Imagine that you’re an aspiring Dominatrix with a fetish for making guys read dark existential philosophy to you. You’ll initially start giving most of your clients a foot show, because that’s what most users want. Until you become a specialist in the dark existential philosophy niche, you’ll have to do those foot shows for a while.
Clients who want to sit on medieval torture chairs and read dark existential philosophy are a very small demographic. This is why you need to make your medieval torture chair shiny and polished, meanwhile convincing your clients that it all has something to do with the foot show. Otherwise, you don’t get to orgasm to the dark philosophy that you’re interested in.
Client or user, you must keep it simple in order to appease greatest number of users at the dungeon. In a world where only some kink is considered acceptable, the Dominatrix is forced to make her fetishes as basic as possible, at least when she begins training. Yet by becoming an expert at giving foot shows, eventually the Dominatrix can transcend into doing the dark existential philosophy gig fulltime.
Enter the UX Dominatrix, also known as the systems-architect-babe. She’s aware of the needs of her most basic users, but advanced enough to make her own esoteric fetishes appeal to a wide group of people. Designing the UX to make her clients appreciate her bizarre aesthetic choices, she demonstrates how both the Designer and Dominatrix can learn how to simplify the complex.
It takes architects creating new fetishes for the Dominatrix to get more interesting clients, and a lot of foot shows are going to have to become existential. Gradually introducing a new element into the design process can make it feel less jarring to the clients. At first you may feel like you’re watering down your fetishes and sacrificing something personal, but with the right craft and skill you can make even your most twisted fetishes become popular on the right interface.
Making users submit to your aesthetic choices is the goal of both the Designer and the Dominatrix. In order to create a system in which the best existential philosophy novels are read in extreme and sensual torture chairs, the users must notice that perhaps the Dominatrix isn’t going to keep doing the same foot show over and over again.
Sitting alone in your medieval torture chair can be negative in terms of value, but as every great Designer knows, nobody becomes successful from doing the same foot show repeatedly. You don’t act out the same scene in order to appease the same designbro who merely wants to have his cock laughed at as he dances around in pasties. Nevertheless, the foot shows are important.
The Dominatrix, like the UX Designer, is a therapist. Her job is to make the clients and users feel better about themselves, and introducing new elements (if done strategically) is what keeps them coming back for more. Always be reinventing. The UX Dominatrix is going to make it so not all women in tech are robots, using both her intellectual powers and knowledge of human psychology to build the greatest medieval torture device known to man. Becoming the master of her own domain, the Web Mistress is back and ready to play. It’s time to get kinky.
—Rachel Haywire is a founder, writer, model, and musician. She is the author of The New Art Right.