Re:Two Universes
by scott_s on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @11:38AM
(#3949040)
One thing the author never mentions is how Portal teaches you how to play the game. Yes, the player has to play, as the author points out, but Portal's designers created very deliberate sandboxes in which to play. They created rooms with distinct features that make it likely that if you play enough, you'll discover the correct thing to do - even if it's just by accident.
That is the design part: understanding the rules of the environment you've created, understanding how people are likely to behave based on prior knowledge when put into that environment, and creating scenarios which lead them down certain paths without telling them about those paths. It's a probabilistic thing. You have to create a scenario where the most likely outcome is that the user learns what you want them to learn.
Another neat thing about Portal that may apply to applications is that the spoken lesson doesn't come until after you've discovered it on your own. The explicit tutorial doesn't so much teach as reinforce.
Re:Two Universes
by starwed on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @05:06PM
(#3950475)
And of course the designers of Portals did extensive testing to get feedback on what worked! Those brilliant designs weren't plucked out of thin air, but came from watching how real players interacted with them.
That is the design part: understanding the rules of the environment you've created, understanding how people are likely to behave based on prior knowledge when put into that environment, and creating scenarios which lead them down certain paths without telling them about those paths. It's a probabilistic thing. You have to create a scenario where the most likely outcome is that the user learns what you want them to learn.
Another neat thing about Portal that may apply to applications is that the spoken lesson doesn't come until after you've discovered it on your own. The explicit tutorial doesn't so much teach as reinforce.