The floor is so important because people sort of wan der in off the strip, and the carpet is drawing them into the gaming areas. I learned to get people over to these prophet hubs. It's lke n analizing for maximum mindlessness. And really, when i started this project, it was las vegas and casinos everywhere. We're in this shift in design that used to be jangly bright like Las Vegas.
Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Addiction by Design, has spent years studying how slot machines hold gamblers spellbound, in an endless loop of play. She never imagined the addictive designs which she had first witnessed in Las Vegas would go bounding into Silicon Valley and reappear on virtually every smartphone screen worldwide. In the first segment of this two-part interview, Natasha Dow Schüll offers a prescient warning to users and designers alike: How far can the attention economy go toward stealing another moment of your time? Farther than you might imagine.