Questions Game Design Oral Exam, 2011 Lecture 1 Skills for creativity in Game Design by Jeffries, 2011 Gist

of the paper-- the skills that are valued by academics and designers are not necessarily all that different. Industry reports that game design programs are not tailor fit to producing employable students may be somewhat exaggerated. Name 3 academic values/skills for creativity 2. Playing games-- you need to play games, and play a lot of them. But it's a passion, not an addiction, you're going for here. (9th by practitioners) 3. Openness to knowledge out of games design-- being well read about Art & Design, not being so obsessed with games that you don't bring anything else into their study. (7th ranked by practitioners) 4. Research skills-- ability to find out and research areas you know little about to increase depth of understanding. (16th by practitioners) Name 3 practitioner values for creativity 1. Visualize the game, and player, in your mind-- This means you need to be able to imagine the game as it will be, and also imagine the experience of playing it-- how will the button presses work, is the interface intuitive, etc. (unique to practitioners) 2. Creative facilitator bring other peoples ideas into the games design process. Not only incorporate people's ideas, but successfully choose between successful and unsuccessful ideas in order to do so. (10th for academics) 3. Games analysis, mechanics analysis-- be able to look at existing games, see the things that are good, bad, understand why these things are so. Understanding how a game is put together, dissecting it and understanding its context. (also the 1st rank of academic desired skills) 4. Designerly Ways of Knowing by Nigel Cross (2001) What is scientific design? Modern, industrialized design. Not controversial. Modern design relies on scientific knowledge to make science visible. Based on the assumption that modern, industrial design had become too complex for intuitive methods, a more rigid system needed to be undertaken. What is design science? Buckminster Fuller. Attempts to formulate the design science method, coherent and rationalized. Systematic design. Extends beyond scientific design, including systematic knowledge of design process and methodology, plus scientific/tech design of artifacts. Hubka & Eder: Design science comprises a collection (a system) of logically connected knowledge in the area of design, and contains concepts of technical and of design methodology... Design science addresses the problem of determining and categorizing all regular phenomena of the system to be designed, and of the design process. Design science also is concerned with deriving form the applied knowledge of the natural sciences appropriate information in a form suitable for the designer's use. Design as scientific activity itself-- refers to an explicitly organized, rational and wholly systemic approach to design. Controversial opinion-- not standard assumption in design & method circles. N.B. - Science of design-- study of designing may itself be a scientific activity. Also, design methodology. A lot of the stuff we're reading for class are actually science of design papers. Not the same as design science.

What is design as discipline? Donald Schon challenged the positivist doctrine underlying design science, offered constructivist paradigm. Science of design based on well-formed problems, while pros have to deal with messy, problematic situations. epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict-- reflective practice. Design as a discipline design studied on its own terms, within its own rigorous culture. Science of design based on the reflective practice of design: design as a discipline, but not design as a science. Underlying axiom: there are forms of knowledge special to the awareness and ability of a designer, independent of the different professional domains of design practice. What is the domain of knowledge of designers? Well, design as a discipline seeks to divorce the practice of design from knowledge domains. But more generally speaking, designers know about the artificial world-- the human-made world of artifacts. They know how to propose additions and changes to the artificial world. Knowledge, skills, values lie in techniques of the artificial. Where can you find knowledge about design? Through designing engaging and reflecting in design. Inherent in the artifacts of the world-- you learn by using or interacting with those objects. Some of it is knowledge based on the process of manufacturing the artifacts. Some of it can be learned through instruction. Lecture 2 Games as Activity by Jaako Stenros & Annika Waern How are games second order design? Game designers create structures that guide player engagement and activity, but their experience is created by their activity with and within the game, and not primarily by the game itself. Games are not complete until they are played. (Does a game even exist until it is played?) There is an overlap between play and design-- play affects the design of the game through its enactment. What is the Digital Fallacy? Treating digital games as the standard of games-- general game studies as a subsection of digital game studies, not the other way around. This has put a focus on games as systems, due to their capacity for extensive design, and taken focus away from games as activity. This means game studies has focused heavily on aspects of gaming which are heavily favored in the digital-- single player games, games which focus on simulation and complexity with computer aided facilitation of playing. In digital games, much harder to establish house rules. Social play and sociability has been separated from the game. More focus needs to be put on games as activity. Garfield-- hard to have a good game experience no matter how good the game is if the metagame is bad Digital games, due to their extensive nature, can rely heavily on their setting within a fictional world and their emphasis on progression through it-- something that does not exist in many non-digital games, with the exception of RPGs. What do game activities as consciously structured mean?

Games are activities that have been specifically designed by a game designer or through traditional tweaking. Conscious structuration is not uncommon-- design to control flow of traffic, encourage shopping, etc. is common. However, a game is consciously structured as a paratelic experience-- it should be valuable in and of itself. Games use places/architecture and processes to guide the player through a certain experience/activity. Games afford playing-- affordances are features designed to allow certain activities. However, many times the player defines the affordance by deciding what is and isn't part of the game, especially in nondigital games. Games are also always socially situated, either during the course of play or in the connotations and myths associated with their play. Even if there isn't anyone else around, there is still a first-person audience. What do game activities as enacted experiences mean? Gameplay is experienced as a play session, which does not exist unless actively created. Tools, environments, social events crafted around the promotion of an experience. Game design is realized only when the players engage with the game. 1. Enacted experiences are socially constructed and transferred. Enacted experiences often require a great deal of training and expertise to be fully appreciated. 2. Participants must engage, voluntarily and properly, in order to experience anything at all. There is an affective element depending on the player's attitude and involvement in the game. Enacted experiences usually consist of some kind of boundary or limit established by the game. Enacted experiences are embodied experiences. While many games emphasize specific elements of the body, the other elements do not disappear. People are still conscious, physical things and their physical elements affect their play. There can be pleasures not strictly associated with the action of the game, but from the pleasure of the movement and grace of the body, for example. What is somaesthetics? Aesthetics from the bodily, experiential perspective. There is also the beautiful experience of one's body from within-- Schusterman. This can mean appreciating the slow-motion play of professional level sports, or designing for somaesthetic experience. Generally focused on physical play-- DeKoven is a good model for somaesthetics. The Well-Played Game by Bernie DeKoven Explain games as social fictions. Games are performances which exist only as long as they are continuously created. They belong outside the sphere of everyday living-- that is, they are part of the magic circle. Cf. Huizinga & Caillois, identifying play as voluntary. Similar to Waern & Stanros' conception of enacted experience, they must be acted out by the players. They are not intended to replace reality but to suspend consequences. They are not life. They are, if anything, bigger than life. What is play? Play is the enactment of anything that is not for real. Play is intended to be without consequence. Play is for fun. Play can applied outside of games-- DeKoven talks about playing with ideas, emotions, principles. When we are playing, we are only playing. We do not mean anything else by it. escapism. On the other side of the coin, when we are engaging in a game we are not necessarily playing. Sometimes we are arguing, struggling, etc. What is the well-played game?

A game that is excellent because of the way it's being played. The way that it is being played focuses on the what Czikimihaly identifies as flow. The engagement of both players in playing together is often more important than competition, which can ruin the well-played game. It has to be a general state shared by all participants in the play. The result of competition is separation. By getting rid of abstract concepts like score, we are able to get back to the experiential root of play. Also a process of illumination: doing things that are unexpectedly right. Measured only in how well we play together. When do really good plays happen? Really good plays happen when the game is being played by us rather than me. It is a cooperative effort between the two players to generate a well-played game, which tends to produce unexpected moments of brilliance. Dekoven identifies good play with play that surprises the player with its grace and skill-- exceeding the limits that the player thought existed. What is the idea behind playing well together? Playing not competitively, but cooperatively, striving for a state of challenging equilibrium while pushing the skills of all players out of monotony-- to the limits of, but not beyond, their abilities. It often requires establishing that the goal is to Play Well Together. We were Willing to Play. Trust, Safety, Familiarity, Conventions, all important. These things build on each other. B.U.T.T.O.N by Doug Wilson Any questions about this should mention Dekoven's Well-Played game, as Wilson cites it specifically in the article. How does BUTTON incorporate the social and material circumstances of play? The games defining characteristic is the incompleteness of its underlying system, in the sense that it is so obviously up to the players themselves to interpret and enforce the rules. The rules of the game are not enforced by the game itself-- Lessig would say that there is a law being enforced, but not an architecture or code which cannot be argued with. The gameplay itself happens outside of the constraints of the computer, encouraging a somaesthetic (Cf. Stenros & Waern) experience where players come into bodily contact and voluntarily engage in activities that are outside of what the game can react to. However, the game's scoring system is based on the button presses-- thus breaking the rules and playing to the code can be accommodated (indeed, they are Totally Okay Now), but hopefully in a playful way. Because it's moving away from hard-coded evaluation and the digital panopticon of the average game, it stresses ambiguity and interaction among the players. Because of this, the game requires a playful social environment-- it is exceptionally voluntary, and relies heavily on players adopting a lusory attitude. The same things required in a well-played game (DeKoven) are important to a successful game of B.U.T.T.O.N. What do anti-achievements encourage? Whereas achievements try to motivate players to pursue specific rewards as delineated by the game system, unachievements try to motivate players to hijack, modify, or otherwise subvert these kinds of extrinsic rewards. Unachievements signal to the players that they should not take the game-specified goals too seriously - that they, the players, should instead confront the game on their own terms. Achievements, in contrast to the extrinsic goals of the core game (e.g. score more points than the other team), often systematize eccentric or extreme actions that may otherwise have been intrinsically motivated, for example, Trick an opposing Medic into healing you (Valve, 2007). In this sense, achievements and unachievements are diametric opposites. Whereas achievements often monitor

actions that players are not strictly required to do to win the game, unachievements selfconsciously fail to monitor actions that players are (supposedly) required to do. The notion of the unachievement should be distinguished from that of the anti-achievement. In gaming culture, the term anti-achievement has been used to connote a specific type of achievement that is humorously orthogonal to the stated goal of the game. For example, in one thread on an online World of Warcraftforum (Shellar, 2008), fans of the game brainstorm hypothetical antiachievements such as Staying Down, earned by players who Fall from a height of less than 20 yards and die. Anti-achievements poke fun not only at the game, but also at the player. In Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (EA Tiburon, 2008), the Afraid of the Dark achievement playfully mocks those players who get the ball within a few inches of the hole without sinking it, rewarding them with a paltry ten Xbox achievement points. What anti-achievements do is take the theatrical or the subversive - the perfectly bad shot, the irreverent antic, the silly joke - and codify them into a system of clearly delineated extrinsic rewards. Anti-achievements, like achievements more generally, instrumentalize performance, thereby allowing the game system to subsume portions of the meta-game. Anti-achievements simply make this instrumentalization all the more apparent. Unachievements, by contrast, strive to do the opposite. They open up a space where instrumental gameplay can readily be infused with double meanings and intrinsic motivations. What is the self-effacement strategy? What distinguishes B.U.T.T.O.N., then, is that it is actively self-effacing [14]. The game does invite physical and subversive play, hinting to and even telling the players that the terms of the game are up for debate. Thus, it is not just that the rules are ambiguous; it is that the game signals an acute selfawareness of this ambiguity. The game makes it clear that players are consenting to something different than when agreeing to play a more traditional digital game. It is then up to the players to negotiate what, exactly, they have consented to. In creating B.U.T.T.O.N., we approached this confluence of gameplay and technology from the opposite direction. Rather than try to enrich or augment traditional physical games with computer technology, we took as our starting point the familiar frame of the console game, then tried to disenchant or un-augment that frame. This distinction is largely a matter of attitude. Instead of exploring how technology can be used to improve gameplay, B.U.T.T.O.N. questions whether games even need all that much technology in the first place. The answer, of course, is complicated. Though B.U.T.T.O.N. strives to transcend the limitations of computer-enforced rules, the game also enjoys the multimedia capabilities of its supporting technology. This tension notwithstanding, the game at least raises the question. Self-effacing games and the people who design them adopt a decidedly ambivalent attitude towards technology, exchanging optimism for skepticism, irony, and absurdity. Why is laughter important? To this end, unachievements and self-effacement represent attempts to reclaim the kind of festivity and laughter marginalized by the current culture of perfectionism and systems geekery. Intentionally broken or impossible games celebrate imperfection. The grotesque body, Eichberg argues, displays what is imperfect in human form. The fool and the carnival are images of things going wrong in life. Eichberg continues: All this gives birth to laughter, which is thus linked to a deep recognition of human failure and blurs the edges between success and failure that are sharpened by the modern culture of perfection (p.167). Laughter at failure - both at the failure of others and of ourselves - betrays a mutual vulnerability between players. And it is precisely this laughter-filled acknowledgement of vulnerability that nurtures a feeling of togetherness.

B.U.T.T.O.N., with an eye towards these relational qualities of laughter, attempts to establish such mutual vulnerability in a digital gaming context. The entire experience is designed to coax players into making themselves look silly, and into having fun doing it. The various commands, such as Act like a monkey and Sing Happy Birthday, are doubly awkward given that the system does not even monitor then. Were acutely aware that it is we ourselves that choose to enforce these instructions. The rush to the controllers is similarly awkward, both physically and socially. Again, the context here is paramount. This messy scramble, so out-of-place in the familiar setting of controller-based console gaming, is unmistakably ridiculous. Laughter is not just a side effect of the game; it is central to the socialbodily process (p.162). Laughter occasions the game as much as the game occasions laughter [15]. Lecture 3 The Structural Elements of Games by E.M. Avedon Derived from mathematicians (von Neumann) and psych-focused (Goffman/Berne) What are the seven structural elements of games? PurposeProcedures for action- method of play. Rules governing action- exceptions, exclusions of the rules to specify what the player should be doing. Number of required playersRoles of participant- (positions) Participant interaction patterns- individual, unilateral, multilateral, inter-group, intra-group... competitive v. collaborative, etc. Results or pay-off+3- abilities and skills required for participation, environmental requirements/physical setting, equipment. What are procedures, and how do they map with mechanics? Some formalist approaches makes a difference between the rules of the game and the actions afforded to players by those rules. This conceptual perspective can be tracked back to Avedon (1971) who suggests a formal structure of games in which there are "specific operations, required courses of action, method of play," which he defines as the "procedure for action", as opposed to the "rules governing action", which are "fixed principles that determine conduct and standards for behavior" (p. 422). The 2nd and 3rd elements identified by Avedon emphasize a difference between rules and mechanics. In Defining Game Mechanics, Sicart equates Avedon's procedure with mechanics. Defining Game Mechanics by Miguel Sicart game mechanics are methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game state. How does Shadow of the Colossus work? Following Jrvinen (2008), the best way of understanding mechanics as methods is to formalize them as verbs, with other syntactical/structural elements, such as rules, having influence on how those verbs act in the game. For example, in Shadow of the Colossus we find the following mechanics: to climb, ride (the horse), stab, jump, shoot (arrows), whistle, grab, run (and variations like swim or dive). For instance, every colossus in Shadow of the Colossus is a challenge, each of which is composed of a subset of challenges: the fifth colossus is a flying creature with weak spots in each wing and the tail. The challenge is to run from one weak spot to another without falling, since player movement is

affected by the wind and the speed of the moving colossus. All these challenges are matched with a mechanic: by shooting arrows, the player calls the attention of the creature; by jumping and then grabbing to the hair of the creature, the player accesses a more or less stable surface where she can then run to the weak spots and stab them. All challenges in this example are mapped to particular game mechanics. stabbing is a core mechanic of Shadow of the Colossus, since the player will perform it repeatedly to achieve the end state of the game, rewarded with the completion of the fictional framework of the game. The basic mechanic in Shadow of the Colossus can be called "stabbing", which requires players to select a specific weapon when placed in a specific spot of a colossus, then press once the x button to "charge" her attack, then press once again to release and effectively stab the colossus. The intensity of the attack depends on the time lapse between the two inputs: the longer the player waits to unleash the attack, the more damaging it will be. From a purely analytical perspective, this mechanic introduces an interesting observation: as opposed to the more classical "aggression" mechanics, in SoTC players do not obtain direct output from their initial input, nor do they have to push down the button for "charging" the attack. This is arguably a design choice, and it could be tied to the aesthetic goals of the game: the player is in a weak position between inputs, which reinforces the sense of awe these colossi suggest. In many computer games, players are supposed to feel empowered, yet challenged by their enemies. SoTC is designed to present players with what appears like an insurmountable enemy and equips them with just the bare abilities to epically undergo the slaying of these creatures. By slightly modifying a well-known game mechanic, it could be argued that the design of Shadow of the Colossus is intended to create an experience of powerlessness and epic achievement. The player is not only faced with the colossi as challenges, but also their repertoire (Juul: 2005) is challenged by the control configuration of the attack mechanic. This challenge has likely been designed to have a significant emotional impact on the player, which I will analyze at a later stage in this section. What is the relation between game mechanics and input procedures? The second advantage is that it eases the mapping of mechanics to input devices, allowing for a great degree of granularity in the analysis of games. Applying the conceptual framework of Object Oriented programming determines that an agent invokes a mechanic in order to interact with the game[3]. When it comes to players, input devices - from mouse and keyboard to the Wii Fit Board - mediate this process. In Gears of War, the cover mechanic is invoked by pressing the A button in the controller. In Orbital, the two mechanics are mapped to the two buttons of the Game Boy Advance device. Thanks to the formal precision of Object oriented terminology, it would be possible to use an abstract modeling language, like UML, to describe the interaction possibilities afforded to players, and how those are mapped to specific input device triggers. For game analysis, this suggests the possibility of closely studying the relations between input device design, and player actions. It would allow, for instance, the study of how in some fighting games, one mechanic is not triggered by one button, but by a combination of input processes. Thus, it could be argued from a formal perspective that mastery in fighting games comes from the mapping (Norman, 2002, pp. 17, 75-77), of one mechanic with a set of input procedures, which leads to both psychological and physiological mappings - how the "body" of a player learns to forget about the remembering the illogical sequence of inputs, and maps one mechanic to one set of coordinated, not necessarily conscious moves Why are game mechanics methods?

Following object oriented programming terminology, a method is understood as the actions or behaviors available to a class (Weisfeld, 2000, p. 13). Methods are the mechanisms an object has for accessing data within another object. A game mechanic, then, is the action invoked by an agent to interact with the game world, as constrained by the game rules. In Gears of War, if the player wants to take cover, she has to press the A button in the controller. This will make the avatar seek cover in the closest environment object that can provide that cover. In that sense, a mechanic is limited by the rules that apply to the gameworld (the general physics simulations, for instance, whose objects are suitable for providing some kind of cover), and, on occasion, to rules that apply exclusively to that particular mechanic - for example, some mechanics can only be invoked in certain environments or gameplay contexts. Following Jrvinen (2008), the best way of understanding mechanics as methods is to formalize them as verbs, with other syntactical/structural elements, such as rules, having influence on how those verbs act in the game. Lecture 4 (from Schechners Play) What is the relation between play and ritual? Playing, like ritual, is at the heart of performance. Performance may be defined as ritualized behavior conditioned/condoned by play. This is apparently at adaptation of Handelman, Play & Ritual: Complementary Frames of Metacommunication. In ritual, the actions that people take have been divorced from their instrumental consequences and given metaphysical properties of meaning. Play has an interiority that ritual lacks-- there can be secrets and thought processes behind the play which the player does not divulge and in fact may be the only person capable of appreciating. Caillois & Huizinga both comment on this relationship as well. Caillois originally dealt with play in a chapter at the end of Man & the Sacred, a book on ritual. What are play acts? Playing consists of play acts, the basic physical units of playing and gaming. Play acts can be specifically defined by a game, or may be acts in the spirit of play. While Schechner claims they are the basic unit of playing and gaming, he then goes on to say that each play act consists of many subacts, distinct behavioral units that form a coherent whole. Some scholars note that this doesn't make any fucking sense and Schechner should think twice before throwing around the word basic. What is dark play? Related to deep play, articulated by Bentham and expanded by Geertz. In deep play, the player wagers more than he can afford. Dark play rewards its players by means of deceit, deception, distress, is inherently subversive. It subverts order. It often threatens to disrupt the play itself-- i.e. THE GIG IS UP Subvert the metacommunicative this is just play-- the people engaging in it may not be sure if they are playing, if they are the initiator or a dupe. Example: Russian roulette,

Which ways do we have of approaching play? (some of the 7) Structure-- anything from Aarseth's oeuvre, basically. Process-- Diachronic analysis of play. Related to structure. Experience-- affect. Function-- what purposes does play serve? Evolutionary, species, individual Contrasting the play of animals with that of humans, different levels of play among different age groups, societies, culture. Ideology-- politics, etc. Frame-- understanding where games begin and end, looking at them from different perspectives depending on involvement in the game. The Ambiguity of Play by Brian Sutton-Smith What does Sutton-Smith mean by the diversity of play? Almost anything can allow play to occur within its boundaries. Basically, almost anything can be done playfully, and there are different levels' or amounts of play. Mind or subjective play (imagination, D&D), solitary play (hobbies, dicking around), playful behaviors (play on words, playing tricks), informal social play (parties, jokes, rough & tumble, bars, the Internet), vicarious audience play, performance play (playing the piano, acting), celebrations/festivals (carnivalesque), contests, risky or deep play. What are the rhetorics of play? as progressplay as fateplay as power-- dominance, agon, strength. Play as identity-- celebrations, home teams play as the imaginary-play of the self-- play as expression, play as discovery, play as experiential, play as frivolous-- pure waste Beyond the Rules of the Game: Why Are Rooie Rules Nice? by Linda Hughes How do children playground rules illuminate design and the activity? In Hughes' text, the position of player and designer are clearly mixed. This highlights the second order nature of game design-- in fact, the ultimate reward of the game is to become its designer. The king of Foursquare gets to choose which rules are enforced and how the game proceeds. Furthermore, the way these explicit rules are interpreted and enforced is highly dependent on both the player, the relationship of the players, and the commentary of the players waiting for an opportunity to join the game. Foursquare is also a folk game with organic development-- it has no inventor or official rule book, suggesting that its design was through a series of evolutions depending on the goals of the game. Furthermore, the physical constraints of the player (little kids) and the social characteristics of the players (the boys!) have a large effect on how the rules are interpreted and enforced. Why arent games much fun when rules dominate the activity? It's not so much that rules are against fun-- but formal rules and the rules which are arrived at over the course of a play session may not necessarily be the same thing. Not all rules need to be rigidly enforced in order to promote play. Helen Schwartzmann (who taught Anthro of Complex

Organizations) promoted moving away from a rules model when looking at play, because looking at the rules means looking at what's important to the game, which is not necessarily the most interesting to an anthropologist. In some games, the amount of playable action is wide and the goals are ambiguous, so the players and the referee must interpret and emphasize the rules for a common purpose-- compare Fine's Shared Fantasy. In Foursquare, the rules are particularly malleable because the King can declare new variants as time goes on. The rules are not objective, and the person setting the rules is not objective either-perhaps they are trying to exclude certain players or types of play, or change the rules for the advantage or handicap of certain players. Here, violating the rules is rarely penalized-- they are more like suggestions. The perceived intention has a large effect on the game-- it's important that people try to play nice and cooperatively in the social setting around Foursquare. When arguing about the rules dominates the activity, it demonstrates that there are different conceptions of the game in conflict with each other. In the example, the boys and girls are playing for different reasons, and the boys are disrupting the social community of the girls. Games aren't much 'fun' when rules, rather than relationships, dominate the activity when there is no attention to flow, fairness, respect, etc. Taking the leeway out by treating all rules as rigidly prescribed and tied to actions subordinates fun, etc. Lecture 5 Cognitive Engineering by Donald Norman What does Norman mean by cognitive engineering? A methodology that applies what is known from science to the design and construction of machines. It is neither Cognitive Psychology nor Cognitive Science on its own. Norman continues with illustrating an issue between the user and the computer: The difficulty of understanding a complex system (such as a computer) from a user perspective. The goal of Cognitive Engineering is to understand this issue, to show how to make better choices when they exist, and to show the consequences/trade-offs a potential improvement can give anywhere in the system. He elaborates on this goal: 1. Cognitive Engineering is to understand the fundamental principles behind human action and performance that are relevant for the development of engineering principles of design. 2. Cognitive Engineering is to devise systems that are pleasant to use - the goal is neither efficiency nor ease nor power, although these are all to be desired, but rather systems that are pleasant, even fun: to produce what Laurel calls "pleasurable engagement". What is the relation between the psychological (user) and the physical (system)? Norman talks about Psychological Variables and Physical Variables. Psychological Variables are goals and intentions of the user, whereas Physical Variables are the controls of a system that allows the user to complete his/her goals and intentions. Norman continues to illustrate this with an example of a tap (faucet) system. The easiest system to build would be a two-tap system, one for cold water and one for hot. However, since the psychological intent of the user is typically mixing these two into a blend that is neither too hot or too cold, such a system has low usability and requires the user to know exactly how much to turn each tap in order to get the desired blend of water. From this example, Norman extracts the following problems: 1. Mapping Problems: Which control is hot, which is cold? Which way should each control be turned to increase or decrease the flow? (He notes further: Despite the appearance of universal standards for

these mappings, there are sufficient variations in the standards, idiosyncratic layouts, and violations of expectations, that each new faucet poses potential problems). 2. Ease of control: To make the water hotter while maintaining total rate constant requires simultaneous manipulation of both faucets. 3. Evaluation: With two faucets, it is sometimes difficult to determine if the correct outcome has been reached. What are the gulf of execution and the gulf of evaluation? The user starts out with the goals expressed in psychological terms, while the system presents its current state in physical terms. Goals and system differ significantly in form and content, creating Gulfs that need to be bridged if the system can be used. The Gulfs can be bridged by starting in either direction: The designer can bridge the Gulfs by starting at the system side and moving closer to the person by constructing the input and output characteristics of the interface so as to make better matches to the psychological needs of the user. The user can bridge the Gulfs by creating plans, action sequences and interpretations that move the normal description of the goals and intentions closer to the description required by the physical system. The Gulfs are presented as the Gulf of Execution and the Gulf of Evaluation. Bridging the Gulf of Execution is presented in four segments: Intention formation, specifying the action sequence, executing the action, and, finally, making contact with the input mechanisms of the interface. The intention is the first step, and it starts to bridge the Gulf in part because the interaction language demanded by the physical system. Specifying the action sequence is a non-trivial exercise in planning. After an appropriate action sequence is determined, the actions must be executed. Execution is the first physical step in this sequence. And just what physical actions are required is determined by the choice of input devices; and this can make a major difference in the usability of the system. Because some physical actions are more difficult than others, the choice of input devices can affect the selection of actions, which in turn affects how well the system matches with intentions. Bridging the Gulf of Evaluation requires comparing the interpretation of the system state with the original goals and intentions. The gap from system to user is presented in four segments: starting with the output displays of the interface, moving to the perceptual processing of those displays, to its interpretation, and finally, to the evaluation - the comparison of the interpretation of system state with the original goals and intention. But in doing all this, there is one more problem, one just beginning to be understood, and one not assisted by the usual forms of displays: the problem of level. There may be different levels of outcomes that must be matched with different levels of intentions. And finally, if the change in system does not occur immediately following the execution of the action sequence, the resulting delay can severely impede the process of evaluation, for the user may no longer remember the details of the intentions or the action sequence. How do you keep the user in control? Not replacing workers, but giving them tools. Norman talks about tools and how tools should be able to keep the user in control by being "intelligent", that is, they should do what the user intends to do, not what the user is attempting to do. To do this, a designer needs a good model of the user, and the user needs a good user's model of the

system. A dichotomy here is that the system should be simple to work with, but not too simple as to require too much skill from the user. They should be intelligent, but be sure to give the user the response he or she desires, and not perform actions that the user did not intend. What does Norman mean by the design tradeoffs? Norman talks about tools and how tools should be able to keep the user in control by being "intelligent", that is, they should do what the user intends to do, not what the user is attempting to do. To do this, a designer needs a good model of the user, and the user needs a good user's model of the system. A dichotomy here is that the system should be simple to work with, but not too simple as to require too much skill from the user. They should be intelligent, but be sure to give the user the response he or she desires, and not perform actions that the user did not intend. You can't do everything. There are tradeoffs between quick development, extensive feature sets. Options/simplicity. These tradeoffs should be made with the user experience in mind. Creativity in the Design Process by Dorst & Cross Notable for the all the designers had the same idea, thought it was original thing. Is there such a thing as a creative leap in the design process? It is often characterized as a specific event-- either that the designer immediately realizes, or only later comes to recognize as the thought that eventually lead to the solution of the problem. Cross conceptualizes it as a bridge between the problem space and the solution space. The problem space and solution space are in flux before being temporarily fixed by the bridge. The solution space is derived from an ideal default solution to a hypothetical problem, coupled with questions as to how the resources or constraints differ from what the designer is accustomed to. The problem space is an ongoing collection of information about the problem. Identifying the connection between these two and forming a conceptual bridge may be perceived as creative leap by some practitioners. The creative leap may also be associated with the surprise element of design as formulated by Schon. How is creative design defined in this paper? Creative design is not a matter of first fixing the problem and then searching for a satisfactory solution. Creative design is a matter of developing and refining together the formulation of the problem and ideas for a solution, with constant iteration between them. The process culminates with a conceptual bridge built between the notional problem space and solution space. Lecture 7 Materializing Design by Sass How are creative fields characterized? Creative fields are characterized by the generation and manufacture of objects for reflection and evaluation (Schon). Painters sketch, game designers make mockups, architects do CAD, models, etc. Sculptors deal with less expensive materials, iterate more complex statutes. Why learning by doing, and therefore why Rapid Prototyping?

Learning by doing allows a designer to acquire new processes of redescribing or redesigning based on previous work. An opportunity to manage the full domain of real life experiences through activitybased learning. What are technical artifacts? A technical artifact is described as an object with a technical function of a physical structure designed and made through conscious production. Prototyping results in technical artifacts. By examining the method behind technical artifacts, design researchers can understand what technical aspects different prototyping models are effective for. Digital design produces 3D models, sketches are good for space/diagramming, fabrication externalizes objects for physical and visual evaluation. Lecture 8 MINIMALIST GAME DESIGN This is different from the minimalist game proposed by Myers, mentioned by Stenros & Waern, which posited a game without a player. What do the authors mean by minimalist? Across all disciplines, the idea is to strip away all unnecessary components, leaving only the parts one really needs. The authors suggest both a minimal product and a minimal process. In design, putting strict constraints on the development of the game to focus its appeal. This may mean abstracting certain parts of the game to simplify them, to constrain the scope of the game so that it can be tackled by a small team, etc. In play, making the game simple so that it is accessible to players and focuses on specific qualities of the game. One way to do this is through minimal controls that allow input amplification. Rather than a mimetic reproduction where one action corresponds to one button, there are opportunities to add context sensitive actions. Minimalist games can be either casual or hardcore. May include focusing on a core mechanic Minimalist games have a small set of rules, contain only few micro-mechanics and possibly only one (macro) core mechanic. may have tightly coupled elements and/or (sub)systems, have simple, easy to use controls that blend with the underlying systems, are systemically and visually abstract, have a low perceived complexity but (possibly) deep systemic complexity. What do they mean by perceived complexity? The game should appear to be simple so that it is accessible. But ideally, the simplicity of the interaction conceals a deep systemic complexity. That is, simple choices belie a complex world of probabilities and changes along the course of the game.

Although they don't specify, the other side of the coin is that a game is quite simple but because of the way it is presented or designed it seems much more complex than it really is. Bloated interfaces, poor explanation of how things affect gameplay. According to Norman, the complexity of appearance seems to be determined by the number of controls, whereas difficulty of use is jointly determined by the difficulty of finding the relevant controls (which increases with the number of controls) and the difficulty of executing the functions (which may decrease with the number of controls). [25] Thus, the game designer must carefully balance the number of elements on screen and their spatial arrangement. The Anatomy of Prototypes What are manifestation dimensions? When creating a prototype that manifests a certain aspect of a design idea, designers need to make

careful choices about the prototypes material, the resolution of its details (which corresponds to the concept of fidelity), and the scope of what the prototype covers (which can be understood as a level of inclusiveness that is, whether the prototype covers only one aspect of the design idea or several aspects of the design idea). These three considerations of manifesting a design ideanamely, the material, resolution, and scope of a prototypeare also part of the prototypes anatomy. We call these considerations manifestation dimensions. What are filtering dimensions? As a part of our framework, we identify an initial set of design aspects that a prototype might exhibit. We call these aspects filtering dimensions. We use the term filter, since by selecting aspects of a design idea, the designer focuses on particular regions within an imagined or possible design space. The designer screens out unnecessary aspects of the design that a particular prototype does not need to explore. Designers may purposefully do this so that they can extract knowledge about specific aspects of the design more precisely and effectively. The decision of what to filter out is always based on the purpose of prototyping. What do the authors claim is the fundamental prototyping principle? If the focus of prototyping is framing and exploring a design space, what matters is not identifying or satisfying requirements using prototypes but finding the manifestation that in its simplest form, filters

the qualities in which designers are interested, without distorting the understanding of the whole. We call this the fundamental prototyping principle. Two fundamental aspects of prototypes form the basis of our framework: 1. prototypes are for traversing a design space, leading to the creation of meaningful knowledge about the final design as envisioned in the process of design, (filtering dimensions) and 2. Prototypes are purposefully formed manifestations of design ideas. (manifestation dimensions) What is the economic principle of prototyping? A designer can determine the manifestation dimensions of a prototype by considering the economic principle of prototyping, which we define as follows: the best prototype is one that, in the simplest and most efficient way, makes the possibilities and limitations of a design idea visible and measurable. The Anatomy of Sketching Why is sketching the archetypal activity of design? Late medieval period-- design & sketching are mixed. Allows designers to visualize ideas, put them down on paper, communicate and iterate upon them quickly. First method for turning an idea into a concrete representation that can be used for refinement, development, planning. Can you name some characteristics of sketching (and why they are relevant for game design)? Quick: A sketch is quick to make, or at least gives that impression. Timely: A sketch can be provided when needed. Inexpensive: A sketch is cheap. Cost must not inhibit the ability to explore a concept, especially early in the design process. Disposable: If you cant afford to throw it away when done, it is probably not a sketch. The investment with a sketch is in the concept, not the execution. By the way, this doesnt mean that they have no value, or that you always dispose of them. Rather, their value largely depends on their disposability. Plentiful: Sketches tend not to exist in isolation. Their meaning or relevance is generally in the context of a collection or series, not as an isolated rendering. Clear vocabulary: The style in which a sketch is rendered follows certain conventions that distinguish it from other types of renderings. The style, or form, signals that it is a sketch. The way that lines extend through endpoints is an example of such a convention, or style. Distinct gesture: There is a fluidity to sketches that gives them a sense of openness and freedom. They are not tight and precise, in the sense that an engineering drawing would be, for example. Minimal detail: Include only what is required to render the intended purpose or concept. Lawson (1997, p. 242) puts it this way, it is usually helpful if the drawing does not show or suggest answers to questions which are not being asked at the time. Superfluous detail is almost always distracting, at best, no matter how attractive or well rendered. Going beyond good enough is a negative, not a positive. Appropriate degree of refinement: By its resolution or style, a sketch should not suggest a level of refinement beyond that of the project being depicted. As Lawson expresses it, it seems helpful if the drawing suggests only a level of precision which corresponds to the level of certainty in the designers mind at the time. Suggest and explore rather than confirm: More on this later, but sketches dont tell, they suggest. Their value lies not in the artifact of the sketch itself, but in its ability to provide a catalyst to the desired and appropriate behaviors, conversations, and interactions.

 Ambiguity: Sketches are intentionally ambiguous, and much of their value derives from their being able to be interpreted in different ways, and new relationships seen within them, even by the person who drew them. (from Working artefacts) What do the authors mean with the design transition in history from invention to ongoing practices? Previously used to be about some guy who came up with an idea, implemented it, everyone thought it was awesome. Now there's feedback from the users, and it has a lot more to do with improving existing practices. What do prototypes do? Prototypes discover user needs. How were the accountabilities of the prototype multiple? Engineers had interests, accountants had interests, Lecture 11 (from Magic and Showmanship) What is conjuring (and how does it relate to pitching)? The art of conjuring consists in creating illusions of the impossible. 95% applied psychology. What occurs on the stage is of no consequence except as it affects the audience's thinking. An illusion creates suspension of disbelief-- a trick is something that people can't figure out, but they never forget it is impossible. Interest depends on meaning, but how does that relate to magic and showmanship? Any form of entertainment must have meaning. When we supply a meaning, we eliminate the challenge (puzzle-element of the trick). If the meaning is made strong enough, the audience may not realize there is any puzzle to solve. Meaning creates drama. When showmanship is carried far enough, it can even provide the illusion of meaning where there is none. Meaning provides the magic of drama. Showmanship intensifies or exaggerates that meaning. Technique keeps the meaning from being diluted by distractions. Meaning is not to be preferred over tricks in all circumstances. With little children, it could convince them that the occult is real. When selling, it is better to be a humble servant just showing off a few tricks rather than a superior magician. Conviction without deception-- suspension of disbelief, not actually tricking someone. Atmosphere controls the state of mind in which the audience perceives your performance. What is the actors rule? Never turn your back on the audience. They can't see your face, you can't see them. They probably can't hear you, either. More generally, this means applying the techniques of acting to the stage-- you have to present yourself, project, let the audience applause and laugh at appropriate moments, and move with fluidity & professional grace. This article also brings attention to the performative nature of play-- the game designer is putting on a performance, and in many cases planning a performance for his players. Lecture 12 (from Cultural Probes) What are cultural probes? Small, qualitative probes into people's lives. In the text, they asked people to take pictures of the social heart of their house, where they sleep, etc. Cultural probes are a design-led approach to understanding

users that stressed empathy and engagement. Probes are collections of evocative tasks meant to elicit inspirational responses from peoplenot comprehensive information about them, but fragmentary clues about their lives and thoughts In which way(s) are they useful for design?
Analyses are often used as mediating representations for raw data: they blunt the contact that designers can have with users through Probe returns. Seeking for justifiable accounts of Probe returns constrains the imaginative engagement and story-telling which can be most useful for design. Beyond these specific concerns, however, it should be clear that the Probes embody an approach to design that go beyond the technique alone. The potential benefits and lessons from this approach are in danger of being lost if Probes are used in a purely scientific fashion.

What should probology be?

If Probes are collections of materials posing tasks to which people respond over time, then probology is an approach that uses Probes to encourage subjective engagement, empathetic interpretation, and a pervasive sense of uncertainty as positive values for design. We accept that Probes, the technique, may be appropriated for a variety of different ends. We hope, however, that other researchers and designers will embrace probology as well as Probes in pursuing design for everyday pleasure.

All of the above, fit into a school of design. (from Anatomy of a failure) Why is success or failure difficult to measure? First, however, we describe the symptoms of failure that is, how we knew that our system did not work. This is more problematic than might be supposed. Most systems reported in the HCI literature are designed to achieve predefined goals such as allowing some task to be completed or problem to be solved. This permits the establishment of criteria such as speed and accuracy against which system success can be measured. The system we report here, in contrast, embodies a style of design, and design research, in which human-machine interaction is seen as locally situated meaning making and the role of design as the provision of multilayered resources for this process. The open-endedness of this approach raises challenges for how systems should be evaluated, because what it means to succeed, and indeed the dimensions relevant for success, may vary widely depending on how people achieve a meaningful relationship with a given design. From this perspective, judging success or failure is not a trivial thing. What are the symptoms for success or failure? Engagement This manifests itself in a variety of ways. Beyond any explicit declaration of liking (which, after all, might be made out of sheer politeness), we take as evidence such things as an enthusiasm about discussing the design and their experience with it; persistence in use and interpretation over time; suggestions for new enhancements that reflect our original design intentions, showing the prototype to friends; disappointment that the field trial must end, and expressions of desire to own the prototype. Reference A form of engagement that has been striking in earlier field trials involves the tendency for volunteers to discuss successful prototypes through reference to other technologies or experiences that they like. For instance, one of the volunteers who tried an earlier prototype, which displayed aerial photography of England and Wales that moved over time, compared it at various times to a hot air balloon, to late night television broadcasts of satellite imagery, and to a plane ride he took in which he spent most of his time in the toilet because it had a window looking down on the earth below. The prototype didnt literally emulate these experiences, nor was it meant to. Instead, suchreferences emerged over several conversations, ultimately constituting a category of valued experiences that could include the prototype and thus allow its appeal to be understood and articulated. Accommodation A notable feature of previous deployments is the degree to which people accommodate successful designs to their existing domestic activities and rhythms. Despite the fact that most of our prototypes

are meant to introduce unfamiliar content and interactions to the home, when volunteers persist in engaging with them over time, they tend to find patterns of use that accommodate them within the activities of home. For many of our prototypes this involves periodic engagement during breaks from more purposeful household activities. The status of a prototype might be checked first thing in the morning and then periodically during the day, for example, with more protracted engagement in the evening as an explicitly acknowledged alternative to television viewing. The domestication of a new prototype appears to be a prerequisite to, and evidence for, its success. Surprise and InsightVolunteers persist in using successful systems over time, interpret them with respect to other favoured experiences, and accommodate them to their domestic routines. More than this, successful systems are those which continue to occasion new surprises and new insights over the course of encounters with them. For instance, new content might appear, or unfamiliar, potentially rare, behaviours might be observed, and this might give rise to new perceptions of the system or the things it indicates. Equally, people may find new meanings for relatively rich but unchanging experiences. Of course, surprise and insight are neither properties of the system per se nor of the people who use it, but instead characterise the relationship between the two. People may perceive novel system behaviours as surprising or not, and such behaviours may occasion new insights or they may not. To the degree that surprise and insight are achieved over the course of a trial, however, a given prototype will tend to be seen as successful. (from Dourish) What is the role of emotion in the context of technologies? HCIs traditional focus on the cognitive aspects of interaction design has recently been supplemented by a range of new perspectives that look beyond the purely instrumental aspects of interaction. One of these has been a focus on emotion and affect, as developed most particularly by Rosalind Picard and Don Norman. They both argue that the traditional focus on task performance has been overly reductive, modelling people in purely computational terms and neglecting other important aspects of experience. Cognition is not disembodied and disconnected from other aspects of human experience; a significant body of work highlights the role that emotion plays in decision- making and other areas of cognitive activity. Accordingly, research in affective computing has begun to investigate the possible relationship between HCI analytic and design practice and the affective aspects of interaction. Amongst other topics, affective computing researchers are investigating whether we be able to build systems that model and respond to a users emotional state so as to be able to craft responses and design interactions that take that state into account, for instance by attempting to recognize and defuse stress. This work places the emotional aspect of interaction alongside the more traditional cognitive and analytic elements. Ethnographic studies of emotion can provide an alternative account that is useful in two ways. First, it turns our attention to a different way to imagine the relationship between information technology and affect, providing us with a different set of design strategies. Second, it highlights the cultural specificities of this very parallelism between emotion and cognition. Lutz argues that emotion is a key master category in Western thought, one that lines up with and is linked to other critical distinctions around which our thinking is organized, particularly in its distinction to cognition and rationality. So rationality is of the head, but emotion is of the body; rationality is controlled, but emotion is uncontrolled; rationality is cold, but emotion is hot; rationality is male, but emotion is female. Emotion is interactional rather than representational. This does not simply raise implications for design; it is an implication for design.