How to Design the Fun out of Things

Brock Dubbels, PhDGScale Game Development and Testing Lab

Dept. Computing and SoftwareMcMaster Libraries

McMaster University

Barbell Factory

Usability and User Expereince

Bullying

Time Flies

• Fun & Flow

– fun occurs, the subjective tracking of activity duration diverges from the actual duration and objective experience (Sackett et al.).

– This is similar to the reported descriptions of the subjective experience of Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992; Sutton-Smith, 2001).

Approach Motivation

Feeling that time is moving faster seems to be the specific result of our desire to approach or pursue something, not a more general effect of increased attention or physiological arousal. For example, people may tend to pursue an activity that is fun.

Approach Motivation

• States high in approach motivation make time seem like it is passing fast because it narrows our memory and attention processes, which shuts out thoughts and feelings that are not related

– (Elliot and Covington (2001) ; Elliot, Gable, and Mapes (2006) ; Elliot (2006)

Experience of Play

• Play, Fun, and Flow:

– When fun occurs, the subjective tracking of activity duration diverges from the actual duration and objective experience

• (Sackett et al.).

– This is similar to the reported descriptions of the subjective experience of Flow

• (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992; Sutton-Smith, 2001).

Attraction of Play

• States high in approach motivation make time seem like it is passing fast because it narrows our memory and attention processes, which shuts out thoughts and feelings that are not related.

– (Elliot and Covington; Elliot, Gable, and Mapes; Elliot, “The Hierarchical Model of Approach-Avoidance Motivation”; Gable; Sackett et al.).

Play

Play?

Play is

• a spontaneous activity that comes about as a mood, or emotional atmosphere and can be compared to way finding. A player may be asked to:

– Create their destination

– Invent a reason for why they are going there

– Create a method for how they will travel

Play and Function

• "Biologically, its function is to reinforce the organism’s variability in the face of rigidifications of successful adaptation” – (Sutton-Smith, 1997, 231).

• Play allows for a reframing of reality, and reconsideration of context and the realm of the possibilities. – (Dubbels, 2010)

Toys, Objects, & Language Structure Play

• play as imagination is action,

• imagination as play without action.

– Vygotsky (1977)

Play as Discourse

Embodied Signals

Design Indicates Ethos

Play and Cultural Role

• Play strengthens societies by uniting individuals through ritual activity and helping them achieve common goals. – Huizinga (1950)

• Toys, jokes, and games are often as symbols of play to face collective fears about cultural issues that quickly overwhelm the individual: bigotry, racism, rejection, terrorism, addiction, and poverty.

• Toys, jokes, and games are things we can study as distributed cognition by examining them as tools, rules, roles, and context.

Activity Ethos

EthosModel Play Game/Work ThreatZConsequence Ambiguous Directed DefinedXContent Story Narrative ExpositionYInterpretation Mimesis Diegesis Compliance

Coherence Relations

• Law of Coherence:

– For low prior knowledge learners, low ambiguity/ high coherence is best.

– For high prior knowledge learners, high ambiguity/ low coherence is best,

CNA of a Story

• Two frogs dwelt in the same pool. The pool being dried up under the summer's heat, they left it and set out together for another home. As they went along they chanced to pass a deep well, amply supplied with water, on seeing which, one of the Frogs said to the other: "Let us descend and make our abode in this well." The other replied with greater caution: "But suppose the water should fail us, how can we get out again from so great a depth?"

Causal Network Analysis

CNA of a Game

Play: Off-Loading Complexity

Dubbels (2013)

User Experience

– User experience is the totality of the effect or effects felt by a user as a result

of interaction with, and the usage context of, a system, device, or product,

including the influence of usability, usefulness, and emotional impact during

interaction, and savoring the memory after interaction.

– “Interaction with” is broad and embraces seeing, touching, and thinking about

the system or product, including admiring it and its presentation before any

physical interaction.

Elements of UX

• Usability

– Usability is the pragmatic component of user experience, including effectiveness, efficiency,

productivity, ease-of-use, learnability, retainability, and the pragmatic aspects of user

satisfaction.

• Usefulness

– Usefulness is the component of user experience to which system functionalitygives the ability

to use the system or product to accomplish the goals of work(or play).

• Functionality

– Functionality is power to do work(or play) seated in the non-user-interface

computational features and capabilities.

Elements of UX

• Emotional Impact– Emotional impact is the affective component of

user experience that influences user feelings.Emotional impact includes such effects aspleasure, fun, joy of use, aesthetics, desirability,pleasure, novelty, originality, sensations,coolness, engagement, appeal and can involvedeeper emotional factors such self-identity, afeeling of contribution to the world and pride of ownership.