Better interface through gaming

I was just having a great conversation with a gentleman named Yoav Shapira from Hubspot.com. I should briefly digress and mention that I am in love with what Hubspot does (Internet Marketing) and you should check them out if you are at all interested in online marketing. Yoav asked me what was going on and I told him about my weekend.

My brother had come to visit me and we had (among all sorts of other trouble) turned on my Playstation 3. I realize that this is by no means a new game system. There isn't anything revolutionary about any of my insight here, but it is funny how we are what we do. As my story to Yoav unfolded I explained that my brother is into racing games but his current state of technology is the Playstation 2 (a totally competent gaming platform). He was taken with the accelerometer in the PS3 controller and how this enabled him to engage games in 3D. He was also taken with the fact that the system has its own operating system and even connects wirelessly to the Internet and has a big hard disk with onboard games and music.

As I relayed to Yoav, my brother tried a racing game (Toys Home to be specific). As he turned the controller like a steering wheel, the car responded in turn. He was driving with no warm-ups. The user interface was direct and exact. He quickly picked up that L2 and R2 were the brake and accelerator--amazing! The game designers had created a UI that a "virgin" could drop into and perform accurately in.

My story for Yoav then turned to earlier in the same weekend. I should mention that this was my first experience with the Wii, but it won't be my last. A six year old challenged me to Wii Boxing and I agreed. This is a smart kid, and he was sounding out several of the words onscreen but I should point out he was six and flying through windows and the operating system like a champion. What I am saying is that without reading comprehension as a tool for operation, this six year old was navigating menus and using a sophisticated graphical interface. My hat is off and my head is bowed to the folks who developed the UI for the Wii. It is natural, logical, intuitive and usable by folks who haven't even mastered literacy. I should also mention I got my clock cleaned in the boxing ring.

Anyway, the point of this story is that I was watching my brother and Kevin (the six year old) carefully as they engaged these systems. They took to radial menus, modal dialogs, and VR (virtual reality) UI concepts amazingly well and it makes me tip my hat to the folks that developed the interfaces for these systems and the games we played.

I realize this also indicates I need to get back to work--I am sitting here doing focus groups with friends as they play games because I have no better place to exercise my career discipline at the moment. I am analyzing a child who is beating me brutally in the boxing ring instead of fighting back--how funny is that?

If you are a UI/UX designer, you may have already played with a PS3 or a Wii, but I recommend you take a step back and watch others as they play. Watch how swiftly cursor movement becomes second nature. Watch how often the user's eyes leave the screen to look at the controller. Watch the decision-making process. There are a lot of lessons to be learned there--oh, and you might learn a new gaming trick or two while you are "studying." :)