just right. As an example, he mentioned a joke about marriage being a game of chess played on a board that’s made of moving water with pieces that are made of smoke. He struggled with this joke for three years, until one night, he had a breakthrough.

“The breakthrough was doing this”— Seinfeld traced a square in the air with his fingers, drawing the board. “Now I can just say, ‘The board is flowing water,’ and do this, and they get it. A board that was made of flowing water was too much data. Here, I’m doing some of the work for you. So now I’m starting to get applause on it, after years of work. They don’t think about it. They just laugh.”

He simplified the interface to the joke and found success. Striving for the same thing in the UX world might not make you as rich and famous as Jerry Seinfeld, but simple, clean UIs generally result in higher success rates, more conversions, and better user engagement. And that's what we're here for.