Designing products where mistakes have consequences

Fall of sophomore year. Waldo Library, Western Michigan University. Third floor computer lab, about 75 machines, a wall of windows on the far side. I was in line at the front desk, trading my numbered mouse pad back for my student ID.

Behind me, someone yawned. Loud, both hands to the face, the kind you’d fake in an improv skit. I looked, thought nothing of it, and turned back to the desk.

Then the gasps. The same student was bouncing in their chair.

I lifeguarded every summer, so I knew what I was looking at. By the time I got across the room they were on the floor, and I could hear their head hitting the concrete through the thin carpet. I flipped their padded office chair on its back and got the backrest under their head. Fifteen more seconds of shaking, at most. A bracelet on their wrist I didn’t need to read.

The shaking stopped and they started choking on their own spit. I rolled them into the recovery position. They gargled, then breathed.

Then I looked up at their screen. A pop-up, maybe 300 by 200 pixels, in its own window on an old Mac. Bold text flashing YOU’RE A WINNER, ringed with lights chasing in a circle like an old Vegas sign.

EMS took them out on a stretcher. I never learned their name.

Years later someone recognized me. “Aren’t you the guy who saved that person?” I didn’t save anyone. I helped them ride out something they’d ridden out before. What stayed with me was the screen. Somebody designed that ad, shipped it, and never found out what it did.

Design decisions reach real people. Every one of them.