The Usability of Things

Upgrade Complete is a great little flash game came out recently. Most likely based on one of the amazing conceptual exercises in Rules of Play, it focuses on one specific aspect of gameplay, buying upgrades, and takes it to its extreme. The upgrades you need to buy are to build the game itself, before you can even play it. I won’t spoil the game for you, as it really is quite fun, and it all builds toward a big punchline that makes you rethink how you judge the quality of games.

One of the most common traps people fall into is looking for some new gimmick or angle that will set them apart from the crowd. They focus on this technology and try to squeeze every last drop of “cool” out of it. They end up with a beautiful and clever piece of art that everybody agrees is impressive, yet nobody buys.

At the end of the day, the part of your work that people will remember and tell their friends about is the story. What is the problem that other people aren’t fixing? How does it hurt things in ways nobody has noticed before? Most importantly, how does what you are doing seamlessly fix this problem without causing new ones of its own? If you can’t answer these questions, you need to ask yourself if you should be heading a different direction.

How are you making life better and easier for someone else?

This entry was posted Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Books, Daily Experience, Service Design. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.