SXSWi Panel Thoughts
I had a ton of SXSW Interactive thoughts I wanted to post, but this is keeping me pretty busy! I’ll aim for some quick bites, and hopefully get the important stuff down.
First off: the panel I was on, “Playing On! Interface Lessons from Games,” went well! Game talk was everywhere at SXSW. Everyone wants to use games as a model to improve their app or business model, and I thought our panel was one of the few talks to bring concrete ideas to the table.
John Mark did a great job finding strong panelists and getting ‘em all to work in a similar direction, resulting in a pretty full hour of content. (Side note: I got to check out panelist Brian Robbins’/Fuel Games’ “Vans SK8″ iPhone game before the panel. It used a pretty cool combination of accelerometer and touch gestures to specify tricks.)
I think there’s supposed to be some audio or video of the panel made available eventually, but I don’t know, so here’s what I’ve got:
Neither is very intelligible without audio and video, so here’s hoping. Thoughts in brief:
- Exploration– and correspondingly, the acceptability of failure– is a major difference between app and game design. UX designers frequently aim for 100% success rate with new users choosing the correct way to do something. Game designers are perfectly okay with you missing that jump a few times, or getting hit by that enemy– you’re learning.
- Why is exploratory learning fun, while other kinds can be dreadful? How come the tutorial portion of an otherwise excellent game can be worse than learning Microsoft Outlook? We spent a bit of time talking about safe and fun learning environments, but this area could use more study. Note, though, that removing “exploratory” from “exploratory learning” is usually the fastest way to remove the fun.
- We talked about the interface opportunities of the Wii and iPhone. Wii is game-specific and iPhone isn’t, but I’m still unconvinced that either can offer a deep, satisfying game experience that wouldn’t be as good or better on a “traditional” game platform. Maybe that’s more about use scenario and target audience than interface, though. Maybe they aren’t aiming for depth.
- There was a lot of discussion about achievements, reputation systems, and other feedback/reinforcement mechanisms. These seem to be the most advanced example of crossover between games and apps– they’re a natural fit with social media.
- Progressive complexity, and tools as inventory items, came up. Somebody just needs to do this already, so we can talk about why it failed.
