DesignAday

Book Review: Playful Design

In preparation for the course I’ll be teaching this semester, I read John Ferrara’s Playful Design: Creating Game Experiences in Everyday Interfaces. John did a good job with the book. The writing is very accessible, and it’s broken up into relatively short chapters, making it easy to reference. John’s target audience is the User Experience (UX) community, so the book approaches the topic from the perspective of applying game design principles to interaction design. Having already read Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design, I didn’t find value in Part II of Playful Design: Designing Game Experiences, but that part of the book will be quite useful to any designer new to the subject. Parts I and III I enjoyed more, with the latter, titled Playful Design in User Experiences, being most beneficial. Here are the descriptions of the chapters in that part of the book:

Chapter 11: Games for Action surveys a variety of ways that games have been applied to influence people’s actions in the real world.

Chapter 12: Games for Learning takes a look at games that have been designed to help people learn new concepts and skills.

Chapter 13: Games for Persuasion describes how games can convince people to adopt a different point of view.

Chapter 14: How Games Are Changing concludes the book with a speculative look toward the future of games, as suggested by current trends in design.

While Schell’s book touches on such topics, it doesn’t do so in great detail, as his book primarily deals with the “how” of game design. Spending a chapter each on learning and persuasion gave Ferrara the opportunity to cover a number of examples I wasn’t previously aware of. Note, also, that Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber has similar chapters with even more examples.

If you are seriously interested in designing games, I would first recommend The Art of Game Design, and it will still be the primary text for my class. If you are a designer looking to add game design principles to your tool belt, Playful Design will be perfect for your purposes. I am already sprinkling my lectures with notes from it.

Fun

Tomorrow night, I wrap up another semester. I got the majority of the planning for next semester’s course done over the weekend. For the second time, I’ll be teaching game design, but the course had to be overhauled. The first time I taught it, two years ago, my students had a client. I crammed all of the lectures and exercises into the first half of the semester, allowing them to focus on implementation for the second half. It was crazy—one of those situations where we only prevailed because we didn’t know we couldn’t do it.

Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoyed teaching the course, but it was rushed. I didn’t have time to do it the way I wanted to. Next semester is going to feel luxurious in comparison. I’ll be able to spend a full week focussing completely on game mechanics without having to cram balance and puzzles in with it. And, I can leave the chapters about interdisciplinary teams and working with a client until the end, rather than front-loading them. I’m especially looking forward to being able to spend some time playing and analyzing games, not to mention playtesting the prototypes that the students will be creating. I already have a designer at Schell Games who expressed a willingness to meet with my class.

It’s going to be a fun semester. Who knows, I might even be able to get the game I started designing two years ago prototyped.

The Teacher’s Reward

Every so often I’ll see a tweet, LinkedIn notification, or article about one of my former students. Many of them are doing really good work. It makes me quite proud. It’s extremely satisfying to know that regardless of my success in my own design practice, I will have accomplished much more by extension through the students I have taught.

myEdu

Just yesterday, Jon Kolko tweeted a link to what he has been working on for the last few months. For lack of a better comparison, it’s like LinkedIn for college students, but it appears to be much more useful than that. Check it out. 

This is MyEdu from www.MyEdu.com on Vimeo.

This looks to be extremely well designed. I would not be surprised if within two years, every student has a MyEdu account. It is very inviting, and I almost wish I were a student so that I could experience using it. Which made me wonder if they might soon extend their features to incorporate faculty as well. So, I looked around on their website and sure enough, they have a beta program for faculty. They are currently advertising features that would let a professor set expectations for their course, manage student recommendations, interact with students, and manage display of grade data. I’ve applied to join the beta.

Rosenfeld, now with more stuff

About a week ago, Lou Rosenfeld, famed Information Architect and founder of Rosenfeld Media, announced that they are now “more than a publishing company”. They have a nice little library of books, each about a very specific subject within the field of design. One of my personal favorites, and not just because I contributed to it, is Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design. I’m in possession of two others that are on my reading list, and I’m looking forward to picking up Make It So, by Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel. In the process of publishing these books, Rosenfeld has collected an A-List of design thinkers. It makes a lot of sense to leverage that body of knowledge in multiple ways, so they are introducing consulting and on-site training as new lines of business.

Consulting: High-value, short bursts of “teach a man to fish” consulting on dozens of UX-related topics. Bring in a guru for a couple days of advising, coaching, facilitating, showing, and mentoring, rather than extensive, long-term deliverables-based gigs. Think “brain shop” rather than “body shop”.

On-site training: Our experts teach, at the moment, 42 full-day UX courses; it’s really an incredible catalog. Remember that great class you sat in on at the such-and-such conference? Now you can have it taught to your whole team—at your own location.

And what a list of experts they have—49 at last count. Many of them are authors, like Nathan Shedroff, while others are well-known for their appearances at conferences, on podcasts, etc. You’ve got Mark Rettig, Dirk Knemeyer; you’ve likely heard of every one of them. The list of courses is also impressive, ranging from theory, to techniques, to down and dirty implementation.

I’m really interested to see how this works out, both in terms of business for Rosenfeld and the end results for the clients. I hope Lou will be sharing some case studies with us in the future.

It’s Away!

There are only a couple days left until the deadline for Interaction 13 submissions. I just got mine in. In addition to my talk, “Working with Developers for Fun and Profit”, I achieved my goal of submitting a workshop. In fact, I submitted two. Hopefully, one or the other will be selected. With my teaching experience, I do believe that conference workshops would be an excellent fit for me.

Introduction to Typography

Typography is one of the foundations of design. It should be part of the fundamental training of a designer, whether pursuing Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Industrial Design, Information Design, or Service Design. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of technology, especially on the web, typography was given short shrift. Designer’s control of type was hamstrung, so the importance of learning the finer points of working with type diminished. A large percentage of Interaction Designers don’t have a visual design background and have not been exposed to typographic training.

Now, with the advent of web fonts and services that provide them, typography on the web is seeing a resurgence. CSS 3 provides fine control of type, making it, once again, a powerful tool in the hands of those that know how to wield it. We are the caretakers of an art that has been under development since 3200 BC (cuneiform)—the very architecture of visual communication. As such, it is our responsibility to become proficient in the use of type as a method of communication, a means of expression, and an element of usability.

Intended primarily for typographic beginners, the goal of this workshop is to:

• Provide a basic vocabulary with which to discuss typography
• Give a historical overview of typographic evolution
• Instill a foundational understanding of how type works in print and on screen
• Demonstrate the implementation of type with contemporary web technology
• Elicit an appreciation of, and passion for, well-executed typography

Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS

CSS 3 has handed the keys back to designers. With a syntax and structure that speaks our language and a fine-grained level of control, it empowers designers to not only prototype in the actual medium, but to contribute production-ready code. The days of pointing at the screen over the developer’s shoulder and trying to explain how something needs to shift three pixels are over. In fact, much of the JavaScript currently employed for simple UI behaviors can be replaced with well-architected styles. Take the driver’s seat, and make the CSS your UI specification document.

This workshop is intended for intermediate designers interested in gaining more control over their team’s final product. As a participant, you will:

• Familiarize yourself with the tools you’ll need to integrate with your development team.
• Learn how Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) can lead to cleaner, more maintainable code.
• Discover how to replace heavy-handed, inefficient JavaScript with CSS-driven behavior.
• Get started on your own library of CSS components.

Never Enough

Yes, that crazy IxDA LinkedIn thread, Do Designers need to be able to code?, is still running. It took a short breather a few months back, but then somebody resurrected it. Most recently, Jessie Nunez asked, “Will the deep skill set that we took most of our lifetimes to develop, hone, and enhance ever be enough?”

No. No, it will not. You see, Jessie, Interaction Design is very, very young. I was in the third graduating class of the very first Masters of Interaction Design program, and I’m not yet in my forties. At that time, the World Wide Web was brand-spanking-new. There was no such thing as CSS. The Inmates Are Running The Asylum had yet to be published. Yes, we’ve come a long way in a very short amount of time, but to think that the current state of the industry is the be-all and end-all of Interaction Design is foolish.

If we peg my career as an Interaction Designer starting in 1998, the year I graduated with my masters degree, then I’ve been practicing for 14 years. Assuming I live to a ripe old age and continue to work in the field, which I have every intention of doing, and conservatively retire at 65, that gives me 27 years in which to continue to grow in my profession—almost twice the time I’ve spent so far.

Should I rest on my laurels, satisfied that I have mastered my trade? Of course not. I will continue to learn, pushing myself to become a more valuable contributor to my team/employer/customers. I do have a pretty good handle on Interaction Design at this point, and I have a degree in Graphic Design as well. Where do I go from here? I see three primary directions to branch out: business, research, and programming.

By research, I refer to hard-core usability testing, human factors studies, psychology, and anthropology. That’s the area in which I’m least interested. Programming is going to give me the most immediate bang for my buck. The more I can spread my influence across the development of a product, the better the end result is likely to be, and the more satisfied I will be in my work. I’ve already started down this path. Business is a longer term goal, one that I’m slowly absorbing from working with my superiors, as well as reading. Strategically, that is what is likely going to get me ahead on down the road.

In the mean time, everything is going to continue to change at a rapid pace. So, no, it will never be enough. That’s the way I like it.

Designers don’t retire. We die. - Jeffrey Zeldman

I know it’s been a good night when…

Tonight was the first class of the Fall semester. One of the indicators of a good class session is that during my drive home, I only half-hear the podcast I’m listening to. My mind is too occupied with the evening’s events. I critique my performance, consider the responses of my students, mull over all the possibilities the semester holds, and begin making plans for the next week.

We kicked things off by watching Objectified. Then I introduced the class to Kickstarter and Quirky, completely new to many of them. From the responses I observed, I’m betting there is a lot of digestion happening tonight. I’m going to be shining a light on design entrepreneurship, and I’m hoping that some of the students will go as far as to initiate Kickstarter campaigns.

Here’s the description of the course from my syllabus:

“Innovation” is currently one of the biggest buzz words in business, and where there is discussion of innovation, there is typically mention of design or “Design Thinking”. Articles have appeared in business oriented publications making declarations such as “The MFA is the New MBA” (Harvard Business Review), or describing “the emergence of the design economy” (Fast Company). BusinessWeek and Fast Company both have sections devoted to design. Major universities have begun integrating their design and business programs with participation from major design firms—Stanford’s d.school for example. And while this “movement” is several years old, the most recent trend is the rise of the designer entrepreneur. Organizations like Kickstarter are giving designers the opportunity to realize their ideas without having to sell out to a large corporation to get them funded. Designers are now cited as key components of successful startups, as well as a competitive edge for established companies.

But what kind of design are they referring to? What training must a designer possess to participate in the field’s current popularity? What qualities of design lend it to innovation?

This course will provide you the opportunity to explore the design process as it applies to innovation. We’ll learn from the successes of firms like IDEO, one of the most notable design firms operating today, and study the writing of Don Norman, one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the subject. We will apply what we learn, taking a product from conception and research to a final design and prototype, and potentially a campaign to fund further work.

At the end of the semester, you will have a broader understanding of the potential of design to affect change in the world, a deeper understanding of proven, problem-solving methods, and an appreciation of the current climate for design entrepreneurship.

This is How Design Works

Wells Riley loves startups and design. He wants them to be best friends forever. So, he built a web guide for non-designers titled Startups, this is how design works.

It’s great for startups. It’s also great for anyone that wants to know more about what design is, how it is perceived in industry, and how you can get some for yourself. The page is chock full of delicious design tidbits, like Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of “Good Design”, video clips from Objectified, and Bill Verplank’s Framework for Interaction Design. He provides the results from a survey of 78 CEOs, marketers, engineers, and designers in which he asked their opinions about design. He presents profiles of five of the most influential designer founders, and he suggests several online services through which designers can be found.

It’s a very thoughtful, informative, actionable presentation. In fact, I’ve decided to use the site as part of the introduction to my course in a couple weeks. It’s a perfect fit, since I’ll be giving my students a large helping of design entrepreneurship. Check it out and then send it to somebody who really should know more about design.

Don’t Waste Time Teaching Tools

I finally got around to reading Jon Kolko’s post, Code is material: why designers must learn to code, which has been sitting in my Safari reading list since he wrote it back in June. If you’ve been reading my own posts here, or attended my talk, Working with Developers for Fun and Profit, you already know that I am in complete agreement with Jon. Go read his article, and don’t miss the comments by Matt Nish-Lapidus and Ryan Betts.

Rather than simply echoing their opinions, however, I’m inspired to make a related point in answer to Carl’s comment:

It seems many interaction design programs don’t teach designers how to code… arguably, they don’t teach designers how to engage in materials more generally.

Yes, designers who work on software should learn how to code. However, I would argue that design schools should not be teaching designers how to code—not directly. I can see value in Jon’s metaphor: code as clay. Claiming code as a material definitely has some merit. However, I tend to think of code more as a tool than a material. There are many tools to choose from, and tools come and go as technology marches inexorably on. Time spent teaching tools, while not necessarily a waste, is certainly less valuable over time than time spent teaching design itself.

During my senior year, I decided my final project would be an “interactive, multimedia work”. I and two of my classmates were the first students in the history of the program to do what I would later term Interaction Design projects. To do so, I had to learn Macromedia Director, a tool that we had just acquired. More than that, I had to learn the Lingo scripting language. The professors didn’t know how to do it. It was completely up to me to put in the time and effort to master the tools. It was my professors’ responsibility to advise and critique my design decisions. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any work in Director, and I’m afraid I would have a hard time making changes to my Lingo scripts. The knowledge I gained from my professors, however, is still just as applicable to the work I’m doing today as it was then.

There’s already more to be taught in design school than there is time to teach. If a student really wants instruction in programming, they should seek out such a course as an elective. There are much more important things to spend valuable class time on.