June 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Writing great documentation →
I love Django’s documentation. It clocks in at about 700 pages printed, and most of it is clear, concise, and helpful. I think Django’s among the best documented open source projects, and nothing makes me prouder.
If any part of Django endures, I hope it’ll be a sort of “documentation culture” — an ethos that values great, well-written documentation. To that end, I’m writing a series of...
4 tags
Designing game mechanics into calendars →
The exercise was to take typical calendar events (a day of four events was provided as an example) and turn them into a game. The notion that this is possible comes from Danc’s post about Ribbon Hero on Lost Garden, where he writes:
If an activity can be learned… If the player’s performance can be measured… If the player can be rewarded or punished in a timely fashion… Then any activity that...
4 tags
What UX can (and cannot) learn from games →
Just add points? What UX can (and cannot) learn from games is a great presentation by Sebastian Deterding examining the currently popular fallacy that adding points to a system is enough to make it into a game or enough to transform a website or service into something fun (something that has spawned some argument lately on Twitter, in fact).
I do think there is much for UX design to learn from...
4 tags
“I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can... →
Why do I blog this I really enjoy this quote and find it exemplifies the ever-increasing delegation of decisions that are embedded/inscribed into technical objects. The Ubik door might certainly be the ubicomp posterchild in a parallel (and dystopic) environment but it seems highly plausible nowadays. Let’s accumulate this kind of examples and see what patterns one can find.
3 tags
RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about... →
This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.