DESIGNER NOTES » Blog Archive » “Fear and Loathing in Farmville” Why game designers are flocking to facebook: 1) True friends list: … Multiplayer games no longer suffer from the Catch-22 of requiring friends to be fun while new players always start the game without friends. 2) Free-to-play business model: New players need not shell out $60 to join the crowd. Consumers don’t like buying multiplayer games unless they know that their friends are all going to buy the game as well. 3) Persistent, asynchronous play: Finding time to play with one’s real friends is difficult, especially for working, adult gamers. Asynchronous mechanics, however, let gamers play at their own pace and with their own friends, not strangers who happen to be online at the same time. 4) Metrics-based iteration: Retail games are developed in a vacuum, with designers working by gut instinct. Further, games get only one launch, a single chance to succeed. Most developers would love, instead, to iterate quickly on genuine, live feedback. (categories: gamesfacebookdesignsocialsoftwaremotivationmetrics )
The Power of the Audience – Anil Dash Great essay. Quote: "…And the best use for realtime communications on the web is not to simply bring in the most recent information on a topic, but rather to make clear that others are experiencing or interacting with the same content at the same time." (categories: realtimecommunicationwritinguxdesign )
user research friday (tecznotes) Awesome article on product design, innovation, community management, crisis management and user research…. and a quote: "…There’s an alternative to the Buzz model of foisting novelty on people, and I think that Flickr is a classic example of a better way to operate on the web. Flickr is famous inside of Yahoo and out for having a basically cavalier attitude to commonly-accepted wisdom about testing, assurance, predicability, and all-around maturity. What that means is that sometimes, Flickr screws up. This is the Flickr coloring contest, hastily assembled during a multiple hour, unexpected engineering emergency from 2006. Flickr had and has a world-class community management approach that can respond to crisis with humor. The coloring contest kept anxious community members busy while terrifying technological feats were performed to unclog the tubes." (categories: stameninnovationuserfocusresearchflickrproduct-designprototypingcrisiscommunity-managementdesignux )
HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback Nice rundown on HTML5 and video and a quote: "…Playback is only one component of the total video experience. You will need to develop analytics and advertising capabilities to match or exceed your current Flash experience. Advertisers don’t publish interactive advertisements in <canvas>. The high-CPM pre-roll and post-roll video advertisements we see today are based on a Flash ecosystem built up over the years. HTML5 video and your money maker of choice will need to find a way to co-exist (banner and text advertisements still work well) and drive your development budget. I expect to see better JavaScript libraries from the open-source community as well as advertising networks solve some of the problem in the near future, just like a suite of XHR handlers popped up once Ajax started to take off." (categories: videohtml5flashbrowser )
Paul Buchheit: If your product is Great, it doesn’t need to be Good. Quote: Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product — the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can’t make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That’s it — no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg — nothing but the essentials, well executed. (categories: product-designproductmanagementinnovationdesignusabilitystartup )
Thunderbird in 2010 @ david ascher Quote: If we have an idea for a change to an existing Thunderbird feature, we’d like to roll it out first as an add-on, so that we can get feedback on early versions of the idea without having to incur all of the up-front costs of landing that change into the “trunk” builds. This should allow us to validate (or reject) ideas much faster. A great example of how this can work is the Personas feature, which matured as an add-on, and is now a standard (and awesome) feature of Firefox 3.6. (categories: innovationmozillasoftwarepluginsiteration )
Highest Paid Opinion Wins « Scott Berkun Great new acronym: "HiPPO’s rule the world when it comes to creating customer experiences. And that’s a bad thing. No matter what you think the optimal customer experience should be on the website it is quite likely that you walk into a meeting room, or office, and regardless of your competence the HiPPO decides what goes on the site." (categories: humorcollab )
Über Conf – Java Conference – June 14 – 17, 2010 – Denver, CO The Ü will offer over 100 technically focused sessions including hands on workshops centered around Architecture, Cloud, Security, Enterprise Java, Languages on the JVM, Build/Test, Mobility and Agility. The goal of Über Conf is a simple one: totally blow the minds of our attendees. (categories: conferenceuberconf )