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  Paul Kim 2:56 pm on February 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook, Games, Psychology, WordPress (2)   

  Game Mechanics and the Real World 

  more about “DICE 2010: Design Outside the Box“, posted with vodpod

  This talk by game designer Jesse Schell is fascinating and well worth watching.

  Jesse generalizes some of the principles behind the success of Facebook games like Farmville, many of which are ultimately rooted in basic human psychology. He then extrapolates how these principles may play out in real world settings as Moore’s Law enables the embedding of sensors and cameras in things as mundane as toothbrushes – with the potential for effecting massive changes in human behavior.

  I was reminded while watching this of Matt’s description of Facebook itself as a giant social game, with your friends as players and their updates as the objects of the game world.

  The best games reward engagement and can induce flow states in their players. It’s interesting to think about how even a blogging platform like WordPress.com might come to integrate some of these proven game mechanics to encourage new users to learn and experienced users to return and keep creating.

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  Paul Kim 10:57 pm on May 8, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  Jordan University Mozilla Club Site 

  

  I learned about the Mozilla student club at Jordan University through Issa Mahasneh’s group on Spread Firefox, the online home of our Firefox marketing community.

  Hey Issa: this is a really well-done design. Great combination of an overall visual metaphor (a student’s desk), professionally-executed graphic design, and balance overall between your copy and imagery. Thank you for sharing this!

  * For those of you who are students or interested in general in helping out with grassroots marketing projects, check out Spread Firefox and The Mozilla Blog to participate or just keep up with our adventures bringing Firefox to the world.

  John Slater is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    John Slater 8:54 am on May 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    That’s awesome – nice work Issa!

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  Paul Kim 5:50 pm on October 25, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Friend in a Box 

  Sonyon: weird, melancholy, awesome Korean toys.

  “We were trying to imagine a boy in the future,” says founder Kim Bo-min, “and all the things that boy would hold in his imagination.”

  “People who dream would most enjoy the brand,” adds Lee Joo-eun, Kim’s business partner.

  “You could say Sonyon is analogous to Peter Pan.” But without the Disney-fied sheen of eternal happiness; Sonyon is still, after all, Korean. “When you walk around Seoul, you experience both happiness and sadness in the things you come across. Likewise, Sonyon lives somewhere between a happy place and a sad one.”

  Via Theme Magazine.

   
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  Paul Kim 3:46 pm on April 22, 2007 Permalink  

  high contrast ideas 

  

  I found Luke Chueh’s portfolio site over the weekend while I was switching my blog theme over to fSpring. Along the way I briefly dabbled with the GlossyBlue theme by n.Design but there were too many colors to sort out, and I suck at making gradients. (I do have to say that Kuler was really useful last night for testing color combos.)

  I was trying to find an icon I could use as a sort of spirit animal for this blog. (“Spirit animal” being a high-falutin’ way of saying “cute mascot with portentous undertones.”) Anyway, a few searches later I found Luke’s site.

  I really like this style. There’s a bunch of other people in L.A. and Tokyo working this vein. I don’t really know what it’s called, but “ugly cute” works for me. Check out Kozyndan, Mori Chack and Yoshitomo Nara for more.

  Here’s the icon I was going to use, built off Luke’s Monkey King painting. I’ll find a home for him yet.

   
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  Paul Kim 6:45 pm on April 16, 2007 Permalink  

  thank you jon hicks 

  I’m a case study for vendor lock-in and switching costs.

  I still use Yahoo! Mail – six years and counting – even though I’ve got at least three Gmail accounts. (I use Gmail just for newsgroup posting. There’s also this nagging feeling I get about being logged into the mother ship while searching, but that’s another story.) I tried the Yahoo! Mail beta a bunch of times, but always came back to the old school version because it felt way faster on my G4.

  I also still use Bloglines, even though all the cool kids moved over to Google Reader an eternity ago. I’m just used to it, and it gets the job of plowing through feeds done.

  But I have to admit loving the shiny.

  Thanks to some fine design hacking by Jon Hicks, part of the original Firefox visual identity team, I am enjoying a much prettier Bloglines tonight. (Ironically I found the Bloglines skin at a post Jon wrote about skinning Google Reader.)

  To wit:

  
  Before

  
  After. Yeah baby.

  So thanks Jon. You made a design geek very happy.