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How Video Games Inspire Great UX – Scott Jenson

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This quote is meaningful to me as I’ve often struggled with a problem until an insight from a user test “changed my perspective”. I had this intuition that video games would also change my perspective. They seemed so much edgier, playing with deeper and more experimental UX techniques. I wanted to go well beyond classic “gamification”. That was all the rage a decade ago where apps used toys like “achievements” to encourage app use. Of course, given what we’ve learned in the last few years about the overuse of mobile phones and social media, it also seems irresponsible to make our apps “sticky” or “addictive”. I was looking for something deeper. Games felt more visceral and I wanted to understand them better and see where it took me. I’m an avid gamer but they felt a bit foreign to me as a UX designer. For example, one of the first game terms I learned was “juicy”, which refers to the amount of video effect you get for any action. Juicy games feel just a bit overwhelming but in a good w

“Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.” Alan Kay This quote is meaningful to me as I’ve often struggled with a problem until an insight from a user test “changed my perspective”. I had this intuition that video games would also change my perspective. They seemed so much edgier, playing with deeper and more experimental UX techniques. I wanted to go well beyond classic “gamification”. That was all the rage a decade ago where apps used toys like “achievements” to encourage app use. Of course, given what we’ve learned in the last few years about the overuse of mobile phones and social media, it…

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