In the academic research paper that was published in the beginning of 21 century “Learning from Games: HCI Design Innovations in Entertainment Software,” the authors analyzed the possibility of elements from the earlier game interface that may have influenced the creativity and innovation of the earlier future general interface design. In the article, they discussed several ideas to point out how to improve user’s satisfaction, usability, and affordance in general UI design by applying the elements from the designs of earlier games interface, such as customizability, sociability, and learning from high-experienced users, as known as adaptability. It is interesting that the game they chose to involve in the usability testing includes a wide range type of games, such as Warcraft(strategic game), Ghost Recon(shooting game), and Diablo(action game), and more and more.
When we view this academic article from today’s point of view, it is not surprised to admit that most of the points they claimed in the article were right. Indeed, the development of game interface had led significant changes to subsequent UI designs such as earlier desktop applications, later on digital UI designs in andriod, IOS applications. Since digital games was a conventional, primal form of HCI in the earlier development of computational technologies, interaction design pioneers in the past certainly could learn a lot from the digital entertainment industry.
Bibliography:
Jeff Dyck, David Pinelle, Barry Brown and Carl Gutwin “Learning from Games: HCI Design Innovations in Entertainment Software” version 7,(2003). Accessed September 12, 2020. (from google scholar) http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.122.6347&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Abowd, G.D., Beale, R. Users, systems, and interfaces: a unifying framework for interaction. In HCI’91: People and Computers VI, pages 73-87. 1991.
Interactive Digital Software Association, Essential facts about the computer and video game industry. http://www.idsa.com/IDSABooklet.pdf
Barr, P., Noble, J., and Biddle, R. Video game values: Human-computer interaction and games. In Journal of Interacting with Computers, 19, 2. (2007), 180–195.
Jørgensen, A. H., Marrying HCI/Usability and computer games: a preliminary look. In Proc. of NordiCHI, (2004), 393–396.
