Video Games - Entertainment or Creative Immersion

I’m not sure if you are a video game player, but even if you aren’t, there are some pretty exciting things happening with the market, namely the devices that run video games as well as the method of interaction with games. Everyone has heard of the Nintendo Wii and their innovation in regards to a motion sensitive ‘wii-mote’ which detect the controllers orientation, motion, and alignment relative to the screen. But if you’ve played any games on Apple’s iPod Touch or the iPhone, I think you’ll be impressed by the level of interaction that the iTunes App Store provides. Click here to see Apple’s iPod Ads featuring games.

Even the quality of free iPod / iPhone games such as Metal Gear Solid Touch and Tap Tap Revenge 2 have intense graphics and unexpected points of engagement ranging from the intellect all the way through fine motor skills. See the Tap Tap Revenge 2 video:

I don’t know if Apple had the iPod and iPhone in mind as a legitimate gaming platform (Apple's iPhone emerges as gaming platform, but it has definitely become more viable and it is only going to grow in the next few months with new software and hardware announcements coming at Apple’s WWDC in June. 

Sony isn’t far behind with their six axis motion sensitive controllers that use games such as Flower, built by That Game Company. Flower is not your typical game by any means. Its hard to explain, but take a look at the video below:

The game is a little strange at first, at least with the years of experience I’ve gained, but I LOVE IT and its a good release from the serious, goal oriented games I’m used to. Instead of being a ‘character’, you become a flower petal that seems to ‘recruit’ new petals along a journey throughout a very detailed and vast universe. 

Echochrome, another engaging example, is a game that makes a player think about perspective. Use the controls to change your perspective and make obstacles ‘hidden’ from view in order to advance to the next level. See the video below:

So what’s the conclusion? It is an exciting time for games and even if you haven’t thought about them or even tried them for lack of interest, it might be worth trying to play a game. It won’t be long before these interactive points find their way into everyday software and everyday lives. We might as well have fun learning it before it becomes a ‘requirement’ for living.

Mobile Interaction Design

(Wireframe built using iPhoneMockup)

You may have seen through the infinite number of blogs and news feeds that there are 10 skills that developers will need in the next five years. Surprisingly, the last item in the list is Mobile Development. I’m a little confused by how low mobile design / development is ranked as we are at the beginning of a new era of interaction design based on gesture and touch. The very catalyst for the new methodologies and the widespread use of multi-gesturing and multi-touch is mobile devices. For example, with so many wireless options of interaction, some applications have actually made tactile contact a highlight of functionality within the app. See below:


Visual design of mobile applications is changing to incorporate new points of interaction such as depth perception and virtual environments. See below:


Stanford University, for example, is now offering their classes and programs through the iTunes U. Big deal, you say? Its not new that a school decides to spread knowledge through Apple. However, look at HOW they give information about heir school and classes to their students via an iPhone application. They use an iPhone application model that uses a 'nested application' view to give the user's the ability to feel like a single application is multifunctional. See below:



Lots of good ideas are coming out everyday and we, specifically the interaction designers and developers, can use these platforms to set good behavioral examples for the future and drive home basic interface rules and principles that have been ignored in other platforms. Just imagine the possibilities when the Palm Pre becomes available...

A Project Guide to UX Design Book Review

A Project Guide to UX Design is a book that defines the micro and macroscopic views of user experience design and its role in the project life cycle. Russ and Carolyn do a great job of reiterating what the core of user experience design is as well as identifying the different roles that utilize it. The book covers a lot of ground and takes a transcendental approach of showing the underlying purpose for each role in order to promote a synthetic comprehension of user experience design as opposed to shallow memorization.

The main target audience of the book are Information Architects, Interaction Designers, User Researchers, and other project stakeholders (Business Analysts, Content Strategists, Copywriters, Visual Designers, and Front-end Developers).

To make the contents more inviting, I've created an enclosing outline to provide abstract classifications for several groups of chapters. Each number represents the number of pages in each chapter:

+ Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD (8)
- Chapter 2: The Project Ecosystem (29)

+ Business Perspective
- Chapter 3: Proposals for Consultants and Freelancers (15)
- Chapter 4: Project Objectives and Approach (10)
- Chapter 5: Business Requirements (15)

+ Research
- Chapter 6: User Research (26)
- Chapter 7: Personas (13)
- Chapter 8: User Experience Design and SEO (17)

+ Information Architecture / Interaction Design
- Chapter 9: Transition from Defining to Designing (18)
- Chapter 10: Site Maps and Task Flows (17)
- Chapter 11: Wireframes and Annotations (17)
- Chapter 12: Prototyping (15)
- Chapter 13: Design testing with Users (25)
- Chapter 14: Transition: From Design to Development and Beyond (10)

The book also contains frequent references to books, online resources, and user experience groups and authors throughout as opposed to an Appendix or a 'For further reading' section nested in the back. This helps to drive home the thoughts as you read them, rather than 'when you are finished'.

As an aspiring user experience professional, I do believe that this book is worth owning, reading, and referencing as a compass to create effective user experience in any project setting.

Birth of R or I

After going through what seems like purgatory to get this blog up and running, I finally have published the site. Welcome to Real or Imagined, a place where you and I can vent some thoughts and you can choose whether something can or cannot exist.

I look forward to posting many things here (i.e. concepts, ideas, thoughts, etc.), conduct book and content reviews for the sake of objective opinions, and several topics that are important in my life (i.e. Information architecture, HCI, information design, interaction design, user experience, philanthropy, etc.).

Let's get started...