6 Things watching ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage taught me about UX
UX is complex, and as many UX professionals mention, it’s like herding cats. Here I explain what I’ve learnt from wrestlers that is applicable to UX.
During the Christmas break, I watched a fantastic TV documentary on SBS about some of the wrestling greats. TBH, I always loved wrestling, and it kind of inspired me to write something very different.
For something a little different for the new year. I thought I’d use ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage as an allegory about UX. He was a colour WWF and WCW personality and had some fantastic insights related to UX principles.
1. The cream rises to the top
The cream rises to the top when testing with cohorts. The best design always wins with users based on the right feedback.
Multi-variant designs and iterative testing works in the way the users direct what works and makes sense. It means the more you whittle back that design, the better the solution for the user and business. Simply because you’re considering the needs of business and user requirements.
Placing criteria and focusing on only what is vital for the business to deliver while creating value for the user reduces scope.
The weaker iterations are thrown out, just like a Royal Rumble, while the best remains. Hence, according to Savage, the cream rises to the top and wins the belt.
This should also be true for design. The optimal solution to a user and business challenge should prevail based on a rigorous set of criteria developed through testing.
2. You may not like it, but accept it
All user feedback is a little savage, I mean it.
The user can be savage.
The best lesson any UX professional can take is that you may not like the outcome, but you need to accept it. Though the user’s experience is subjective, there is an objective influence over a business’s goal.
Titles to wrestlers are akin to qualitative research to UX professionals. They validated the value and experience.
Like Savage commented on the outcome of titles, “You may not like it but accept it” about the fates and destinies of the top wrestlers. You may disagree, but it’s a demonstrable outcome that is exceedingly difficult to argue. Disgreding validated reality is a recipe for failure.
Therefore, as a UX specialist, you must take the feedback even if it is unpleasant.
3. Every sport has its own cast of characters.
Just like wrestling, UX has its own set of characters. We call these personas and behavioural archetypes (I’ll write about these more in the future).
Wrestling is amazing at these personas. These are memorable archetypes for the wrestling narrative (and there have been some amazing ones over the years). What is comparable, these traits, behaviours and path narratives essentially are the Hero’s Journey.
Very Jungian, I know.
Firstly, a monomyth is a narrative device involving an adventurer who experiences a series of trials before being transformed and rewarded. We see this with wrestlers. The feuds between the heel and babyface resolve in the final, where one wins the belt in a great return. In Macho Man’s case, winning the title.
We have one ‘hero’ though the season who experiences transformation and atonements. Before I am questioned, what this has to do with UX, the concept of a monomyth is a user journey. We, as UX professionals, explain these experiences through user journey maps.
We explain the highs, lows, and behavioural traits through a given user's experience. And, yes, to an extent, this is phenomenology as UX people are explaining the meaning and relationships of the user journey. Akin to the monomyth.
Secondly, wrestlers have the most quirky and understandable personalities. They are analogous to human behaviour, and we empathise with these actions and traits.
Coplan (2006, p. 31–33) emphasises in the philosophy of film the function contagion plays in eliciting an emotional attachment to a character. Empathy and communication are crucial to connecting to a belief, thought, or judgement. As you understand, sympathising or empathising with the character, the distinction is for assigning a feeling to an experience (Thomson-Jones 2008, pp. 120–121).
With wrestling, it’s cheering on the babyface who has just won the belt or booing the heel who just entered the ring. In contrast, we use personas and archetypes in UX to align understanding to a user’s behaviours, traits and experiences.
As with wrestling, UX had its own cast of personalities. These are personas we reference when mapping an experience.
4. Use props (or in UX case, prototypes to explain a narrative).
During the 80’s pregame promos, Savage used props for engagement purposes. Savage was the master of props when wrestling. He used these to illustrate his point and simplify his story. They were funny and entertaining and thoroughly explained his character arc.
It was genius, and I believe many wrestlers commented on how apt he was in selling his narrative. UX professionals are storytellers. In our case, we sell our vision to users, businesses and stakeholders through prototypes. These can be anything from a sketch to a detailed clickable prototype.
Compared to Savage, UX designers tell the story, and we show a solution. It tells the story of the problem statement and potentially how we could solve it. Like a wrestler, we don’t tell. We provide prototypes that significantly improve user and business comprehension of a concept.
5. Get attentive with emotions and empathy, then roll with the feedback.
Macho Man’s interviews were surprisingly profound. As a UX professional, I was struck by one of his most prominent interviews in which he emphasised two essential concepts regarding empathy and resilience.
Firstly, to understand emotions is to add context and meaning to the experience. Camus (2013, pp. 87–89) explained that humans seek meaning, but it is subjective and dependent on the meaning they ascribe to something. Users assign meaning to a point in a journey, and we, as UX professionals, explain what this means to a business.
Regarding Macho Man, the significance of our interpretation and comprehension of these experiences is fundamental. And that’s the point, and we translate how a user feels (subjective) to the journey (objective).
Secondly, how we react and realign is essential to how a UX professional designs a journey. Refining and pivoting are vital aspects of an agile mindset. Feedback and insight direct how we design a product. As Macho Man illustrated, to make something meaningful, it is crucial to roll with the punches for success.
It’s why it’s an awesome perspective, as he understood the importance of a growth mindset and the meaning behind emotions.
Side note:
Emotion Typology is a fantastic resource for explaining user feedback for what the emotional context means.
6. Just because someone acts a certain way doesn’t mean they’re like that in real life.
In reality, the Macho Man was extremely private and a complete recluse in his later years. This raises the last and most crucial perspective about UX and Savage.
The reality of what a user says and does isn’t necessarily the same thing. The Macho Man in the ring was not the same in reality, and users are the same in this respect. What people claim to do not necessarily correspond with the truth. It’s why it’s necessary to use grounded theory around user research. Using both qualitative and quantitative metrics illustrates patterns and correlations between traits and behaviours.
Grounded theory (and phenomenology) validate the relationship between what a user says and does. Furthermore, as UX professionals, we correlate the propensity of what a user reports to the actual metrics. It does not imply that a user is inherently dishonest; instead, recollection is unreliable, and what a user reports is meaningful. Memory is fallible, and users tend to gravitate to signposts of the journey (points of the meaning).
Many times, with deep-dive research, what is discovered is what is reported by a user is not the whole reality. It’s like the tip of the iceberg; whereas a UXer, we seek to understand the behavioural traits, the why.
And like the Macho Man, there is far more to a user than the immediate things they tell.
It’s a matter of finding the whole story.
In summary, Ooo yeah!
“Being a wrestler is like walking on the treadmill of life. You get off it and it just keeps going” Randy Savage.
In many ways, Savage was a UX professional. He used gimmicks and behaviours that were based on audience reactions. What worked, he kept doing, and what didn’t, he discarded.
It was effectively Agile, via a feedback and refinement look based on the audience’s reaction. And it’s why he was able to be a monumental force and great of the profession. Macho Man gave the people what they wanted through some nifty, albeit pseudo-UX practices.
Yes, crude user testing, I know… but rather effective, and why I think he was doing UX deep down.
References
- Camus, A 2013, The Myth of Sisyphus, Kindle Edition, Penguin, London.
- Carroll, N 2010, ‘Movies, the Moral Emotions, and Sympathy’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy.
- Coplan, A 2006, ‘Catching Characters Emotions: Emotional Contagion Responses to Narrative Fiction Film’, Film Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 26–38.
- Thomson-Jones, K 2008, Aesthetics and Film, Kindle Edition, A&C Black.
