The Information Design of Games
From CS377g “Serious Games” and CS247i’s unit “Games for Understanding”
An annotated deck
There are multiple disciplines that specialize in turning data into information and making possible for ordinary people to understand.
- Information Architecture is the art of making information findable, understandable and usable.
- Graphic design is the art of making print and digital work beautiful and desirable.
- INFORMATION DESIGN is the art of making information understandable. Like maps, it’s usually a lie, but a useful lie.
Examples
Remembering rules (and procedures, and point values, etc) is HARD! SO you want to make sure the information people needs is where they need it.
With Patchwork, there are three boards: two for players to make their quilts on and one to keep score.
Patchwork has been designed for maximum free working memory.
By notations, I mean anything that a user needs to write or draw.
Kodama takes tiles and relaxes the edge matching element, letting you grow a tree
Oh hai educators. Here are slides. pdf | ppt
Be nice! Attribute twice! (me and Matt)
BONUS
Strongly recommended: Randy Hoyt on Cardboard Interfaces
