Sunday, September 26, 2010

Eating challenge demonstrates good design



Watching Man vs. Food with my housemate, I noticed an eating challenge that is unusually well designed. Typical food/eating challenges have the basic time limit and so on and looks something like this:

  • Defined quantity of food.
  • Fixed time limit.
  • Prize for the winner.
  • Hall of fame public recognition.
Here's what's different about this Randy's stuffed pizza challenge that I think is so well designed:
  • Two people do this challenge together.
  • There is not only a hall of fame but a hall of shame where the losers must write their names.
The hall of shame is great advertisement. This challenge sees about 1% success. Plus, the fact that it's 10 lbs of pizza for TWO people, seems to make it seem so much more fun and likely that two people would see the hall of shame and say "Look at those losers, I bet we could beat them." So much more normal and likely sounding than some individual deciding to go do this on their own. And more fun than two friends going to do their own challenges at the same time.