Posts Tagged ‘Donald Norman’

Notes on Play, Exploration, Challenge and Learning

In Articles on 17 April 2008 tagged adaptation, challenge, Dan Saffer, difficulty, Donald Norman, exploration, flow, game design, games, gaming, GD, interaction design, IxD, learning, Matt Jones, play, rules, usability, user experience, UX with Comments Off

(My reading notes are piling up so here’s an attempt to clear out at least a few of them.) Part of the play experience of many digital games is figuring out how the damn thing works in the first place. In Rules of Play on page 210: “[…] as the player plays with FLUID, interaction [...]

Space to Play

In Articles on 4 February 2008 tagged activities, Ben Cerveny, Donald Norman, emergence, game design, games, gaming, interaction design, languages, learning, movement, play, thinking with 2 comments

The languages you’ve mastered shape your thinking. Nouns, verbs, adjectives…if you think of your day-to-day interactions on the web it’s clear the language you’re using is (very) limited. Does that limit your range of thoughts, and the things you’re able to express? Certainly, I’d say. A quote from an old Ben Cerveny bio found in [...]

Spectra of Learnability

In Articles on 22 January 2008 tagged books, communication, conceptual models, Donald Norman, fun, game design, games, GD, interaction design, IxD, learnability, mental models, play, playful, toys, user experience, UX with 2 comments

They gave us Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things1 to read in interaction design school. I remember reading it and—being young an cocky—finding it all very common sense and “Why do they ask us to read this stuff?” And so on.2 I am rereading it now, in the hopes of sharpening my argument for [...]