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Cargo Cult Design and WHY you should AVOID IT

What is Cargo Cult Design?




Have you ever tried to follow other successful games and apps design while working on yours..??.I am not talking about graphics or other stuff. I am talking about those "Special qualities" that we think made it successful.Well at some point or other we all try to make many things as they were in other successful apps.

OK Dee i got it..but title of this post is about some Cargo-cult thing..........whats that ?.and whats the problem with this approach..? 

The problem is that reason behind these successful ones is not there design,yes it matters but not as much as the their luck. This kind of approach can lead to the the "cargo cult design".This term cargo cult comes from the per-industrial period.You see there were many tribes in pacific region. These tribes were exposed to the cargo coming from western countries.This was obviously beneficial for these tribal people but as the westerners left the cargo ceases to arrive, leading to a very uncomfortable situation for these tribes. These tribes the turned to rituals to try to re-create the conditions at which the westerners arrived but obviously this didn't worked.These people then even made mock-ups of military aircraft and the airstrips.

You can find more information about cargo cult here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

When we try to add things from other successful works in our work just because they are from a successful work and not understanding the reason behind it, we are doing something called cargo cult design.

There is a whole terminology about this for example if you copy someones code and you don't know how it works it can be said as Cargo cult programming, there is even a term called Cargo cult software engineering.You can find more information about these here.


We need to understand the real thing behind something successful not just follow it.You should focus on motivation theory and behavioral psychology if  you are designing the app, or focus on algorithmic analysis while working on a code.

Guys this is it for this post, please share this post if you find something useful learned something new also please share you thoughts in the comment section.

                                Thank you very much for giving your precious time

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