Getting Playful

Playful is a conference about games, and playfulness.

Another Friday, another conference. This time it was Playful 2010. Not as good as dConstruct but a fun day nonetheless.

I didn’t take many notes, but the general theme seemed to be “stop putting points and prizes on things, because that doesn’t make them a game, and it doesn’t make them fun”. This was perhaps seen as an about turn.

Richard Hogg and Sebastian Deterding were my favourite speakers. Richard did a great skit on being a contrarian and how you can “Escape from the crushing inevitability of liking something that’s good”. Sebastian was the dry German who pointed out that just because you’ve nicked badges from foursquare doesn’t make badges good or appropriate for your thing.

In between these things, some important 4square rules were sorted out: REALLY DON’T auto-tweet your location all the time. Especially if you’re a drive-by checkin merchant.

dConstruct 2010 in summary

A summary of the speakers at dConstruct 2010.

I attended my first dConstruct yesterday, which was a nice trip to Brighton, seeing friends and drinking a bit too much. My very brief take on the sessions:

The Designful Company
You’re aiming for different but good, but it takes guts to aim for and will test badly as it’s unfamiliar. Sticking with the familiar will test better, but ultimately market badly.

Boil, Simmer, Reduce
Collect ideas, play with them without pre-conceptions “Nobody will die doing this”, prune stuff back again, try and aim for simplicity.

Information is Beautiful
There’s too much information, this needs to be pruned and presented. Don’t do circular diagrams.

The Power & Beauty of typography
Typefaces have emotions and these should be in keeping with the overall site/copy. Much like shoes can set off or kill an outfit. This wasn’t too well received too well by a bunch of men and women attendees who appeared to be of the “what’s wrong with 1 pair of shoes and helvetica” crowd.

The Auteur Theory of Design
Explored the idea that projects need one ultimate authority like the Film Director with Final Cut, and that person is a limiting function on the output, and can drag up or down the overall output.

Jam Session: What Improvisation Can Teach Us About Design
Improvisation can bring about your best ideas, works best within a framework when you’re riffing off other people, and your self-inhibitions are lowered when you do it; removing that self-censorship can lead to new things.

The Value of Ruins
An unexpected standout for me; archives are potentially amazing for the future, but as we turn off things like Geocities we’re potentially losing just as much information as previous civilisations did in fires and the like.

Everything The Network Touches
Eons ago a cunning road network provided the ability to carry messages really quickly, and that communication gave empires advantages. Now we’re potentially building the infrastructure for this kind of stuff in the online world, with Bathroom Scales that tweet. Every time devices get more connected information becomes increasingly contextualised and ever more useful. Winner of the Most OCD-ly amazing slide Deck Animations Award – they really were lovely.

Kerning, Orgasms & Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks
Nerds care about things that other people don’t. That’s fine, don’t expect them to, try and make stuff so they don’t. Never get complacent, useful feedback probably hurts. Put the “narcism of minor differences” aside to deliver