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