One of the more innovative gifts this year has got to be the Nintendo Wii which promises to take social gaming to a whole new level with its motion sensing controller. But will it end up on the scrapheap with such failed innovations such as the Virtual Boy, or will it rise to glory defeating the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Lets take a closer look…There is little doubt that console gaming isn’t really the most inspiring thing in the world - the controller, the nexus for all user interaction, has remained relatively unchanged since Sony released the dual-analog controller for the original Playstation back in the late 90’s. Yes, Nintendo tried something slightly different with the shape of the N64 controller, but you can’t get away from the fact that aside from Wireless connections, the biggest change in controller between the console generations has been the colours of the buttons! Instead the focus has been on graphical horsepower, with new consoles being able to push more and more pixels in order to make games look more life like and immersive. Enter the Wii…Sporting something which is more akin to your TV remote, the Wii-mote is fully motion sensitive. The benefits of this are immediately seen in the console’s menu interface - no messing around with the analog stick trying to use an on screen keyboard, this is real point and click simplicity, and it works really well. (Although apparently not as well during the festive period!).The bundled Wii sports game is quite fun, especially with a few friends round, everyone can take turns at taking swings at virtual baseballs and throwing virtual bowling balls. Like the Gamecube before it, the Wii is an excellent social console, with Nintendo’s homegrown game lineup well suited to the social setting.

So, whats bad?

Like all novelty items, that novelty has to wear off at some point, and too be honest, that is what has happened with the Wii. Don’t get me wrong, its very innovative and a great use of technology, but after a while it just gets boring… especially when the realisation dawns that most of the launch games are just Wii Sports remakes with better graphics, or ports from other platforms with rushed modifications to leverage the controller.Also, the Friends system is horrendous when compared to something like Xbox Live - each console/user has a 16 digit friend code (rather than the friendly nickname used in Xbox Live), and thats not all, apparently every game has its own separate friend code. Its a bit confusing who would design such a system without realising that asking users to exchange several separate numbers, which are longer than the average phone number, is actually not a good thing at all.

Which console will win?

Too be honest, dispite its failings, I think the Wii will do well - this much is already evident in the tremendous launch day sales - but its ability to beat the novelty factor lies in the hands of game developers. The initial line-up fails to satisfy, but thats not to say that in 6-12 months time there won’t be some killer games, especially as developers learn to take advantage of the innovative control mechanism. I can’t wait to see what they come up with. (more…)

Yesterday it was my work Christmas party - a joyous time of year where you enjoy fine food, whilst also placing bets on which co-workers will fall over first! Its always quite surprising who actually is the first to fall over - its usually the person whom you least expect! Anyway, we were out in Brighton and after many beers the group began to break up. I found myself with a co-worker in a different bar admiring the projector display on the wall.Shiney things are great for attracting drunk people, I’d bet that many an alcoholic can be found in the early hours of the morning, staring contently at the glow of show window dispays. In this case we were looking at a photo slideshow of a previous event at the venue.Its nice to look at photo’s, especially when filling in memory gaps of the night before, but I couldn’t help thinking to myself what is the point? I’m staring at photo’s of people I don’t even know, and aside from admiring the ladies (actually there seemed to be the same 3 or 4 in all the photo’s), there was nothing particularly special about the photography. No cool visuals, just people… dressed in funny costumes… with beer…Obviously if I were the person in the photographs it might be quite a compelling experience, which is personal to me, but otherwise I’m just going to be looking at strangers whom I have no personal connection with.Wouldn’t it be cool to go into a bar and have a unique experience which is somehow personalized to you and everyone in the room at that moment?From Flash on the Beach, as I mentioned in a previous post, many speakers had used Flash in conjunction with its Webcam and Microphone support to create interactive art installations, which would respond to the observer - why not take this into the social space? We already have Music visualizers which can generate funky visuals to a given sountrack, adding a second layer of interaction on top of his could create an even more unique experience.I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to be doing some Flash Webcam coding over the holidays, but also to designers out there - next time you are designing something, be it a web application or any other piece of interactive technology ask yourself, how are people going to interact with this experience? What value can be gained by adding the personal touch? In many cases it is something which may require minimal effort, but add a great deal to how users percieve your product. Looking at the video game industry, we see this a lot, wether it be Nintendo’s Mii’s - customisable avatars which the user can model upon themselves - or games that let you map your face onto the main character’s head. Its often a nice touch, leaving user’s with a warm fuzzy feeling inside.Happy Holidays! (more…)

One of the underlying themes of many of the sessions at Flash on the Beach was user experience and user interaction. Some of the more compelling examples demonstrated an interative art dispay, responding to visitors as they interact with a microphone or webcam tied to the exhibit. Other examples incorporated images of the visitor etc. The goal is to create an experience which is unique to each person who views it. These experiences may look similar to each other, but still have an element of uniqueness.A further example is one of the more recent Samsung mobile phones, where the UI changes depending on the phone’s environment. For example, during the day you will see clouds, in the evening, stars will appear on the background wallpaper. If signal strength drops, the sky goes dark. Out of the box, each phone is identical, but over a period of time it becomes customized to the owner.The question I find myself asking is how can this be applied to a Web application?We already have some degree of personalization on the web, and many large organizations have vast amounts of customer data at their disposal, which is usually used to target offers and cross sell products to the user. What we are talking about is something more - the explicit purpose is to create an experience, not cross-selling products. There is always the possibility that cross-sell could be worked into something like this, but it shouldn’t be the primary purpose.In many ways the web could potentially allow for much richer customization of applications - you have a lot more data available about your user, both internally (assuming you are some kind of organization with which the user interacts with) and externally (through services such as Flickr, del.icio.us etc).If you look at a site such as the homepage for American Express, you see a background image of some people walking along a beach. Wouldn’t it be cool if it changed depending on my location (so in my case it would be something British… looking out the window, rain would be a good choice!). It could also rotate seasonly, showing snow in winter, green in summer. Why not take it a bit further… why not look at my Flickr account, analyze my tags and determine that I’m interested in Snowboarding - show me a relevant background image. For a company like American Express, you have access to data around my spending - say I regularly spend money in New York - use that information to customise what I see, and perhaps on the side, fill up the page with regional offers.The difficult task is making such customizations meet some basic criteria:

• They must be non-obtrusive. An entire website shouldn’t totally change just because its 11am, any changes should be subtile , leaving the structure of the site and the brand represented relatively intact. As with the art installations highlighted above, each experience should look similar but whilst still being unique. KISS.
• They must not require additional user effort. All of this should happen without the user having to do anything - they can’t be expected to configure any of this or spend the time selecting the content they want to see.

All of this could make for an interesting web… (more…)