User Experiences of Tarot Card Design

G6

Hey All,

Wanted to start a thread to share our user experiences with card makers and publishers about their decks since clearly most do not consider user experience in their design phase.

Hope this is therapeutic and helpful for everyone.

Here's my most recent experience I will share. This is the Art of Tarot deck set made by Metro Books. Admittedly, this is a cheap set. The cards are 3.4 x 4.7 roughly. For my taste, these cards are too big. The card stock is thin and these are glossy. This recipe amounts to what I refer to as Big Floppy Cards, which translate to an unwieldy/bad user experience.

CHECK OUT PIC BELOW

My solution for this particular set is to trim the deck because of all the wasted space in the card design. However, the problem in doing this is that the card back design will be chopped/cropped in a less than desirable way. I'm going to do it anyway because it is an acceptable trade-off, so stay tuned for follow-up pics.

The main point here is that if card makers/publishers are going to be unconscious of some of this user experience feedback, consider choosing your card back designs with modification by the user in mind.

Feel free to share your user experiences of decks on this thread, so hopefully we will get more of what we want and less of what we don't.

Paz
 

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Zephyros

Wouldn't this be better discussed in the Tarot Deck Creation forum?
Tarot Deck Creation

As long as the discussions center around general experiences and/or attempts to rectify perceived flaws then there's no problem in it being in Talking Tarot. The Creation forum is for decks in progress. Discussion about specific decks and experiences with them would be discussed in Tarot decks.

As the thread progresses it might be moved but I can't say right now due to the topic's rather ambiguous nature.
 

nisaba

I think it's painting with a pretty broad brush to say that "clearly most do not consider user experience in their design phase". And, in fact, it's difficult to *get* feedback from users if the deck hasn't been completed and published yet.

I would venture to suggest that creators of decks, certainly self-published ones, handle their product comprehensively themselves, before they release it.

Size and cardstock is subjective. Some people like solid, stiff cards, other like whippy, flexible or even cloth-like cardstock. And me, I have stubby little fingers, but I'm equally at home with Los-mini decks and with the Cary-Yale Visconti, which us almost as long as my forearm, and is as wide as most decks are tall. It merely alters my shuffling-style slightly. :)

For me, user experience is about the eyes. A quality deck is one that feasts the eyes and the mind. In the end, nothing else really matters to me.
 

G6

I think it's painting with a pretty broad brush to say that "clearly most do not consider user experience in their design phase". And, in fact, it's difficult to *get* feedback from users if the deck hasn't been completed and published yet.

I would venture to suggest that creators of decks, certainly self-published ones, handle their product comprehensively themselves, before they release it.

Size and cardstock is subjective. Some people like solid, stiff cards, other like whippy, flexible or even cloth-like cardstock. And me, I have stubby little fingers, but I'm equally at home with Los-mini decks and with the Cary-Yale Visconti, which us almost as long as my forearm, and is as wide as most decks are tall. It merely alters my shuffling-style slightly. :)

For me, user experience is about the eyes. A quality deck is one that feasts the eyes and the mind. In the end, nothing else really matters to me.

Perhaps it's broad strokes, but I bet if you ask most deck makers/publishers to give a breakdown of the reasoning behind their decisions in the design process I'd bet the answers would not involve much user experience of a prototype or market research/testing.

Yes, everyone has their likes and dislikes. The hope is that by sharing what you think about the design of the deck and user experience it will provide some usable information.

For me, in addition to design/layout of the artwork, user experience is more tactile and about handling as well as space consideration for spreads. As with the Art of Tarot and several others, even if I really dig the artwork, I won't use a deck if it doesn't work for handling and space considerations.
 

G6

Update: Art of Tarot PICS

Okay, so now this deck is roughly 3x3 inches.

The card backs don't look as bad as I thought. I would still advocate for card back designs that would be unaffected by modification.

PICS
 

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G6

As long as the discussions center around general experiences and/or attempts to rectify perceived flaws then there's no problem in it being in Talking Tarot. The Creation forum is for decks in progress. Discussion about specific decks and experiences with them would be discussed in Tarot decks.

As the thread progresses it might be moved but I can't say right now due to the topic's rather ambiguous nature.

Hey Z, if it seems ambiguous the idea is a discussion on user experiences with all aspects of a deck including the deck itself, packaging (box/bag) etc. Hopefully, folks will post user feedback on decks they have experienced/handled. This feedback should be things that work or don't work for them. Specific praises or issues/complaints, solutions, which may include modifications, discarding elements or selling/giving it away...

If the thread needs to be moved, feel free, thnx.
 

Barleywine

And then there are deck creators like Ciro Marchetti, Erik Dunne, Seven Stars and others who participate here on this forum, where they can't hide from our input. :)
 

G6

And then there are deck creators like Ciro Marchetti, Erik Dunne, Seven Stars and others who participate here on this forum, where they can't hide from our input. :)

Although they may wish to at times, lol!
 

CrystalSeas

I would still advocate for card back designs that would be unaffected by modification.
In Robin Woods' book "Robin Wood Tarot: The Book", she talks about her publisher rejecting a back design after they changed the size of the card by 1/16 inch.

If things need to be redesigned every time the card size changes by a barely perceptible amount, I'm not sure there's any good way to design them to be unaffected by user modification. How many ways could a user trim them? And how many different designed would you have to layer on top of each other to make that possible?