At the Dconstruct conference on the social web earlier this year, Alex Krotoski spoke about building a bridge between the game and web communities. The difference between these two, she claims, is mainly that while game developers get to design products that target people like themselves, the web community designs solutions targeted towards very different people than themselves. But as games become main stream (Nicole Kidman appearing in the Nitendo DS lite ads for instance), and room for play is more accepted as a way of enhancing the user experience in web applications, the two communities definitely have something to learn from each other.

So, largely agreeing with Alex I spent last Friday at Playful, a one day event about games and play hosted by Pixel-Lab here in London. There were many great speakers on the program and although a few of these came disappointingly unprepared, the atmosphere in Conway Hall was warm, fun and engaging.

To me, the most interesting talks revolved around the notion of “freeplay” - the bit of the user experience that can’t be designed or controlled by designers in advance.
Interaction designer Kars Alfrink (Leapfrog) stressed that meaning and value is created by the user. Designers will take this away from people by presuming play in advance. To allow a “possibility space” to emerge, you have to “under-specify” and create tools rather than trying to define a specific experience.

Eric Zimmerman of GameLab’s talk was also about “free play”, and how “systems literacy” is the new defining form of literacy in the coming years. So many aspects in our life are mediated by interfaces and systems, and game play is a model for understanding systems because games have rules. “Problem solving does not only require an understanding of the system,” Zimmerman said, “but also the ability to play with it.” Systems does not understand play, or emotions -  they enforce rules. Designers who create amazing user experiences and drive innovation make sure that the rules of the system allow a little bit of “freeplay” - movement within the rigid structure. Eric used the game of wriggling the steering wheel or playing with the gear stake when you’re driving as an example - the gear/steering wheel is there because of the system, but freeplay is the free movement within this system. Flickr is a great web example of this - members use the groups and pools as tools to create games around photography.

Architect Eric Clogh (212box) gave us another example of a “system” within the system. While renovating the Klinsky residence on upper Fifth Avenue NY, they were asked to do a little “something” for their four kids. Combining architectural elements with history and puzzles, he created an incredible story that the kids would unravel via 18 clues embedded in the apartment, which got progressively more difficult to solve. Read more about “The Mystery on Fifth Avenue” at the Herald Tribune.

In tune with all of this, designer Matt Brown from Last.fm urged us to “draw more dots - people will join them”. Last.fm have released an API to their service so that people can create their own stuff around the listening and sharing experience. Matt is especially interested in how games can help teach us how to play an instrument and demoed some fun little games based on finger exercises for brass instruments. As an old Trombone player, my favourite must be the “Breath Control Car” although the Singing sock puppets are hilarious…

Well done to Pixel Lab for hosting this event - it will be interesting to see how it progress next year.

Isaac’s been known to repeat the maxim ‘We demand perfection!’ when collaborating with our CSS Ninja, Sarah, on projects. Now, whilst visual perfection is something we strive for at MxM, we also strive for maximum engagement with our users. So I was interested to see this mini-interview with Clay Shirky who espouses a bit of rough to make sites that require interaction more friendly.

Basically, he’s saying that if something looks too perfect (like a kitchen fit for a magazine shoot), people won’t touch it. This is why the sites we’ve designed recently (and in the past) put people and activity to the fore.

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My colleagues and I went to Dconstruct - a one-day conference about designing and building the latest generation of social web applications.

All of the talks were interesting, although I found some too techie for me as a designer. However, one talk by Joshua Porter was particularly interesting.

Joshua talked about biases that affect the way people think and make decisions. He also shared some insights into how to use cognitive bias to get people signing up and using software. Here are some notes.

Examples of cognitive biases:

Bandwagon effect – people tend to do things because other people do the same. This is related to group pressure – if we don’t know something we follow the others, we use shortcuts rather than do the logical thing, which would require gathering all needed information (we act like sheep).
Example:
• Freshbooks uses the bandwagon effect tactic to attract new users by emphasising number of new users, showing them on a worldwide map, and displaying reviews from “Happy Users”.

Representational bias – people tend to follow like-minded people
Example:
• Freshbooks uses a representative selection of happy users on their homepage with authentic photos, job titles, quotes, real names, etc.
• Yelp.com – for review of the day, they’ve chosen people that are very active on the site (lots of friends, lots of reviews). This is the desired behaviour that is valued at Yelp.

Loss aversion – people prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains.
Example:
• Best buy – you can shop there without creating an account, but at the end of the shopping process they say:” Create an account to save time the next time you shop”. Would be more effective if it was: “Create an account so you don’t lose the ability to track your package.”

Ownership bias – people value things more when they feel sense of ownership. Some websites can get you engaged by creating something first before asking for any sign up – this creates an instant feeling of ownership.
Example
• Slide – instantly engage you into creating a slide show without signing up. They encourage you to sign up afterwards so you can edit this slideshow later.

• Geni – gets you started very quickly, they just ask you to fill in three bits of information and you can start building a family tree that you can share.

• Flickr – using “You”, “Your” – gives users a feeling that they own it

I agree with Joshua that it is very important for web designers to understand and translate social psychology into a positive experience for web users.

By understanding biases designers can use them to their advantage to attract and convince people to sign up and use the service.

Equally, if it’s not clear what the site is about and the proposition isn’t strong enough to attract users, then it won’t build an audience. And what’s the point of that?