Archive for design
11 November, 2009 at 9:23 am
· Filed under design, game design, life, quote, research ·Tagged rewards
We can easily become slaves to novelty, especially in the form of shiny technological toys that push novelty to us every hour of the day.
“…The brain is built to ignore the old and focus on the new….
Novelty is probably one of the most powerful signals to determine what we pay attention to in the world.”
“Researchers have found that novelty causes a number of brain systems to become activated, and foremost among these is the dopamine system…
…research shows that dopamine is more like the "gimme more" neurotransmitter.”
“…the role of dopamine is not in the pleasure that one may get from the drug, but in establishing the craving that keeps one coming back for more…
When dopamine is released, it is a signal to the brain that is it now time to start learning what is going on.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-poldrack/multitasking-the-brain-se_b_334674.html
http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/multitasking-is-the-brain-seeking-novelty/
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15 October, 2009 at 7:16 pm
· Filed under design, game design, life, quote
BMW TV ad, my emphasis.
We are a car company.
But we don’t just make cars.
We make time machines, build Snowploughs, and create works of art.
We inspire fans, and fan clubs.
We are efficient and dynamic.
We even shape the future.
We realized a long time ago that what you make people feel is just as important … as what you make.
And at BMW we make Joy.
http://www.bmw.tv/core-services/view-video.mp4?id=1056&type=itunes&formatType=ipod
BMWs may create joy in their owner, they have a darker side and can also create superiority and arrogance on the road.
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26 September, 2009 at 1:32 pm
· Filed under design, publishing, quote
“A company’s success on Facebook revolves around three factors: ability to maximize viral channels (to drive new users), the ability to create an effective internal engagement loop within an application, and access to an open communication channel with Facebook’s platform people.”
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/09/the-zynga-influence/
- Have something to drive new users (Attract)
- Work to keep new and existing users engaged and happy (Engage and Extend)
- Good relationship with the platform owner to stay live and ahead of the curve
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25 August, 2009 at 8:13 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote
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20 July, 2009 at 6:49 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote
- Think like a marketer. If you want your content to be used as a vehicle for marketing departments (and to accept those marketing dollars), you need to start understanding the fundamentals of how marketing works. Get to know the terms and basic principles.
- Think “in” and not “around.” Brands don’t just want to buy useless display ads around your video content, they want to collaborate with you and be worked into your content.
- Think socially. Digital content is more compelling to advertisers and brands when you open up the interactive possibilities of being online and leverage a viewer’s social graph. Get Facebook-y and Twitter-y with your content.
- Think about distribution. Before you pitch to potential sponsors, you need to have a distribution plan for your content that goes beyond putting it up on YouTube. How many episodes? How often will they roll out? Where will they roll out? How are you promoting them?
- Think deeper about brands. The makers of Dove believe it’s doing more than just selling soap — it’s about female empowerment. Truly understand what those behind a brand believes it stands for, research where it advertises and figure out why and how your content could fit in.
- Think about the specific industry. Sectors like pharma and kids will have specific laws around what and how things can be sold; if you’re going after a certain business, learn about it beforehand.
- Think about brands early on. Don’t take something already in the can and try to shoehorn a brand in there. The integration should be as natural as possible.
- Think celebs. Casting a web celeb who already has a fan base that can be leveraged is appealing to advertisers.
- Think about the RFP. No one will hand you a request for a proposal until you’ve earned it. Get to know, as best you can, the agencies and companies that issue them. Show them your work and get to a level where brand creators will tell you what their business problem is.
- Think about the ROI. At the end of the day, that’s the goal: sales. The more you can help to realize that goal, the better your chances of getting brand dollars will be.
http://newteevee.com/2009/07/14/want-to-get-your-web-series-sponsored-10-things-to-think-about/
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3 May, 2009 at 10:01 am
· Filed under design, life, project management, quote
“Blank Page Syndrome: when presented with infinite choice, it’s sometimes hard to get started”
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000407.html
Without a boundary it is too easy to drift inefficiently, to strike off in different directions, to take your first idea, to freeze and stare at the blank page or to spend way too much time or money on something.
Cirque Du Soleil : The Spark, Igniting The Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All by Lyn Heward and John U. Bacon
“Oh, we’ve got budgets and deadline, all right,” she said. “Without them, I don’t think we’d be half as creative as we are. They force us to come up with solutions we’d never think of otherwise. Constraints on time, money, and resources can be incredible motivators!. Some of our most inspired ideas have arisen from the most Spartan situations.”
“So how do you turn these random ideas in to an act?” – “Deadlines!” He laughed. “Of course, they always come too fast, but without them, your mind is not focused. With them, on the other hand, your panicked mind starts coming up with crazy ideas it would never otherwise. If you have two days to design a transition from a trapeze act to a trampoline, you will think of something!”
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16 April, 2009 at 10:17 pm
· Filed under design, game design, research ·Tagged simplicity
So much time and energy goes in to designing, implementing, testing and releasing software features that only a minority of people use.
“Only 20% of a mobile phone’s features are used regularly; up to a quarter remain completely undiscovered”
from a study by WDSGlobal
1 billion apps downloaded from the App Store, yet most go used or unexplored. Our appetite is there, and for whatever reason our hunger fades quickly.
“Pinch Media drawing on iPhone analytics data highlights that (only) ~20% of user’s ever return to use an application the day after it is installed. There are many ways to interpret this data: the harshest being that ~80% of user’s are so unimpressed with their application that they never return to it.”
http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2009/04/1000000000-apps-pfft.html
In some cases breadth of function is important, although no excuse for complexity.
“A lot of software developers are seduced by the old "80/20" rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.
Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.”
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
Is featuritis driven by fear?
“Fear of being perceived as having fewer features than your competitors. Fear that you won’t be viewed as complete. Fear that people are making purchase decisions off of a checklist, and that he who has the most features wins (or at the least, that he who has the fewest features definitely loses). Fear of losing key clients who say, "If you don’t add THIS… I’ll have to go elsewhere."
Be brave. And besides, continuing to pile on new features eventually leads to an endless downhill slide toward poor usability and maintenance. A negative spiral of incremental improvements. Fighting and clawing for market share by competing solely on features is an unhealthy, unsustainable, and unfun way to live.
Be the "I Rule" product, not the "This thing I bought does everything, but I suck!" product.”
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/featuritis_vs_t.html
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9 March, 2009 at 10:55 pm
· Filed under design, quote
“zig when everyone else is zagging”
Ian Ballantine from The Element by Ken Robinson
Finding a blue ocean or gap in the market is better than staying where everyone else is or has been.
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21 February, 2009 at 10:43 am
· Filed under design
Innovate to create user value
Innovate to create cost saving to create value
Innovate for value
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3 February, 2009 at 5:45 pm
· Filed under design, quote
“Good design is clear thinking made visible”
Edward Tufte
- Quantitative thinking comes down to one question: Compared to what?
Try very hard to show cause and effect.
Don’t break up evidence by accidents of means of production.
- The world is multivariant, so the display should be high-dimensional.
The presentation stands and falls on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content
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14 January, 2009 at 1:17 pm
· Filed under design, life, project management, quote
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7 September, 2008 at 10:11 pm
· Filed under design, quote
Applications should be Meaningful.
Social: Helps users interact and communicate more effectively by using information from the social graph
Useful: Delivers value to users by addressing real world needs, from entertainment to practical tasks
Expressive: Enables users to share more about who they are and about the world around them.
Engaging: Provides a deep experience that users want to come back to regularly
Applications should be Trustworthy.
Secure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph
Respectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions
Transparent: Explains how features will work and how they won’t work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications
Applications should be Well-Designed.
Clean: Designed to be intuitive, easy to use and free of mistakes
Fast: Achieves low latency while scaled to handle user demand
Robust: Maintains reliable uptime and minimizes error rates
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5 September, 2008 at 8:46 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote ·Tagged simplicity
There isn’t a fixed ratio between good features or ideas and ones that need editing or dropping. The ratio is bound to be worse than you would like to think at the time of creation. If 1 in 36 photographs are worth keeping, how many ideas are worth keeping?
“Omit, then submit
What you leave out is often what turns good into great. What you leave out is the difference between something that is either 1) never seen or used or 2) simple, clear, and actually digestable. It’s true for photography. It’s true for features in software. And it’s true for plenty more too.”
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1228-a-361-ratio-is-actually-pretty-good
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10 August, 2008 at 5:43 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote
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16 July, 2008 at 8:21 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote
“Compelling experiences have 3 stages with 6 attributes”
Attraction then Engagement then Extension
defined – can you describe it?
fresh – does it startle, amaze or amuse?
immersive – can you lose yourself in it?
accessible – can you try it, can you get better at it?
significant – does it make you remember?
transformative – do you have something to show for it?
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1 July, 2008 at 7:56 pm
· Filed under design
- Time-Shifting is the Rule for Today’s Youth
- Friends and Ads Heavily Influence Television Viewing
- Teens Want to Purchase What They See
- Make finding shows easier
- Make search match the way they think
- Add intelligence and make it personal
- I want to save my shows
- My shows need to move with me
- I want to share my shows
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14 June, 2008 at 8:54 pm
· Filed under design, game design, life
Screens and pages tend to be scanned in a Z, starting at the top left corner of the screen.
Less than 20% of words written on web sites are read when someone ‘reads’ the page.
People/players, want to scan and don’t want to read.
- On an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less.
- People spend some of their time understanding the page layout and navigation features, as well as looking at the images. People don’t read during every single second of a page visit.
- On average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_stats_are_in_youre_just_skimming_this_article.php
As a result, Web pages have to employ scannable text, using
- highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
- meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
- bulleted lists
- one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
- the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
- half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
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29 May, 2008 at 10:14 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote
Chuck Green Ideabook.com on commercial ‘graphic’ designers, with many parallels for game design.
http://www.ideabook.com/tutorials/1_view/5_principles_of_good_design.html
edited with comments;
“Design is more than meets the eye … The purpose of design is to communicate an idea. It is as much, if not more, about function as it is about looks. It is as much intellectual and visceral as it is visual. If you don’t have a clear, well designed message, you don’t have a design. Design is marketing, marketing is design”
The purpose of game design is to provide an enjoyable experience. Focus on a clear defined core experience as a base.
“Design is about communicating benefits… No matter what you’re selling or giving away, if I am your prospect, I want to know what’s in it for me. I have hard-earned money or time to invest and I rarely part with either without the promise of some return. Are you going to entertain me? Educate me? Inspire me? Solve my problems?”
Is the core experience something that players want, will identify and enjoy?
“Design is not about designers … The good designer pleads “Create a design that answers your client’s needs.” The bad designer commands “Don’t be an idiot—design something that’ll look good in your portfolio.”
You are rarely, if ever be the target audience. Understand what the experience your audience will appreciate.
“Design is not an ocean it’s a fishbowl … Design and marketing ideas are not always interchangeable—be careful about the principles you apply and how you apply them.
High concepts and designs are not the same thing.
“Design is creating something you believe in … The saying goes something like this: “great advertising will kill a poor product faster than no advertising at all.” The same is true with design—good design will attract an audience faster than poor design. …Step away rather than compromise your values.”
Form over function leads to shallow experiences, function without engaging form is a dry game. Good function is the bedrock of game design.
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20 March, 2008 at 10:28 pm
· Filed under design, game design, quote
“We don’t ask consumers what they want. They don’t know. Instead we apply our brainpower to what they need, and will want, and make sure we’re there, ready.”
Akio Morita, Founder of Sony
Feature creep
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