Last month Aleks Krotoski spoke at dConstruct on Playing the web: how gaming makes the internet (and the world) a better place (listen to the podcast, or see a write up of the talk here).

Two main things I got out of this talk: (1) carrot: good games should reward people for contributing more, with points, levels, collectable items. (2) goals: good games should have an end goal.

Casting my mind back to various games I’ve played, I’ve never been so hooked on a game as Ultima Online. I played this game compulsively for about a year – quitting only when I really needed to focus on schoolwork (and when I finally switched to a Mac).

Rewards and goals are everywhere in Ultima Online. The gameplay is rich on hundreds of different levels: across the macrocosm of the game down to the tiny little details. I loved that spell ingredients, known as ‘reagents’, spawned across the land – which could be picked up and used, or sold. I could also harvest cotton from cotton fields and sell it to tailors in the town. If you’re like me, you’ll find both of these ideas hopelessly novel.

Another thing I liked about the game: killing monsters gives a character an amount of “fame”. And with enough “fame”, you gain a title. This brings a compelling social aspect to the game: you have something to show other players for your participation in the game. Your title also reflects your skill level, ranging from “novice” to “legendary” (they might have introduced more levels since).

Building a character within a system, within a world, is satisfying, compelling, and addictive. A character can take one of hundreds of possibilities. The game is not just about “killing stuff” within a contrived “level”. In addition to being a mage or a warrior, you can make a living as a tailor, a chef, a bard, a thief, and even a beggar. Skill increases as you practise it: so, to build your bard character, you’d need to first raise enough gold to buy an instrument, then walk around playing said instrument.

This does get a little dull. In some professions, raising skill is much too mechanical and technical for sustained interest, so you could macro or automate it to rise. (If you get caught, though, you put your account at risk.) On the whole, I think the game manages this well: although it can get boring, it is more likely that you will invest the time to build your character than it is for you to give up or quit the game.

How does Ultima Online manage this? You can clearly see the structure and process for raising a skill. In other words, you can see the journey ahead, and know what you need to do in order to reach the end. You can see the rewards in the future: e.g., a tailor with 100.00% skill can make better quality leather armour for your mage. An animal tamer with 100.00% skill has a much better chance at successfully taming a dragon. Getting to 100.00% skill is difficult, but fun: the rewards are both in the journey and in the destination.

I think Ultima Online is the perfect game. Sadly, its membership is dwindling: possibly because World of Warcraft is the new MMORPG vogue, and possibly because gamers aren’t known for their lengthy attention spans.

So, some basic principles which are useful to interaction and experience designers, or anyone planning a social website:

• Reward your users for participation.
• Allow them to build something, and allow them to see the end-goal.

Another principle:

• Give your users a structure: give them limitations

From ‘Rules of Play’:

The idea that players subordinate their behaviors to the restrictions of rules in order to experience play – and its pleasures – is a fundamental aspect of games. The restrictions of rules facilitate play, and in doing so, generate pleasure for players.

From L. S. Vyogotsky:

To observe the rules of the play structure promises much greater pleasure from the game than the gratification of an immediate impulse.

Now: how to bring these principles to social websites?

I’m not really sure what I’ve got myself into. Feeling a little pressured by the fact tickets were being reserved for both girl geeks and those who hadn’t attended a BarCamp before, I haphazardly signed up to attend BarCamp Brighton 3, which is being held at Sussex University on the 6th–7th September. (It is just after dConstruct, which I’m also attending – I’m hoping to glean some presentation skills from the excellent speakers.) Tickets for BarCamp Brighton 3 sold out within 10 minutes, which, of course, made me feel lucky and compelled to actually go.

I know it’s “just” a BarCamp, but I can’t help wondering what the hell I’m doing. Public speaking was something I despised at school and university, and generally I tried my utmost to avoid it. In fact, public speaking and exercise were my two least favourite things. In some grand twist of irony, I now visit a gym three times a week (paying an obscene fee to do so), and I’m attending a BarCamp – voluntarily!

So, I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to talk about. Typography was my specialism at university, and I know a fair amount about how typography works (mainly in print), and, of course, the history of typography. What interests me most about typography is printing. There are obvious parallels with printing and with the web: both deal with the dissemination of information, with literacy, and the flow and sharing of ideas. I wrote my dissertation on the history of the broadside ballad, which was the first low-level way of communicating thought through cheap print. I can’t imagine having written about anything that is more meaningful to me.

I’m going to use a blog post I wrote a few months ago on ‘Twitter and the Crystal Goblet’ as a starting point, and come up with a twenty-minute presentation on transparency in mobile experience design. That way, I’ll usefully combine my three loves: typography, experience design, and mobile. Oh: and Twitter. (I’m also contemplating calling the presentation what dead typographers can teach us about designing for delightful mobile experiences.)

Thoughts welcome. Presentation tips very welcome.

Apparently 81 of you subscribe to my blog. My goodness! Even if you subscribed by accident, or can’t find the button to unsubscribe… thanks.

It’s now over a year since I graduated. I quickly learned getting a job in graphic design is hard. I really need to update this post, Tips for Young Graphic Designers, which I wrote back in March. The advice is still applicable. But I’ve learned even more since, so I’d write things differently, and probably write more.

Graphic Design. Most exciting to me is that I’ve learned I can drop the first word. I’m not really a graphic designer. I much prefer the term experience designer. In the last few months I’ve become a huge fan of Don Norman. I’m also fascinated by the approach towards design by places like IDEO, who embrace design as a whole (I’m working my way through Designing Interactions, an excellent book written by co-founder Bill Moggridge).

Similar, but not the same, Adaptive Path has a very interesting view on experience design. (Tragically I’m missing their UXWeek, which is next week.) I think their philosophy towards experience design is summed up in this blog post about Starbucks: Starbucks is not about the coffee, by Peter Merholz:

“[...] I don’t think it’s about The Coffee. Starbucks has to deliver a basically good product, but they don’t need to deliver a superlative product. [...]

What they need to do is make the store experience inviting, not so much about pushing product, but about being that Third Place (not home or work) where people can get a respite.”

Merholz’s advice to Starbucks is that they focus on the whole experience engendered by the coffeehouse visit. Coffee is predictable and nice to have, but Starbucks is really about having negative space where you can stay as long as you want without the pressures of home or work. It’s the whole experience that has made Starbucks successful… not (just) the coffee.

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Working for a software company is great: as well as designing graphic elements, I work with wireframes and think about how people interact with interfaces and devices. I get to use all of my brain. It’s the focus on people and interactions that makes this kind of design work utterly compelling. (And it’s removed all guilt about getting an iPhone. It’s work, right.)

My advice to the new generation of graphic designers: educate yourselves! Take your degree as a starting point, but really: don’t pigeonhole your interests too quickly, because the industry is changing.

I’d like to direct you to this really excellent post on Design Observer: Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School. I’d recommend anybody and everybody read this, as it’s excellent advice and applicable to life in general.

I’ve just started reading Adaptive Path’s book, Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World. Here are some thoughts it’s provoked so far.

People / consumers / users / fool-proof
Ugh, the problem with words! This sentence stood out:

“Once you stop thinking of your customers as consumers and begin approaching them as people, you’ll find a whole new world of opportunities to meet their needs and desires.”

As I interpret the sentence above, the word “consumer” risks rendering an anaemic, flat, or mono-faceted view of a person, who should be considered as not just a consumer, but – well – a whole person. So if products should be considered in a wider context, so should people.

Still, you could argue that this is all silly pedantry – holding little to no value for designing a product or a service – and that the word “consumer” doesn’t imply a limit, per se, but usefully demarcates a single activity.

Inconclusive, and possibly over-analysed.

That said, words matter.

Don Norman wrote that we shouldn’t use the phrase “fool-proof” when talking about making a product simple. Why would you want to insult your users by calling them fools? He also wrote that if the product is difficult to use, you can only blame the product.

Empathy with users (user is my preferred term) is necessary for creating a good product experience.

Brand strategy versus experience design
Peter Merholz draws attention to an article on experience design by the UK’s Design Council, which confuses brand strategy with experience design. According to the Design Council, “experience design concentrates on moments of engagement between people and brands, and the memories these moments create”.

Merholz wrote a succinct and clear response to Ardill’s article. Merholz’s view is that brands work “inside-out”: brand is how the company projects how it wants to be perceived. Experience design works the other way, or “outside-in”: an “appreciation of customers’ motivations, behaviours, and context leads to the development of a product, service, or system that can satisfy them”.

In Merholz’s definition, brand strategy and experience design are totally different things.

I really like the clear definition of brand strategy and experience design as Adaptive Path explains it. The confusion is there because experience design is still formative, and there is no universal, solid framework established, and perhaps there shouldn’t ever be a universal, solid framework. After all, everything is subject to change.

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It’s a very thought-provoking read so far. I’ll write up other ideas and thoughts I deem worthy of sharing…