Recently I’ve been enjoying playing the Xbox Live Arcade port of Perfect Dark – I played this extensively as a kid (especially the multiplayer with it’s groundbreaking inclusion of computer-controlled bots!). However without the rose-tinted glasses, a number of obvious usability issues come to light. Today I’ll look at the major usability problem in this…
read moreHarry Brignull has introduced the idea of Dark Patterns – website’s using UX principles to promote business goals over the end-user’s experience. When shopping online for a replacement watch, I stumbled upon a particularly nasty one. I thought I’d share: Let’s start with some back-story. While in Hong Kong recently, I found the most amazing…
read moreAs part of my Masters project I’ve been studying the patterns found in social interaction while gaming, and how people play games together (much more on this soon). Last week saw the release of Ubisoft’s “We Dare” across Europe. Here in the UK, our delicate sensibilities have been spared from this game, apparently due to…
read moreJenifer Tidwell’s book aims to not only help you make the right design decisions when creating an interface such as a webpage or application, but also aims to justify why you’ve made the right choices! Designing Interfaces takes the idea of a sourcebook, with a variety of design solutions at your fingertips, but expands this…
read moreJust a quick one today, that I’ve been sitting on for a while. I recently played, and loved, the Monkey Island ports on the iPhone. In general the pacing is perfect for mobile gaming, and I am strongly hoping that they port Day of the Tentacle next! However there was one area where the port…
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