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This article shows how a good interface can really be effective:

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Whip out your I.D.s!: Informational Design, Instructional Design, and User Interface Design (pt.1)

Note: At first, this may seem a deviation from my focus on educational gaming but read on, dear friend, and enlightenment will come…

(Good karma, and tasty too. These tiny Buddha babies are pears grown within Buddha molds ==  #@$i12-ing awesome!) 

Circuitous Introduction

This semester, I’m taking a class on visualizing data, and it’s been ehh – pretty good. Lectures are overly simple and I have a hard time focusing on them (or going to them, heh heh), but the homework has been really useful: I’ve learned regular expressions, data-scraped a couple of websites, learned the fundamentals of Processing, a Java-based programming language for visual design, and thought of a really killer idea for my final project (Be prepared for May 2010, when my final project finishes development…it will blow your mind and change your dietary habits forever!...or so the current [really lame] marketing slogan goes).  In any case, last week we had to find, critique, and redesign some data visualizations.

As I've seen and learned, the overarching difficulty for a designer is balancing aesthetic consciousness with good design principles and proper expression of data. 

There was one visualization that particularly epitomized this problem. The designer in question? David McCandless, a self-described Information Designer with an interest in “how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath.” Of his many notable accomplishments, McCandless has created a webpage, Information is Beautiful, won numerous awards, been featured all across the Internet, and published a book, The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia. Clearly, he’s somewhat of a hot shot. 

Designer focus: David McCandless (McCandles would have been so much cuter.)

There’s no doubt that the McCandless’ work is eye-catching and provocative: the data covers interesting topics (“Haiti Earthquake: Who’s given what?”, “What does China censor online?”, etc.), the colors used are vibrant and varied, and the shapes clean and vectorized. For the aesthetic enthusiast or information junkie, it’s a feast: delectable eye candy drizzled with stimulating brain candy. As a (brutally unscientific) measure of its visual impact, one common reason for purchase is its use as a coffee table decoration, presumably to instantly impress upon guests one’s unique intellectual bent. After all, how better to express your quirky love for knowledge than vibrant data on the time it takes different condiments to spoil? 

Worried about looking stupid in front of a potential love interest? Just put this book on your coffee table and she’ll realize your empty, awkward silences are actually moments of profound, unfathomable intellect.

So far, so good. It's clear that McCandless’ problem does not lie within his choice of content, and it certainly does not lie within his technical and artistic abilities (for they are substantial). What is the culprit then? None other than his fetish for transmogrifying the data so much that the fidelity of the data is destroyed. When the data – the base supporting the visualization’s very existence – is misconstrued, the visualization cannot be trusted and its value falls by a landslide. Quite astonishingly, McCandless is unapologetic for having deceptive visualizations. On the design I analyzed (“The Billion Dollar Gram”), he unabashedly states that there was “a little visual cheating to make everything fit.” Close inspection of the visualization shows obvious anomalies; for example, the area of Facebook’s $15 billion is larger than the area of Online Advertising’s $20 billion:

No no no, the LARGER rectangle represents the SMALLER amount. What are they teaching you in school these days??

No matter how high up the income ladder you may be, $5 billion is no chump change. This isn’t a data visualization – it’s one of those whacked up psychology tests where you’re seeing one thing and reading another!  

Y..no, Green, Bl-Red, Orange,.......
….I give up.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s another serious problem: what are the numbers for “Facebook” and “Online Marketing” quantifying? Facebook’s net worth? Facebook’s profits? Online advertising’s revenue? The cost online advertising has inflicted on traditional print advertising? Revenue/profits/net worth/costs are HUGELY different. What is the point of looking at a visualization of data if 1) the visualization deceives and 2) the data is incomprehensible? I remind you that this work is from a highly acclaimed, published designer whose mission is to “cut through BS.” 

Maybe BS looks different when you have purple squares magically hovering before your eyes…

(McCandless’ profile pic)

Final thoughts on data visualizations and David McCandless (who hopefully never finds my blog. Or hopefully does. In which case my ego would become very, very large.)

I’m a bit unsure about my final thoughts on McCandless. On one hand, as I’ve stated, I’m really peeved about some of his designs and his disinterest in fixing some huge errors. If McCandless insists on bastardizing the data, then, well, he’s killing the main point of informational design: to inform efficiently and effectively.  It’s not just the deceitful data. McCandless has used design techniques that are clearly NOT optimal for presenting information. For example, the Billion Dollar Gram uses areas to represent amounts (the human mind is not good at measuring area – length is more comprehensible), as well as random colors that create false groupings. On the other hand, through his digital artwork, McCandless has made a lot of information more approachable to people. As someone who sees the potential in using technology to educate, I can’t help but be supportive of this kind of thing. Some of his designs are simply gorgeous, thought provoking, and at the very least, spur some great intellectual discussion online (for an example of one that I liked, see When Sea Levels Attack!).

So, what do you think?
        Do you support McCandless for making information more approachable?
        Or do you think he’s fundamentally wrong for bastardizing the data?


Next time: Front-end vs. Back-end in User Interface Design
Being able to present information clearly and pleasingly while maintaining the fidelity of the data is difficult. It requires an excellent designer who values the data and the user, a designer who doesn’t exploit graphics to enthrall and detract from the lack of usable, factually correct data. That is not to say good graphics are not important; a boring, visually ugly design will garner no interest and will be just as (or even more) useless.

The problem between balancing the front-end (look and feel) versus the back-end (code and data) similarly arises in user interface design, also called interaction design. The value of good user interface design is becoming an increasingly recognized, due in large part to the successes of companies employing user-friendly interfaces (iPod and Google search, to name a few of the most popular). This is a good segway to part 2, in which I will examine the user interface design of applications and programs (including, yes! - educational games). Let’s end with a quote, which we expand on next time. It seems to have been inspired by a cadre of McCandless-like User Interface Designers. Hmm.:

“We often see products that look really good – whose aesthetics are superb – but whose functionality or whose interactivity isn’t adequate. That is not because the product wasn’t designed, but because it was designed by an aesthetic, visual designer rather than by an interaction designer with the tools to master cognitive friction" 

-Alan Cooper, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, pg. 212

Game Review: Immune Attack. Fight or be killed... FROM THE INSIDE.

Recently, my friend and Harvard economics teacher Saad Fazil referred me to a wonderful article on how gaming is being used to improve education. From 6^th graders at the high tech Quest to Learn school to border officer trainees at Loyalist College, players of educational games have had empowering results: not only do they fair better on academic and critical skill tests, but they are also more enthused about learning. This is an achievement that should not be easily dismissed: students more excited about learning are more receptive to new ideas and perspectives and continue to benefit in the long-term. 

One of the games discussed in the article caught my eye. Immune Attack is a first-person-shooter in which the player explores the 3D environment of an immunodeficient patient and teaches different cells how to fight different infections. Personally, as a high schooler, I could never get excited about biology because I found the static pages of cell diagrams distant and surreal; it took some intense amount of imagination and faith to believe all that stuff was happening in my body.

Think you miss high school? Flip open that dusty old biology textbook and let me ask you again...

Also, with so many labyrinthine (<--take a minute to think about how cool that word is) biological terms (eosinophil, reticulocyte, ductulus efferens, to name a few, and to make your head hurt a little), it was seriously a drone reading about them and trying to remember what did what.  So, suffice to say, I saw real potential in Immune Attack, developed by the Federation of American Scientists and Escape Hatch Entertainment.

Nothing says "cool" more than red, black, and ADVENTURE!

Immune Attack: Review Time!

[Note: This review is based on a 15-minute test of the game. For a more in-depth perspective, you can download it for free here!]

Pros:

I’ll start with the pros. Upon booting up the game, I was immediately impressed with the quality of the graphics, content, and voice overs. The story is engaging, the tutorials helpful, the game controls easy to understand, and the game display pleasantly uncluttered and easy on the eye. I particularly appreciated the structure of the missions: numerous scientists would chime in, making your mission seem excitingly important, and helpful information pop-ups, a mini-map, and light-up navigational “buoys” (arrows pointing you in the right direction) were readily available to clear up any confusion. Not only that, the game resisted being just a static FPS by interspersing cut sequences of vivid animation explaining and showing your mission objective. I was PLEASED and RELIEVED by the variety of gameplay because my biggest fear when looking at the promo video was that it would just be a lame, typical low-budget FPS that would get really old really quickly. First watching the biology in action and then repeating it in-game really helped solidify one’s understanding and gave one a sense of purpose. After 15 minutes, I’d already learned a surprising amount: Chemical signals inform surface proteins to bind to a monocyte’s receptors and slow it down; ICAM (another surface protein) then transforms the monocyte into a macrophage to ward off infections. Okay, so I might have gotten the specifics a tiny bit wrong, but still, this is way more than I knew about immunology thirty minutes ago!

My favorite weekend activity? Navigating my nanobot in a blood vessel while trying not to be destroyed by erthrocytes and macrophages. Duh.

Cons:

Now for the cons. These are things that are very easy to fix, but could substantially improve the gameplay. My major critique is the way the game deals with death. Upon death of your nanobot, you lose essentially all the progress you’ve made thus far and return to the beginning of the current or previous mission (it seemed to be either/or, based on the two times I accidentally kamikaze-d).  This can be particularly frustrating in the beginning of the game, in which the mission is merely navigation. Here’s an example for you: I completed the first training mission, began another mission, died near the end of that, and was returned to THE BEGINNING TRAINING MISSION. Why, pray tell, would the developers think that after almost completing the second mission, I should go back and learn again how to move my arrow keys and whatnot? It's a bit ridiculous. These kinds of problems are simple code fixes but can massively frustrate the player and destroy his game experience. Adding to this, there should be a way to defend against death or to increase nanobot health. This would make navigating the vessels more fun and interactive.

A part of Immune Attack that I did NOT get to because of my repeated deaths :(. It looks cool though. 

What would also make navigating more enjoyable would be to encourage players to inspect the non-mission-essential cells they float by. So far, there is no incentive, save the “I feel smarter!” incentive. Unfortunately, as we all know, that’s really not much incentive. I floated by lots of purple and green blobs and, unsurprisingly, I felt no desire to examine them. The game developers should learn from people’s natural love to collect and meet mini-goals. For instance, they could add a “photo book” type feature, in which learning about a new cell adds its picture to your book. Collecting photos would make you more eager to examine your surroundings  and make new discoveries. In addition to priceless satisfaction, rewards for collecting could include increased nanobot health capacity.

People like to collect the weirdest things. Giant Plush Microbes, including "Sperm Cell", "Human Ovum", and the quintessential favorite, "Toxic Mold". At Think Geek.

Lastly, though the user interface design is nice and clean, more feedback mechanisms should be added. Specific buttons/features should be lit up when they are discussed to make the gameplay more comprehensible.

FINAL NOTE: The quality of this game really impressed me. I have little doubt that substituting this game for a high school immunology course would leave the student better educated about immunology, with a greater capacity for explaining details and how specific cells perform their function, as well as increased excitement for school and learning (I'm definitely more than a little biased though, since I went to a bad public school and learned very little from my science classes). (Edit: Here's some evidence that it increases students' confidence with molecular biology! Woot. Gimme some of that!)

 Do I feel it reaches the pinnacle educational game (in which the game is so fun that it would be downloaded just for entertainment)? Not really. But it defied my expectations by being well-designed, interesting, and relatively fun. I know my first post was kind of a downer on current educational offerings; testing this one out made me realize I should learn and explore more before I make overarching judgments. ANYWAY, enuff for now. Peace!

The Beginning. And why I hate most educational games.

It's Valentine's day and I'm a bit down but hey, I've always wanted to start a blog and I love educational gaming so, why not? Hopefully this will be of some use to you all who share my love for edu-gaming.
    As a kid, I played a lot of PC games. I'll never forget booting up my old desktop PC and waiting for the command line so I could play my new floppy disk. There's been ongoing debate about whether old games are better or new games are better. I can't strongly be for either side (particularly because after recent downloads of MSDOS games, I've realized my love has been driven in large part by nostalgia), but there is a special something about old games, particularly old educational games. To supplement the limitations of 24-bit colors and those catchy-yet-irritating midi tunes, old game developers had to make great efforts in content. The writing and dialogue reflect the love and craftsmenship put into it. Contrastingly, today's games have superior gameplay and graphics, but content that feels less heartfelt.

Secret of Monkey Island: Stands the test of time due to its utterly charming and witty dialogue. 

(Lucasfilm Games, 1990).

    As a result of these market changes, the consumer education industry has collapsed. I know I sound morbid and old (the former being true, the later being up to your own perspective -- I'm 21), but it's seriously sad. I talked with David Dockterman, a lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and the VP at Tom Snyder Productions, and our conversation went something like this:
        me (chipper, immature): I love companies like "The Learning Company" and games like "Carmen Sandiego and such"!
        him (serious): The Learning Company is dead. All consumer educational product companies are dead.

   It was a bit of a depressing realization, to say the least.

One thing I want to make clear is that the majority of current educational software and games -- I HATE. I hate those silly match-the-pattern games, those boring multiple choice question "games", the irritatingly bad role-playing games with too much dialogue and shitty interaction elements. They're just plain boring. They're much worse than the educational games I played a DECADE ago. I dare you to find me another industry that has so severely backtracked as educational gaming. There isn't one.

This is a "game" to teach dads how to cope with their baby. Overly simplistic and boring with a terrible user interface and ridiculous gameplay (even KNOWING the answers, one can fail because he isn't lucky enough to find the right match) makes one go WTF and immediately click [x]. Don't believe me? Try it out here.

(Torque Interactive Media, 2009).

 In today's techy environment, immersive, virtual worlds are springing up practically every second.  A truly immersive world is where a person's whole attention gets captured, where all his or her senses are awakened. I feel that this is the best place to learn -- despite current offerings, I am positive that technology has a lot of potential and can make learning fun.

Not convinced? Think about reading that 800 page World History book with the teeny tiny text and the tissue-paper thin pages. Then imagine roaming Asia, horseback riding behind Genghis Khan, transporting spices across the Silk Road, or debating Plato and Socrates.
Or think about reading those boring little diagrams in your ridiculously heavy science textbook. Imagine instead exploring the rainforest or desert, collecting specimens and examining them. Imagine exploring the inside of a cell and seeing your macrophages in action.

Unfortunately, all of this would require significant talent and money, which is never going to happen if the large game studios don't think there is profit to be made. Most educational game companies make little money, depend on government subsidies for funding, and invest little money into making sub-par games. Which in turn make little money because they're usually sub-par and boring. It's a self-fulfilling process and it sucks.

Well, anyway, enough talking. I'll be writing more about educational game offerings and the market from now on and be succinct about it -- promise! Happy Valentine's Day :)