Last winter Stanford University hosted the Metaverse U Conference to “bring together industry leaders, artists, and academics to discuss a range of topics surrounding virtual worlds.” For some reason that seemed important at the time I couldn’t attend, but as the July 4th holiday nears I’ve taken time away from a social media-cum-virtual world-cum MMOG […]
Archive for the 'User Experience' Category
Green Report from the Metaverse
Published July 3rd, 2008 in Emerging Technologies, Serious Games, Social Networking, User Experience and Web 2.0 & Beyond. 0 CommentsWii for the Visually Impaired
Published July 2nd, 2008 in Uncategorized and User Experience. 0 CommentsDesigning software that could be used by people with differing abilities was a big part of building software for Pearson Education. Working there taught me a lot about Universal Design for Learning and making products accessible, so it’s refreshing to see this meme make its way into a game for the Wii — in this […]
The Contrarian View
Published June 5th, 2008 in Marketing, Social Networking, User Experience and Web 2.0 & Beyond. 1 CommentA shout out to Lee Wilson at the Education Business Blog who wrote A Contrarian View of Social Media, adding another perspective to my recent panel and posts about social networking.
Lee quotes Bob Hoffman over at Copyblogger whose post A Cranky, Skeptical Loudmouth Looks at Social Media Marketing bottom lines the distaff view:
You and I […]
Social Networking on the Rise
Published May 30th, 2008 in Business & Finance, Culture, Social Networking, Uncategorized, User Experience and Web 2.0 & Beyond. 0 CommentsFrom the number of inquiries we receive and the projects we’re managing lately — blogs, forums, wikis, user content sites, multi-player games and sims — it’s clear there’s tremendous demand for social networking. Out of curiosity I pinged Indeed.com and found this trajectory for social networking jobs:
“social networking” Job Trends
“social networking” […]
What Happens Here Doesn’t Stay Here
Published May 28th, 2008 in Educational Technologies, Serious Games and User Experience. 0 CommentsDoes what you experience and learn in virtual environments like MMOGs and videogames have any relevance to real life?
Thought leaders like Jim Gee and researchers like Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), assert that it does. Bailenson has been studying ways that online behavior affects daily life (.pdf) and in […]
The Search Game
Published May 7th, 2008 in Emerging Technologies, Marketing, Serious Games and User Experience. 0 CommentsA shout out to Eliane Alhadeff for her recent post Search as a Serious Game which highlights a seriously cool search interface from SearchMe.com. A picture says a thousand words so file this under User Experience and go take it for a spin to see what web search + gamer centered design might look […]
Making Games That Don’t Suck
Published April 10th, 2008 in Dust or Magic, Serious Games, Uncategorized and User Experience. 1 CommentHow could you go wrong choosing William Shakespeare’s plays and characters to be the centerpiece of a massively multiplayer online game?
Just ask Ted Castronova who received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation to create Arden: The World of William Shakespeare, then discovered genius alone isn’t enough. As Chris Baker reports in WIRED […]
Can a video game evoke human emotions more subtle than the adrenaline rush of offing gun-toting zombies and other digital miscreants? After playing a demo of The Graveyard, produced in an expressionist film noir like black and white by Belgium-based Tale-of-Tales, I’m that sure they can. From Tale-of-Tales’ press release:
The Graveyard is an experiment […]
Your Web Domain Analyzed
Published March 21st, 2008 in Culture, User Experience and nextNY. 0 CommentsEver wonder your website or blog wold look like if all the links out were traced five or ten hops to their ultimate destination?
David Polinchock at BrandExperience found this applet by Salathe Marcel where you “…put in your web address and it turns it into this very cool, visual graph.” Very cool indeed.
The illustration […]
Will Wright’s “Spore” Coming in Sept.
Published February 13th, 2008 in Culture, Dust or Magic, Uncategorized and User Experience. 1 CommentIn one of the most anticipated product announcements in years, Will Wright said this week that his new game, Spore, will be released worldwide on September 7th. I’ve seen so many previews I’ll be glad to get my hands on it (though I don’t look forward to the Cloverfield-esque movie sequel where “Spore Eats […]
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