Design Interactivity = Fun

Rah Koster leads one of the mid-morning keynotes at O'Reilly's eTech conference in San Diego today. He chooses the topic fun and starts his presentation by asking the audience to start humming and clicking. His analogy - music and patterns.

Fun is a chemical response and arises out of various experiements. He uses gaming user interface examples as one way to determine what is fun -- or not.

By Lee Ander

--Understanding the pattern it has been presented
--Poking at something and seeing how it responds
--Mastering the way a model works

Research has shown four types of fun. He shows a grid, where hard and easy line up across the top and visceral and social are listd on the bottom.

Taken by Nicole Lazzaro

There is a grammar in the way these things work, meaning that 'hard' fun rather than a visceral fun (a rollercoaster ride) is what games are based on. Users interact with a system. When they do, they need a feedback response. So, how do you apply this kind of interactive design to technology?

He shows us the front page of Amazon. He says, "There needs to be a range of choices and options. Where, when, how what, choice of abilities, variable feedback, bad and good return on investment and cost of failure. This is why shopping on eBay is more fun than shopping on Amazon."

"In games, it really matters that you don't always get what you want. That is what drives people to come back. When you fail to get something, the game needs to tell you that you have failed.

Fun fundamentally comes from learning. You need to know that you failed and where, so you feel as if you have made progress in some way, something people thrive on. This drives people to come back for more.......a human desire and feeling that you will improve next time, i.e, Frogger."

There also has to be a verb which becomes a repeatable activity for 'fun' to work. i.e., in a social networking site, that verb may be connect, on Amazon, it may be buy, on eBay, sell or promote, with a game, it may be destroy or create. It has to involve skill and you have to be able to do it better or worse.

"This is why eBay is so compelling," he says. "It requires skill and over time, you can learn tricks and get better and better at buying and selling, i.e., you feel like you're growing more competent."

He points out that fun comes from a growth in competence. As you come to accomplish something, whether its on eBay or through a game, it has to be something you can handle but also challenge you, i.e., statistical variation.

Novelty also matters. There should also be a fresh scenario. In games, this is referred to as the topology of the environment. The territory and topology should affect the outcome, i.e., a death trap planted on the topology will affect your outcome depending on your choice.

Lastly, he suggests that it should be something that is competitive, which is key in games. This is also a compelling aspect with eBay.

There are also components like contribution and feedback, i.e., the voting mechanism in social media sites, where users can give a blog post, service, game or product 2 or 3 stars or a thumbs up or down. Raph is also live blogging the event from his site.