#design lessons

[schichtwechsel-blog]

Learning by Doing and Other Design Lessons – Microsoft Design – Medium

Microsoft Design’s Steve Kaneko on revolutions, Mars shots, flow state, and ZUI

Welche Rolle Mixed Reality im Design Team von Microsoft in Redmond spielt, berichtet Steve Kaneko im Interview auf medium.com.

https://medium.com/microsoft-design/learning-by-doing-and-other-design-lessons-ec67c54b0a9a

[confettistyle]

What I've Learned from Nate about design and about life

What I’ve Learned from Nate about design and about life

Have you ever been asked the question “what famous person would you like to have dinner with?”  I have and my list of names includes a handful of people, one of which has inspired me in design and in life.

The first person on my list, Oprah, needs no explanation and I am grateful to her for giving the second person on my list the design opportunity of his life and making me aware of him.

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[anthonyhj]

Don't Break Your Game

That might sound like obvious advice, but it's not actually an uncommon practice.  Perhaps I should be more specific; don't remove desirable functionality from your game, for any reason.  It probably still sounds like good advice, but I suspect many of you are starting to guess what I am talking about.

I'm talking about the practice of irritating players into buying your game by removing their ability to play the way they want to.  It's not just games that do this and, in fact, it was not a game which inspired me to write this post.

Actually, it was Windows...

You have to understand that I was upgrading from XP at this point.  I'd used Windows 7, but XP did what I needed it to do (actually, I was using Ubuntu more than XP) and I had never got around to upgrading.  When I switched to Windows 8, it actually became my main OS and I didn't regret it, despite its flaws.

That was until earlier this week, anyway...

Most of you will not know about this, but the Windows trial was until January 2013 (i.e. now) and that means inducing you to buy it.  I assumed it would be an all-or-nothing thing or a nag screen, but the truth is more annoying; Windows 8 reboots every two hours until you buy a licence.

Now, you may say that even getting two hours' functionality is good.  After all, it's free!  They have no obligation to offer anything, so why complain?  The answer is that I'm not; I'm saying that they shot themselves in the foot because they broke Windows.

The screen turns blue and flashes 'Windows has encountered an error and must close' or something similar, then restarts.

I had seen the 'Windows will shut down every two hours' message, but still thought Windows had crashed the first time it happened.  It even said it had crashed!  Suddenly, it's a broken operating system.  I knew it would work fine after I'd paid for it, but my most recent memories of Windows 8 would be of random crashes just when I was in the middle of something (nothing new for Windows users) and demands for money.  I almost reinstalled Windows XP, out of irritation.

The same concept applies to games though.  If a game kicks you out entirely after the trial period and tells you how to reactivate, you have a choice whether to do that or not.  Importantly though, your last memory of playing the game is of a fully-functional game.

If, on the other hand, you are allowed to keep playing a functionally-impaired game though, you remember a broken game.  I don't care how much fun you had before it was crippled, it's human nature to remember failures more clearly than successes and recent events more clearly than more distant ones.  If you combine this (so all the memories of good software are older than the ones of broken software) then you are doing yourself a great disservice.

Freemium games have to walk a careful tightrope, since they rely on this to a certain degree, but that's not really something I want to get into so late in the discussion.  Maybe I'll cover it in an upcoming one...

[pileofideas]

excerpt...

"1. It's all about the basics. "I love jokes so much," says Jerry Seinfeld towards the beginning of the show. "I love them so much." He loves them because they're the indestructible building blocks of comedy. The others agree. "So many of these young guys think it's all attitude," says Chris Rock. "But you have to have jokes under your weird persona, under your crazy glasses, under your crazy voice." Design has basic building blocks too: scale, proportion, hierarchy, contrast. Get those right first. Or, as Seinfeld concludes: "You can put in all kinds of furniture, but you have to have steel in the walls."

[superphamtastic-blog]

"SUMPIN WRONG WITH STRIPPIN?"