How are Industrial Design and Interaction Design different? Is it true that Industrial Designers drink more during work hours? Are Interaction Designers better looking?
Tomorrow night: Artefact will be presenting with Carbon alongside frog design, Microsoft Hardware, Fluke, and Hornall at frog design in Seattle. If you’re a fan of game shows, in flight entertainment, or Christopher Konrad, then you will love this event.
Learn more about the “soft” and “hard” sides of product design. See work that was designed by Artefact and Carbon working together.
Event Details When: Wednesday, July 22nd. Doors open at 6:30, presentation starts at 7:00. Where: frog design at 5th and Pine in Seattle - 413 Pine Street, Seattle, WA 98101 [map link] Fee: Free!
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the play by play @artefactgroup
Sam Chenaur, Platform Strategy Advisor for Microsoft, wrote a great entry covering our collaboration with Identity Mine and InfoSpace. The project set out to design a new toolbar that utilizes the power of Silverlight™ technology to perform engaging interactions beyond current experiences. InfoSpace currently offers wallpapers and recipes, but they have set out plans to extend this service through the simple, yet functional shell, such as weather, music and horoscopes.
Chenaur also points out the benefits of an RIA implementation, which extends the idea of the conventional toolbar:
The use of a rich interactive technology, like Silverlight, to power a user interactivity is important as it creates an engaging experience for the user. Unlike other toolbars available today, crammed with indistinguishable icons, the toolbars developed by InfoSpace are a fresh experience with simple, elegant and consistent user experiences. Each toolbar sort of act as a Rich Interactive Application (RIA) that happens to live at the top of your browser.
This last Thursday (October 23, 2008) a bunch of interaction and game designers made the trek across 520 or across campus to the IxDA’s local monthly meeting hosted by Office Labs.
The theme this month was “Lessons from Game Design” with three speakers who have worked or participated in the game design industry to present on their experience and insights. Microsoft was kind enough to host the event in their building 33 Conference Center and also provide hungry designers with free dinner, er, i mean hors d’oeuvres.
But enough about food, let’s get on to some good gaming… can you figure out how to rescue the princess?
Daniel Cook first spoke on “Prototyping and Sketching” by describing how to apply game design methodology to software interaction design. He did so by attempting to rebuild the common “Rescue the Princess” game scenario as a general software or productivity application.
This little gem (figuratively and literally) above is the “Web 2.0” newly improved version of “Rescue Princess Enterprise 2008.” (Although that one button design may descrease the time needed for users to complete the task, it’s probably still not as fast as these guys). Through these and many other examples he described how the secret ingredient to game design is “Exploratory Learning.”
Exploratory Learning provides that:
You are given a goal
You aren’t told how to reach it
You can fail
You can succeed
Delight comes when you figure it out on your own
and most importantly:
The designer has to believe the user is smart
In game design where the user is constantly rewarded in the game and pulled through a narrative story (usually with a healthy dose of jaw-dropping visuals) this makes sense and works. It reminded me of a typical “Usability Study” where a piece of software is tested to see how well the user can use it on the first try. Typically, success (or failure) rates are measured in how long or how many tries it takes the user to figure it out, with 0 being the ideal. But in game design, failing is part of the experience and provides greater reward when the user figures it out on their own.
Purposeful failing is typically something that is avoided at all cost in software applications, where the user’s goal is to accomplish a task quickly rather than blow off some steam shooting space aliens. Dan proposes that both can be possible - that the use can accomplish tasks while having fun at the same time. It’s something to think about.
All of this reminded me of a TED Talks video (part 3, timecode 16:40) I watched recently about a educationally-challenged student who became self-taught in computer programming because it was “fun” and “rewarding” as opposed to learning to read which didn’t seem to have any value to him.
Next up, Mark Long, founder and co-CEO of Zombie Studios, spoke on the role of “Narrative in Game Design”, and how it then may apply to software interaction design.
In particular, Mark descrbied how games like Grand Theft Auto IV have built on the narrative rise and fall in classic story telling, tying the user’s interactions directly into that story. But he also wanted to show that game design is, can, and should develop beyond the current “grammar set” that has been established and used since the early days of film (reaching its full vocabulary with Citizen Kane) by debunking 2 faults of typical games:
using rewards as a way of dragging the user through a mediocre story
fixating on telling a story from a single character “hero’s” perspetive
He proposed that games, or some iteration thereof, will become the defacto entertainment of the future and, like the Nintendo Wii, will incorporate more advanced methods of interation.
At the end of the evening, George Amaya, User researcher at Microsoft Game Studios, spoke on his work conducting usability studies on local multiplayer (social) games like SingStar, and others while developing the Xbox 360 game “Lips.”
Among the interesting findings, they discovered that karaoke and karaoke games is very different between Japan, the US, and Europe (Germany in particular). Totally different dynamics and style of play were discovered in these different regions via these user research sessions. They also discovered interesting dynamics within groups - different behavior and interaction between the performers and the observers.
The one universal take-away? Karaoke games like Lips are a lot more fun when you’re drunk.
Amen, brother.
Note: It was stated that a copy of the slide decks and a full video of the session would be posted at some point on the Office Labs blog. So far, we haven’t seen it but will update this when it comes live.
Join us for our monthly IXDA meeting - hosted by Microsoft’s Office Labs on Microsoft’s main campus - Building 33.
This month’s topic is Lessons from Game Design
This is a chance to learn where the fields of interaction design and game design overlap. It’s a chance for IxD to learn more about how games challenge, reward, and engage players. We’ll hear how game designers use prototyping and sketching (Daniel Cook), how usability techniques are used to fine-tune casual game play (Mac Smith), and how narrative and storytelling immerse players in experiences (Mark Long).
Details
Thursday October 23, 2008 at 7:00pm
Microsoft Convention Center - Building 33
16070 NE 36th Way
Redmond, Washington 98052
This past Thursday saw the 2nd annual IDSA design debate held at the Olympic Sculpture Park in downtown Seattle. A decent-sized crowd showed up for drinks and hors d’oeuvres and subsequent righteous debate on design.
On panel were Anne Traver (graphic design), Bill Buxton (interaction design), Bill Gaylord (architecture), and Jill Solberg (industrial design) to discuss their aligned or opposing views on various pre-selected design topics. For example: Are designers just styling more stuff to sell to consumers to stuff the pockets of rich corporate America? Do large corporate clients suck the creativity out of projects? Can environmentally-conscious design happen at the individual level, or does it have to be a federal mandate? And so on.
Bill Buxton, offering to be the “official” contrarian, provided much of the stimulus in the ensuing debate. He offered lively counter-arguments to the relatively moderate opinions of the panel and could always be counted on to provide a few off-the-wall ideas to keep things interesting.
The moderator, Jacob Fleischer, also donned his hat of excessive trash and consumerism (created specially by Bill Gaylord, pictured left) to provide a level of comic levity to the subject of designers being primarily responsible for landfills.
The debate provided some unique insights and topics, but with the panel staying mostly neutral at most turns. Next year, we’d like to see the gloves really come off and get those knuckles bloody!
In the end, what seems to be the solution to all the world’s design related problems? Better design. Hmmm…
The Seattle Interaction Design Association group would like to officially invite all members and students to the next event! We’re very excited to announce that the theme of this event will be on natural user interfaces (NUI) and the future. We will spend some time exploring NUI interactions and the implications for it in the future five years and beyond. To help us with this discussion, August de los Reyes, Dennis Wixon and Sabrina Boler will kick us off with a talk on their insights on their experience with Surface and other input technologies. Following will be an open floor for conversation, networking and some hands on experience with NUI related stations. Please join us for this exciting occasion where we will discuss, learn and story tell the next generation in user experience!
RSVP with Chrish or Kevin [at] artefactgroup [dot] com
This will be a catered event with light snacks and beverages (alcoholic and non alcoholic).
Parking is available on the street as well as across the street in a paid lot.
The event is also free.
RSVP: Contact Chrish or Kevin [at] artefactgroup [dot] com including any additional information regarding number of guests or questions about the event.
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