How to design the fun out of things

Brock Dubbels will be giving a talk on “How to design the fun out of things” at McMaster University this Thursday, check out the details below:

Open Access Colloquium
Thursday, May 1, 2014
2:00 – 5:00 pm
Sherman Centre, Mills Library

Brock Dubbels, PhD
GScale Game Development and Testing Laboratory
Dept. Computing and Software
McMaster University

Description

In using software, people should feel like they should have had to suffer a bit, like when they have to eat their vegetables, take their medicine, or take a standardized test. In this talk I will offer a framework for designing the fun out of things, or conversely, how to maintain the aspects of an activity that make it enjoyable. This talk will offer an interactive examination of issues of different approaches to software development, making comparisons between the traditional usability approach, and the contemporary application of user experience research with specific application to current trends like gamification, learning software, and general software development.