INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND GAMES
Owen Gibbs
INF385e
4/5/2012
Subtopics
Increasingly immersive peripherals
Game elements in websites
Serious Games
Increasingly Immersive Peripherals
The Early Days Gamers had to rely
on their eyes and ears (and imaginations)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Atari-2600-Joystick.jpg/465px-Atari-2600-Joystick.jpg
Haptic Feedback Introduced in 1976 –
Sega’s Fonz
Early home useNintendo 64Sega Dreamcast
Sony Dual Shock built in haptics and created standard
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Fonz_1976_sega_arcade.PNG
Beyond Traditional Haptic:Philips amBX System
Short for “Ambient Experience”
Speakers w/ lights, “wallwasher,” rumble pad, and fans
Philips kits discontinued
Extreme Immersion & the Future
http://www.force-dynamics.com/401/
Potential for integration of various forms of non-visual/auditory feedback.
Olfaction? Taste?
Game Elements in Websites
Badges
AKA Achievements
Popular in gaming (XBOX, PS3, Steam)
Becoming more popular on websites
They help with revenue (targeted ads), community building, better crowd-sourcing, and better comments
Websites With Badges
Foursquare Huffington Post StackOverflow Kongregate Pub Scout (Team Beer)
Project 27x
Design team at Vanguard tasked with redesigning Open an Account function
The old design was a serial process that “obscured the vision of the whole”
Looked to games, especially children’s games, for inspiration
Leveraged visual metaphors “to help tell the story of investing” and animations to focus users’ attention
Project 27x (cont.)
Kellie Rae Carter & Dominic La Cava, Gaming the Design: Using Game Design Techniques in the Realm of Investing, Figures 1 and 2
Serious Games
Games Aren’t Just for Fun Games are being used for many
purposes other than entertainment Example Categories:
AdvergamesGames-based learningGames for healthExergaming
Dora the Explorer
66 Dora the Explorer games on the Nick Jr. website.
Each game has a list of developmental skills associated with it:CREATE with usEXPLORE with usCOUNT with us
A Local Example
Yan Zhang’s current research: “LIFEisGame: Learning of facial emotions using serious games”Designed to help kids with Autism Spectrum
Disorders learn facial expressions
Questions?
Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_technology https://www.ambx.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmBX http://www.pcworld.com/article/199362/15_ultimate_gamer_c
hairs.html http
://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/140653/how-badges-help-news-websites-build-community-make-money/
Kellie Rae Carter & Dominic La Cava, Gaming the Design: Using Game Design Techniques in the Realm of Investing, Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology August/September 2009, Volume 35, Number 6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~yanz/research.html http://www.nickjr.com/games/dora-the-explorer/all-themes/all-ages/in
dex.jhtml