codehesive.com : interaction design, ux, data visualisation, gaming & miscellany

Last weekend I started reading The Art of Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki. I’d heard a lot about this book (and Guy) in general, so had fairly high expectations for it. The book is just as the title suggests: how to enchant people, either personally or with a product and so on.

From the outset, to be honest, I found it hard to really understand the hype. It’s by no means a bad book, but just not as — well, “enchanting” as one would expect. But I kept going, until I hit this point: speaking about the concept of being a “mensch” (based on the Yiddish expression for being beyond just a human), Kawasaki ends an anecdote about actor James Garner with these words:

…in other words, Garner was saying, “Don’t menschion it”.

Ugh. Really Guy? I instinctively slammed the book shut at that point. A book on enchantment had actually made me feel so disenchanted I slammed it shut because of an appallingly cheesy pun. For me, the book’s credibility had just vanished.

But aren’t all puns appalling and cheesy?

By coincidence, shortly after reading that pun, I saw this wonderful video from comedian Rich Hall:

I’m not cuing the video to the pun: watch the whole thing, you won’t regret it — it’s genius (but the pun is at 2:19 if you can’t wait or missed it).

Rich Hall’s pun? Now that’s enchanting and funny.

Humour is a powerful thing. Even with design. Google is a great example: the “I’m feeling lucky” button through to many Google Doodles. Twitter’s Fail Whale is another great example. It can lower the tone, relax and even amuse people in otherwise frustrating situations.

But it’s a dangerous approach: if the fail whale wasn’t so cute, it might not work. And this is the problem with puns: they are the riskiest form of humour. I disagree that they’re the lowest form of wit: instead I think they’re hardest form of wit to execute. For every Rich Hall that makes a genuinely funny one, there’s a thousand terrible ones being made by your uncle and member of senior management no one likes.

So sorry Guy, but for me you’re now in the same category of wit as the latter two examples.

I think I’ll move on to my next book.