ALTERING THE DEAL

10 min readJul 13, 2022

Star Wars as a Case for Iterative Design

“I know you skipped us a Star Wars movie.”

The accusing eyes of my children showed no mercy.

I had an excuse, though. I hated the prequels. Or, I thought I did. The first time I showed them Star Wars, I opted for Machete Order (episode sequence: IV,V, II, III, VI). I wanted them to experience the reveal that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father as I had.

An entire generation has grown up and had kids of their own already knowing this, so it can be hard to appreciate the shockwave that moment sent through audiences. I painstakingly sheltered them from spoilers until they were old enough to experience that shock for themselves and I ensured that they could.

Now, I was accused of the blatant omission of Darth Maul, who my children insisted sounded pretty cool. I thought, sure he’s cool, but…overall, they have no idea how mistaken they are. It was I who was mistaken…about a great many things.

I relented. I had always been curious about the animated series work, but hadn’t yet seen any of it when the pandemic happened. As quarantine began, we decided that instead of 2020 being the year of COVID, we would make it the year of Star Wars, watching all of it. ALL OF IT. We began in March and finished sometime in December.

Here’s the current map of all of Star Wars, as of 2022, so some of this wasn’t out yet, but trust me — it was a lot.

The first thing I noticed, with some irritation, was that they loved Jar Jar Binks (more on him, later). I was horrified. This bumbling slapstick character that my generation universally reviled was getting all the laughs he wanted. Every cue. I was alone in my sourness. We got through THE PHANTOM MENACE and I found their reactions warming me to it. The goofiness didn’t hurt as much through their eyes.

ATTACK OF THE CLONES followed and after that we dug into what I would come to see as the height of the ‘pre-original” work, the CLONE WARS animated series and its finale’s interweaving with REVENGE OF THE SITH and possibly one of my favourite series endings ever. Then, to SOLO, REBELS and THE MANDALORIAN, and on…but, there was in Episode I a moment that triggered this article.

Episode I alters Star Wars in a way that reminded me of my work life, leading creative departments in general and (a lot of) digital product design, specifically. It updated the mythology in the way that you might update a digital product with a new feature to improve it and it did it in such a way as to change what had come before by implication. THE PHANTOM MENACE iterated on a feature of the original trilogy story that improved the related components of that story in the way designers build and improve the features of digital products and experiences.

To begin, when we say digital product, for those not as familiar, refers to any tool or experience you access through a digital interface, be it a website, or an app, etc., whether it’s consumer facing like a .com site or internal, like an HR portal, it’s a digital product. Next, a quick definition of Iterative Design, from Wikipedia:

“Iterative design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a product or process.”

In the “old days” of digital, we did a lot of big builds. Completely pull down the old, launch the new. And, sometimes, we still do, but, unless your needs have completely changed, or you’re implementing an entirely new technology, we often recommend smaller improvements over time. Product teams live this reality every day, iterating features based on research and updating products in a way that is more akin to organic growth than to complete replacement. In this process, we release batches of work, testing prototypes to determine if a hypothesis is effective, taking the findings, applying them, testing again, releasing when ready.

A cycle of continuous improvement, Iterative design is to work on enough of something at a time so as to improve the product overall. Iterative is often treated synonymously with Agile, but you can design iteratively without using the other elements of Agile. If this is something you’d like to know more about, you can read all about it here, where they offer this handy example of iterative: “[when] building a search function for a website, at first, the website would contain basic search criteria which could be later enhanced by adding more options in the next iteration”. At an apparel site for instance, you might start with search functions like, MEN, WOMEN, UNISEX, then add PANTS, SHIRTS, HATS, then get to RED, BLUE, GREEN, etc.

The main thing to understand is that you can use the Iterative model at any point in a product’s lifetime. You can launch a product, look at the data, see that something could be improved, draft a hypothesis to improve it, test that hypothesis with users using a prototype, develop it, launch it, test it again and repeat.

So, to really, really simplify it, you can add a new feature to an old product to make the product better at any time.

What does this have to do with Star Wars?

When George Lucas contemplated the villain for Star Wars, Darth Vader was a person’s name. First name, Darth. Last name, Vader. He was described in Lucas’ first draft as General Darth Vader, a “tall, grim looking humanoid”.

Now, for the hardcore Star Wars fans, it is amazing how hard it is to nail down some of these facts online, simply due to the sheer volume of commentary available. There’s even some controversy about Lucas’ own retelling of the tale, but I scoured everything I could find and I think this stands true.

As the story progressed, in the original trilogy, the name became an alias. He was Anakin Skywalker, then he changed his name and became Darth Vader.

The prequels changed that with the introduction of a the name of the Emperor, Shreev Palpatine, and his own alias, Darth Sidious and Darth Maul, his apprentice. This is where it got interesting to me to think of it as an iteration. Darth was no longer Darth Vader’s unique alias or name. The feature was updated. Now, it was a title. A rank. The rank of Sith Lord.

This is a design iteration that affects the entire platform. It creates an expanded library of character types (in design, components) and it both vastly improves and alters one of my personal favourite moments (in design, interactions) between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader.

Originally, in Episode IV, when Vader says:
“When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master…”
Obi-Wan Kenobi replies:
“Only a master of evil, Darth.”

Obi-Wan in that script is referring to Darth Vader by name. it could have just as easily been, “Only a master of evil, Jimmy.” Or, “Dave” or “Billy-Bob”. But, as the story evolves (iterates), we learn that Darth a title and that Anakin Skywalker never achieved the rank of Jedi Master and, to Obi-Wan, his fall from grace and betrayal of the Jedi has reduced him such that he is unworthy of a reference other than his corrupt, dark side title. Obi-Wan’s comment is now dripping with disappointment and disdain…

“Only a master of evil, Darth.”

The original design is improved by the context of the new component. Suddenly, the name, as a title, creates a much deeper, richer context. It adds curiosity, introduces layers to the hierarchy of our villains and makes them more interesting.

The original film (product) is unchanged, but by understanding the context of the word Darth (feature) the experience of the product is improved / changed.

+Patterns

When asked why Star Wars is so successful the creators always return to family. It possesses a core to which anyone can relate. The story also follows patterns. What Lucas refers to, when discussing the prequels, as “like poetry, they rhyme”. These are iterative as well. Each layer applied to explore new territory but also to validate what has come before (or, what chronologically comes later). Patterns help people relate to stories (just as they help them navigate digital products). This is why many cultures share aspects of mythological patterns — patterns that were among Lucas’ greatest influences.

In design, we like patterns, too. We create pattern libraries, which represent all the design patterns we use for a product. “They are repositories of UX and UI elements that frequently appear on a website.”

The patterns of Star Wars? Always two there are: family and balance. The family pattern is quite explicit, with Obi-Wan and Anakin, Vader and Luke (and Ahsoka Tano), Kanan Jarrus and Ezra Bridger, Han and Leiah and Ben Solo, Palpatine and Rey, Din Djarin and Grogu, in The Mandalorian, even Boba Fett and the Mos Espa street gang, Obi-Wan with Luke and Leia.

The balance aspect is more implicit. Kanan Jarrus actor, Freddy Prinze Jr, offers an impassioned perspective on this. It gave me a thought that I can’t find elsewhere, but knowing the Internet, I can’t be the first person to wonder this. I mentioned how my kids love Jar Jar. I realized, while watching Jar Jar’s iteration in CLONE WARS that on top of his slapstick antics they love him because he always wins through his innocence and ignorance.

What if, in contrast to the fan theory from Redditor, Lumpawarroo that he is a Sith, he actually can’t lose because he is pure? What if he is the balance to Palpatine, who despite his material success is always doomed to ultimate defeat. Where Palpatine is a brilliant, powerful Sith using The Force to achieve domination, The Force requires a balance of someone who is clueless, powerless, and optimistic. One is completely selfish and the other without a sense of self. Yoda isn’t The Force’s answer to Palpatine. Jar Jar is. Just a thought…And yes, as with all things that represent features that have been incrementally improved, he’s slightly better in CLONE WARS.

Slightly.

There are organizational benefits to iterative design. You keep and optimize what’s working. You can break problems down into smaller pieces and solve elements of them without discarding what works. You can test out your hypotheses before launch to be as sure as possible that they will work. But, the real benefit, could be an a-ha moment that unexpectedly improves an entire experience. Before you throw out all of your design for something completely new, ask yourself, do you need to? Or, would you be better off with the advantage of a system already in place that embraces the scale of everything you’ve already built, incrementally improved over time? It worked pretty well for Star Wars, anyway.

Post-script (features Obi-Wan Kenobi spoilers)

I first wrote this in 2020 and have been tinkering with it ever since. Often wondering if I should even publish it. Now, as I put the final touches on it, the Obi-Wan Kenobi series has completed.

In their climactic battle, we have another of the repetitions, or stanzas, as Obi-Wan Kenobi’s battle resembles Ahsoka Tano’s battle with Vader in STAR WARS: REBELS (some are calling it a flagrant rip-off, decide for yourself.)

When he leaves, unable to kill his former student, he sets up the line I mentioned earlier, as inspiring this article’s design metaphor by saying, “Good-bye…Darth”. The feature is now a standardized component of the pattern library.

And the circle is now complete.

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DYLAN GERARD is a Creative Director and Experience Design Lead in Toronto, Canada. He has led large-scale digital projects for brands that include ASCD, Boston Pizza, BMW, California Resources Corporation, Goodlife Fitness, INFINITI, Nike, Nissan, Pfizer, TCL, Visit California, and then some. He has also led a mix of advertising and brand identity work / codification for organizations like ASCD, Canadian Red Cross, Goodlife Fitness, MOVATI Athletic, and Melissa Wood Health. He is a sitting member of the Brand Council of the Canadian Marketing Association where he advises anyone who’ll listen.

Thanks

Thanks to Filipe de Carvalho who very kindly gave me permission to use his beautiful, award-winning flat Star Wars Icons. I didn’t end up getting them quite right for this, but they are gorgeous.

Check them out here.