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Chuck Clanton
Lynn Cherny, Erik Ostrom
Game design, user interface design, iterative design, problem solving.
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people spend money from their own discretionary entertainment budgets just for the opportunity to experience the user interfaces of software applications sold as games. Much of this experience involves difficult problem solving as well as tactical and strategic reasoning and performance, that often exceeds the demands of typical tasks at work. Yet, games are fun and work often is not. Why?
A game designer spends a year or more designing, tuning, and balancing the game play of these titles. They playtest relentlessly during this year because games are not designed, they are iteratively evolved from an initial design. As in most other fields, game designers have their own meetings, conferences, lore, and craft. Little of this has yet seeped into the HCI design community, yet many have recognized its pertinence.
This workshop will bring together practitioners and researchers from game design and the HCI community in a dialogue about user-centered iterative design, interface techniques that engage users, the experience of problem solving, constraints on the production processes in their respective fields, and other shared issues.
The workshop will take place over the course of one day and the following morning. The first morning will be primarily informal discussion of the issues of game design; the afternoon will be devoted to walkthroughs of particular games, demonstrations of genres and of interaction techniques used in them.
During the second day we will continue with demonstrations, and also spend some time summarizing our discussions-in particular, identifying issues from game design relevant to user interface design.
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