Don't Design Ritual

In 2016 Apple shipped a MacBook Pro that started up in silence.

The chime was gone. One F-sharp major chord, written into the Mac in 1984 as a power-on self-test tone — the sound of a machine confirming its own memory was intact before handing you the screen. By 2016 it had been vestigial for years. Diagnostics had long since moved somewhere you couldn't hear them. Removing it was correct.

People were furious. Not inconvenienced — furious. They passed around terminal commands to bring it back. In 2020, Apple restored it in a firmware update, quietly, the way you return something you shouldn't have taken.

Nobody at Apple designed a ritual. They designed a test tone.

Why ritual

Imagine you are asked to recall someone you meet long times ago. What can you tell about him?

Peak effect.

What is ritual

It's not celebration, neither gamlification.

Design "for" ritual

Don't design ritual, design for ritual.

In my early days of designing I thought ritual is celebration, like throw a confetti after a milestone step.

The chime is totally unncessary for your Mac to start up and what's seems worse, it consume a little more battery.

Hence you don't really need to design a ritual. By making a unique card after subscription you are actually trying to make your works feels like worth that money, but good content are what people want now - unless the subscription is the end (like Resend shows a card after a email was boardcast).

So what's the ritual here? Make the entire process clean and trustworth, then prepare a feedback to add weight.

The card is still fine, but don't hope it bring a ritual, which is totally depends on who's paying, they may trying to pay that in a video meeting and once they clicked the Pay button they slide into another google docs tab.

Notes