Reviewing 3 Popular Design Books: Part 2
My reviews and short takeaways of some of the most popular books about UX and Game design.
This will give you short descriptions of the books Gamify by Brian Buke, The Gamer’s Brain by Celia Hodent & Digital Compassion by Per Axbom. With thoughts of what I think of the book as well as the 3 key things I learned from it. I hope this will inspire you too pick up these books too!
Gamify
How Gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things
By Brian Burke
Learn more: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7538528.Brian_Burke
His teachings are quite easy to follow and give an understanding of what Gamification is, and what it isn’t. But it’s not as easy as just adding it to a product and see instant positive results. He speaks in great detail about not looking at Gamification as the thing that magically motivates people if you make them chase points to get stickers.
He talks about how Gamification can be applied to many areas, not just how it works in video games, but also financial apps, in schools and encouraging employees in a company.
“Gamification is NOT about slapping points or badges on an activity and expecting it to magically become more engaging. It is about understanding the players goals and motivation and designing the experience that inspire them to achieve their goals.”
My Thoughts
I really liked this book as it was easy to read, had great examples from real products & how companies evolved their structure. The information was easy to take in as he kept it short and to the point.
I got inspired to investigate more into the topic and see how I can apply it to my life, to get that extra motivation.
Top 3 learnings
- Points, levels and other motivators are NOT something you slap on to any product to magically make people engaged, stay longer or work harder. That is guaranteed to fail. It takes analyzing the problem, talking to the target audience, finding their goals, design the engagement, user journey, testing the idea & iteration.
- The Gamification needs a purpose that aligns with the user goal, NOT the company goal. And it’s not about fun, but the outcome should be Rewarding.
- Gamification goals that are too high/difficult or just reward the 1% that reaches that target will NOT motivate the 95% of the users that you are trying to motivate. (Giving out 1 reward to only the best each month will only motivate the already motivated & good person. For the rest it’s not achievable, so why bother?)
Recommendation
I recommend this book to Designers and company Leaders.
- Designers looking to further their skills in engaging users.
- Leaders looking to develop and build an organisation together with their employees.
The Gamer’s Brain
How Neuroscience and UX can impact Video game design
By Celia Hodent
Learn more: https://celiahodent.com
Celia goes deep into what happens in the brain when someone is playing a video game. The book is in many ways as essential to Game UX Designers as Don Normans well-known book “The Design of Everyday things” is to Product Design. This book is written very much in the same way and is packed with wonderful learnings and tips!
It breaks down and explains in a very clear way the Drivers, Psychological and social aspects that go into the work of designing for a game. She references other books, draw similarities and shows visual examples from games to help put theory into practice.
“A video game is a type of magic: When it’s done well, players suspend their disbelief, and they enter a state of flow.”
My Thoughts
Even if the book is sometimes quite heavy with information and takes some time to really get through, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about everything from the psychologically aspects of experiencing a game, to the good tips and practices learned by other game UX designers.
The book has many examples from games on how a design worked in a good practical way and how it was solved to fit that game.
But… I think that the book could have been structured in a better way. Having to go back several times to re-read sections that had some wonderful things in it, but it was hidden in heavy pieces of text and among other topics. Sometimes I just saw a wall of text and it was difficult to remember each good thing in there. Having a better structure of each chapter, sectioned it to be easier to remember and a small summary in the end of the most important parts would help a lot. Aka they could have “UXed” the book better.
Top 3 learnings
- Some challenges are good, most games have something to overcome or figure out. You present a challenge (find the hidden item, kill a boss or make tactical choices). But menus, readability, remembering basic controls, etc. is NOT supposed to be what’s stopping the player to enjoy a game. Do that part excellent so the player can focus fully on the fun challenges.
- Positive reinforcement. It is far better to reward a player for doing something right/good than it is to punish them for doing something wrong. But be weary. Gold/item/rewards that were the main motivation for players to do something in the beginning, will quickly make them do that less if the reward is removed. Having something give a negative reinforcement once, decreases interest and the player stop doing the activity altogether.
- The onboarding of a game can in many cases be the most important part to stop player frustration and leaving your game the first hour! When looking at creating the onboarding experience for a game, this book has a list great list of things you need to think about. Here is just the short version:
Category = overarching system. What does the player need to do? Move around, build something, shoot, crafting?)
Priority level = make a list of all things the player needs to learn to play your game.
When = When should the teaching of the elements take place? Is something best to learn in the first 15 minutes.
Tutorial order = what order is best to learn each thing?
Difficulty = how difficult is it to learn: easy, moderate, difficult?
Why =Define why it’s meaningful to learn this feature. How it will help them active their goal?
How = What tutorial method do you need? Only UI, learning by doing, dynamic tutorial text?
Narrative wrapper = What story helps you support the onboarding plan?
UX feedback = Look at UX test results to find what has been observed to anticipate what the key difficult areas could be.
Recommendation
Every Game designer should read this book! It’s as essential to game designers as “The Design of everyday things” is to Product Design.
- Game designers
- UX designers
- UX Researchers
Digital Compassion
By Per Axbom
Learn more: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46249443-digital-compassion
This is a small one, but has a great message! It’s a small book that talks about the importance to think about all users when creating a digital platform. The ones that have a problem reading, seeing, hearing, finding things on the screen and the ones that can come in harm's way because of these products and services.
Per talks about the need for the digital world to include all people, not exclude them because they are far too often the last thing the designer thinks about when using personas to find target groups.
The book gives you tools to start mapping out the user journey to see where things can go wrong. What can happen? Who can get hurt? When can this be a big problem?
It’s about taking responsibility for the effects a service can have on peoples lives and not blame other people or the industry as a whole became “everyone else is doing this.”
“So much is about doing it the Right Way, when it should be about the Right Thing!”
My Thoughts
I think this book is great, with a lot of gold nuggets and great insights. It’s nice to read about the soft side of the digital age and how important it will be moving forward. This book brings a much-needed heart to the digital design world that sometimes just feels stressful and all about the sales numbers.
Top 3 learnings
- The user that is considered to be in the minority and “not worth thinking about” with the time & budget of a project, is not so uncommon we might think. They would happily use your product if we just made a small effort to design for them.
- Make sure that the service can be used by people with different types of disabilities. It should be understandable how the service is used despite what experience, knowledge, language capability or concentration level the user have. The necessary information should be understandable despite for example hearing, sound & light conditions or other variations.
- Sometimes things can be too easy. The pursuit to make things easier for the user can have unwanted effects. Amazon for example, introduced the “1 click purchase” feature. But the effect of this was that bought things they didn’t need or want and in some cases didn’t notice that they had bought. This was because when removing the friction, people didn’t think through the purchase.
Recommendation
Designer, UX, Developers, Product owners. There are no reasons to not read it!
Conclusion
I hope this helped you see if these books are interesting to pick up or not right for you. Since ‘The Gamer’s Brain’ is such a heavy and slow book to read I recommend reading one of the smaller books in between, since they are much easier to get through.
All of these are great reads in different ways and I really enjoyed all the weekends at cafes with a big coffee reading these.
Thank you for reading! ❤️
If you want to get more tips on popular books, UX design, game design and industry leanings? Then give me a follow here on Medium! I post something new (almost) every month.
🐦️ Also follow me on Twitter if you want to connect: ichianna
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Part 8 (coming soon)
