Nice explanation of how to use new USA today screen
April 25th, 2012What’s the difference between a “Warning” & a “Notice of Warning”
April 24th, 2012
Play testing
February 21st, 2012Designing Games for Non-Gamers: Rapid Prototyping as a Design Methodology by Dennis Paiz-Ramirez, Sarah Chu, Allison Salmon, and Belinda Gutierrez
A short but good read. I photocopied it and handed it out to the GameOn team. Playtesting has such a nicer sound than usability testing. Below are some of the what I considered the best takeaways.
- Quick prototypes paired with frequent playtests allowed us to address any misconceptions we had about our target audience.
- Questions we asked during playtesting were: 1 – Can players determine the goal of the game? 2 – Does the game retain players’ interest? 3 – Do game scenarios make sense?
- Tutorials: we gave players information about the interface as it became necessary for gameplay.
- We learned that the tutorial should be explicit about what players can do in the game and should explain what happens when a player performs a game action. We also need to allow users to skip the tutorial and explore the game if they feel comfortable doing so.
- Keep [tutorial] content focused on the goal of the game.
- Highlight the game’s main goal first.
- Conduct frequent playtests.
Referenced
User Experience, Volume 10, Issue 4, 4th Quarter 2011 www.UsabilityProfessionals.org
p 11-13
Some morning Sketching fun
February 16th, 2012
Sometime when I’m writing, instead of an outline I’ll just start sketching while thinking the problem I’m facing.
Here are this mornings sketches while thinking of gamification.
LOVE take as much as you need
February 15th, 2012
This just tickles me in just the right way. I saw this sign/ad on W Madison street in Chicago.
Pinhole Camera Gallery Exhibit
January 19th, 2012A great opening reception at Durand Art Institute tonight by Stefano Cossu. Sparks, ghosts, and Coals. He built his own cameras seen below. All these locations from the Chicago streets at night. Dreamy and full of contrasts that force the viewer to see the landscape and the photograph as physical object at the same time. Wonderful!
I find the night settings exciting. Forms take on a more dreamy cast with light sources emerging from cocoons of embryonic wombs of id darkness.
Unlike the modern digital renderings from websites that harbor no tracings of production, no context of construction, Cossu’s work stands in sharp contrast.
His work celebrates the mechanics and materials of art as much as the idea of sign. Today’s digital images are bereft of any birthmarks, nor embody any aspect of the photographer or the mode of production.
It’s is Cossu’s who brings the conversation back to exposing us in a beautiful way to seeing the simulacra we are building with digital modes of production.
Bravo!
Future of Learning Thoughts
January 18th, 2012Good diner with the Future of Learning club last night at Aroy Thai.
Some interesting discussion topics
1.Two big challenge for future training is how to wade through large systems level data and designing leadership learning experiences.
2.Customer service can not be taught directly, only as part of some task.
3. Instead of education for individuals – education/schools/learning systems/environments for human machine teams. Augmented humans — how do we redesign “education” and training for the future of augmented humans?
4. Gamification and the importance of Open Badges and Mozilla. Badging systems like this are even more so effective to signal status and to encourage social promotion. Though a wider badge ecosystem will drive designers crazy.
Exquisite Corpse
January 17th, 2012Last week at at GameOn team lunch we played Exquisite Corpse – a parlour game in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold to conceal part of the picture, and pass it to the next player to continue with the picture.
Experience Design (UX) & Experience Points (XP), like peanut butter and chocolate
January 16th, 2012User experience designers should look “experience points”, a gamification concept, to help them build and design better experience.
Experience points, of the different types of point systems in game design and gamification, are the most important element in a gamification framework.
Experience points are how you watch, rank, and guide your player. This gets to the heart of experience design and user centered thinking.
A good exercise would be to go through your webpages and assign experience points to every activity you want users to engage in. This way you make it explicit how important each is in relation to other actions across your entire web presence. This forces you to look at experience design above the level of page design.
See also
Sketching & merchandising expensive jewelry
January 5th, 2012Look at how this store sells people by merchandising sketches of the product. Emotive and personal, conveying a different attitude than just a product image might.
