The point that I tried to make in my talk last night was that social games are exceptionally strong drivers of consumer behavior. Zynga and other game companies have shown that huge numbers of people will come back every day to play games. The success of these games is no accident – these experiences are designed to influence behavior and drive very strong engagement. In a world where sustainable living often costs more (or at least appears to cost more given current market structures), I think there are lessons from social games that can be applied to influencing consumer behavior beyond depending on altruism.

For years, single player games have shown strong engagement. Basic mechanics like achievements, unlocking, and leveling up have proven to be strong drivers of engagement. There seems to be something in these very clear reward structures (you know what you have to do, and you receive some reward when you do it) that appeals to human nature. These mechanics are part of social games as well. See the screenshot below of my Poker Profile on Zynga’s Texas HoldEm game. The visual representation of Achievements brings visibility to the things I can achieve in the game, which compels me to play more to hit those milestones.

With the help of internet-based communication platforms, such as Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone, social games have added another level of mechanics onto the traditional single player games. These mechanics deal with interactions between people – and more importantly, interactions between friends. The mechanics of this space – competition, comparison and cooperation – have driven aboslutely explosive growth in the social games industry. Again, these mechanics seem to appeal to something fundamental to human nature, and that appeal stretches across geographic and cultural barriers (social games are growing just about everywhere there is a platform to enable them).

A few examples:

Competition: YoVille is a virtual world, where you create a digital representation of yourself and customize your space in that world. You can then interact with others in the virtual world – having conversations, visiting their apartments, dancing, and giving gifts. The YoVille friend ladder, a persistent element at the bottom of the game, shows how highly your room is rated relative to your friends. By seeing how you rank against your friends, you are motivated to invest more in the game to rank higher in your social circle.

Comparison: Everyone in YoVille has an apartment to customize. You can visit your friends apartment and check out all the cool stuff they have. Really well done apartments get more visitors, and make you want to go back and improve your own.

Cooperation: In Mafia Wars, a game where you become leader of your own Mafia, growing your mafia is key. You can improve your odds for fighting, gain money, and increase your power faster by adding more people to your Mafia. When adding Mafia members that fill certain roles, there’s a synergistic effect – together, you can do more in the game than you would be able to on your own.

I think that there is huge potential for designers to learn lessons from the mechanics used in these games. By using these mechanics in our products, we might be able to spark widespread change in ways that wouldn’t depend on guilt or altruism. One idea that I’ve been thinking about lately that might serve as a useful example: “What if my local power company were a social gaming company? What would my energy bill look like?” A few thoughts:

• My bill wouldn’t be a monthly piece of paper, it would be a rich interface where I could receive up to the minute information about my energy usage and performance
• Every day, I would see my energy usage relative to those of my friends. By framing energy efficiency as a competition between my friends, I would be motivated to try to beat my friends every day.
• I might see how my city block ranked against others in my neighborhood. If my block was lagging, my neighbors would pester me to be more efficient so our block could win and get our efficiency bonus.
• Even if I couldn’t manage to change my lifestyle enough, I might have a way to trump my friends by spending more to buy wind or solar power.
• There would be a clear path to improvement, incentives to level up, and rewards along the way – from day one, I could see how to be an energy rockstar, and the competition would engage me to invest in this.

Zynga Games (just a few – see more at zynga.com):

• Texas HoldEm
• MafiaWars
• YoVille
• Live Poker for iPhone

Useful Resources:

• Lost Garden: What Are Game Mechanics?
• Wikipedia: Game Mechanics
• Game Developers Conference: Lessons from Social Games

With the exception of a few small side projects, most of the design and product management work I did in 2008 was for Affinity’s sites. Here’s a rundown of some of great projects I was able to work on during my time there, and the part that I played in each project.

Affinity's flagship site.

During the time I spent at Affinity, I worked first as the primary UI designer and product manager for our community sites, and later moved towards more creative direction as Milan Phan took over the hands-on design responsibilities. Our approach was very collaborative – the executive, marketing, engineering and editorial teams all deserve credit for helping the product team to create the best communities possible.

New Site Launches:

• AllHealthcare – product management
• AdminSecret – creative direction, product management
• HRGuru – creative direction, product management

Site Redesigns

• InsideTech (relaunch of TechCommunity.com) – colorscheme and logo concept development, creative direction, product management
• Tickle.com (redesign) – creative direction, product management. Tickle was shut down at the end of 2007.
• WomenCo (redesign) – creative direction, product management

Channel Redesigns: Affinity sites have similar structures, so each of these channels exists on most of the Affinity sites. The best place to see examples of all channels in one place is Affinity’s flagship site, PoliceLink. In general, many of the projects I worked on at Affinity were about bringing a cohesive, intuitive user experience to their sites. We focused on standardizing styles and interaction patterns to speed development and improve the flow for users.

• News Channel – UI design and product management for channel homepage, browse pages, article pages
• Benefits, Education and Training – UI design and product management for channel homepages, browse pages, article pages
• Discussion Forums – UI design and product management for all pages in channel
• Photos (best seen on ArtBistro) – design direction and product management for all pages (interaction design by Milan Phan)

I’d like to thank the team at Affinity for making the time I spent there one of most interesting and challenging experiences I’ve had. You guys are awesome!

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The complexity and reach of the projects I’m working on has increased exponentially since I graduated. But the questions and process to solve the problems are fundamentally the same. Design provides a framework that is rarely taught in schools: a method for creating intelligent solutions to complex problems.

My advice to you: embrace the fact that everything in your life can (and should?) be a design problem. Think beyond graphic design, exhibit design, fashion design. See the world from a more holistic perspective – the world is a place full of complex problems in need of intelligent solutions.

The projects I’m working on now will have contact with tens of millions of people. What makes me qualified to do this? What makes me think I can do this successfully? One answer: design. Problems get bigger, but the methods for solving them stay the same. Identify the goals, identify the constraints, learn enough about both to push the limits of what’s possible.

Here’s the other trick: it’s not magical. Yes, sometimes there is that spark, that moment of creative inspiration where everything falls into place. More often (and more important, when you’re expected to produce these solutions on a regular basis, not just when you happen to stumble upon an epiphany), it is the result of hard work and focused effort. There’s a lot of mediocre stuff out there. Mediocre design, mediocre products, mediocre people. If being exceptional was easy, everyone would do it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for those who embrace the challenge), it’s much easier to be mediocre.

My challenge to you: Take what you’ve learned here, and remove the limits from your thinking. There’s plenty of complex problems out there in need of intelligent solutions. Take your design education and go solve a few, you’re better suited than most to do so.

I earned two degrees while I at UC Davis. One took 80% of my years here and 20% of my effort (Ecology). The other took 20% of my years here and 80% of my effort (Design). Looking back on it, I think I tired of my ecology program because there wasn’t much room for creativity. If you did the research and recorded the right numbers, and then put those numbers into the right equations, out came the results. You may not like the results, but there wasn’t much guesswork in the process.

Design, by contrast, forces you to ask questions and explore solutions. Some (many?) of the solutions will be novel, at least to you. How to pick one? There aren’t traditional “right” answers. Sure, design has “rules” but they’re not like the rules of physics – immutable and constant – in design, the possibility exists of breaking those rules, so long as you’re doing it appropriately and know what you’re doing. A favorite quote: “Rules are a substitute for poor skills of observation”. If you find yourself depending on the rules for guidance, maybe you need to work on your judgment and observation.

When picking these solutions, you can only choose the one that you think will best solve the problem within the constraints of the context.

And the new design:

We decided not to pusue the business idea after looking at a number of other companies doing similar things (Loopt, Whirled, etc), but not before I designed and coded a working prototype for nightlife destinations in San Francisco. I learnd basic PHP and MySQL to write this site, which has CSS skins for both iPhone and desktop browsers. You could link it up with your Facebook account to see venues your friends were attending, and see lists of venues ranked by proximity and popularity.

Doing all this in a web browser seems rather quaint now that the iPhone SDK is available, but at the time I wrote the prototype, Safari was the only place for app developers to make iPhone services.

The prototype is still functional (except for the Set My Location address mapping feature), and can be accessed at www.gettoutt.com

California Lighting Technology Center: Working with my partner Ashley Brown, we redesigned the CLTC exhibit space and designed a modular case system to support their needs for flexibility in the space. I used Illustrator, Photoshop, and SketchUp to bring the designs together.

Green Design Wiki: a resource for exhibit designers interested in sustainability. I still maintain this site, and it gets about 1,000 hits a month.

This flash portfolio includes print, web, and exhibit desing projects, complete with brainstorms, sketches, and final implementations.

View the flash portfolio.