Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

  • Designing motivational services

    We use Basecamp to manage projects. It’s great for creating tasks and milestones that can be assigned to those responsible. It keeps conversations neatly organized in threads while you can attach documents/screen shots to these.

    There’s loads of similar web based services out there. But although they might be easy to use, this is in no way a guarantee that people stay on top of recording (or even completing!) their tasks.  A few weeks into the project you often find that the whole group, previously collaborating in one space, have moved the whole thing offline, into their separate in-boxes and what have you. Now things have turned a little bit Texas.

    Perhaps this happens because most systems are designed around the users functional needs while the motivational and emotional bits are completely ignored. Well, you may say… does it matter if a system is boring to use if it does what it says on the tin..?

    That’s true if you’re happy to get on with things, tick the check box when the job is done and don’t worry much about the mundane aspect of it all… But if you’re one of us ‘daydreaming slackers’ who are driven mad by this humdrum type activity then you might need a little ‘kick’ to get going.

    In spite of having the same functional needs to complete a task, we’re rarely motivated by the same stuff. Some take pleasure in seeing a completed check list, others can only recall what a painful job it was to get there. You can split these groups of preferences into even smaller ones. That’s why it is an enormous challenge to design motivational aspects into services.

    Reward and punishment are two very common strategies for motivation. Often only one is in use at a time:
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    Sometimes, the two are in use simultaneously… “If you eat all your peas, you’ll get dessert…”

    I don’t think there’s any doubt that collaborative systems would be much more effective if they were designed with motivational features. Just look at games – using both strategies, they’re designed to make us desire to progress to the next level.

    An example of this is Farmville on Facebook. Keep on top of your farmer responsibilities and you’ll earn money. Forget, and your crop will wilt. The horror. It’s unpleasant.

    Obviously farming won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but neither will, uhmm, time sheeting…

    Anyway, Famville is a FB application that cleverly gives the user a clear incentive to frequently spam their walls with game info at the same time as giving their friends a reason to lurk around their wall, waiting for this to happen…

    The game keeps you fussing and caring for your farm by giving you ribbons whenever you’ve accomplished a goal. In true FB style, there’s a ribbon for nearly everything – harvest enough to build your cash reserve, then buy a few buildings and hey hey presto – you’re awarded a great architect ribbon and a gift.

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    Pick fruit from at least 5 trees and you’ll get the amazingly rare “knock on wood ribbon”. The ribbons are then posted on your wall so you can bask in a well deserved glory – but wait! Just because you’re so great, your friends should get rewarded too…. click [ Get a bonus from Elin ] and a bonus sum will be added to your game money. Clever. Now I feel guilty when I don’t share these posts on my wall.

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    (I’m not going to mention names, but there’s quite a few loiterers hanging around my wall these days….)

    There’s lots more to Farmville, but that’s not the point of this post. Neither is to turn Basecamp or similar services into Farmville…

    For all of us who design services, it is very important to put aside purely functional needs for some moments and think about how to motivate users.

    I’d be gutted if I logged into Basecamp and found all my tasks wilted. On the other hand, life would be quite alright if every hour entered in my Harvest timesheets resulted in some beautiful, personal data visualisation at the end of the month.. or better yet, I could pick up a bonus reward every time @stueccles completes his:)

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    Elin Sjursen By Elin

    13th August 09

    4 comments

     Games

    innovation

  • Playful 2008

    At the Dconstruct conference on the social web earlier this year, Alex Krotoski spoke about building a bridge between the game and web communities. The difference between these two, she claims, is mainly that while game developers get to design products that target people like themselves, the web community designs solutions targeted towards very different people than themselves. But as games become main stream (Nicole Kidman appearing in the Nitendo DS lite ads for instance), and room for play is more accepted as a way of enhancing the user experience in web applications, the two communities definitely have something to learn from each other.

    So, largely agreeing with Alex I spent last Friday at Playful, a one day event about games and play hosted by Pixel-Lab here in London. There were many great speakers on the program and although a few of these came disappointingly unprepared, the atmosphere in Conway Hall was warm, fun and engaging.

    To me, the most interesting talks revolved around the notion of “freeplay” – the bit of the user experience that can’t be designed or controlled by designers in advance.
    Interaction designer Kars Alfrink (Leapfrog) stressed that meaning and value is created by the user. Designers will take this away from people by presuming play in advance. To allow a “possibility space” to emerge, you have to “under-specify” and create tools rather than trying to define a specific experience.

    Eric Zimmerman of GameLab’s talk was also about “free play”, and how “systems literacy” is the new defining form of literacy in the coming years. So many aspects in our life are mediated by interfaces and systems, and game play is a model for understanding systems because games have rules. “Problem solving does not only require an understanding of the system,” Zimmerman said, “but also the ability to play with it.” Systems does not understand play, or emotions -  they enforce rules. Designers who create amazing user experiences and drive innovation make sure that the rules of the system allow a little bit of “freeplay” – movement within the rigid structure. Eric used the game of wriggling the steering wheel or playing with the gear stake when you’re driving as an example – the gear/steering wheel is there because of the system, but freeplay is the free movement within this system. Flickr is a great web example of this – members use the groups and pools as tools to create games around photography.

    Architect Eric Clogh (212box) gave us another example of a “system” within the system. While renovating the Klinsky residence on upper Fifth Avenue NY, they were asked to do a little “something” for their four kids. Combining architectural elements with history and puzzles, he created an incredible story that the kids would unravel via 18 clues embedded in the apartment, which got progressively more difficult to solve. Read more about “The Mystery on Fifth Avenue” at the Herald Tribune.

    In tune with all of this, designer Matt Brown from Last.fm urged us to “draw more dots – people will join them”. Last.fm have released an API to their service so that people can create their own stuff around the listening and sharing experience. Matt is especially interested in how games can help teach us how to play an instrument and demoed some fun little games based on finger exercises for brass instruments. As an old Trombone player, my favourite must be the “Breath Control Car” although the Singing sock puppets are hilarious…

    Well done to Pixel Lab for hosting this event – it will be interesting to see how it progress next year.

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    Elin Sjursen By Elin

    3rd November 08

    0 comments

     Conferences

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