Dave Harrelson and Alexa Andrzejewski are working on an iPhone application for the website Smart.Fm, a Japanese language learning website.
In a few posts, they are telling how they’re working on the project; last one is really interesting.

First of all they started with the right approach: thinking about the iPhone as a platform and working with in mind its strengths and limitations. Alexa says:

The smart.fm iPhone app should not be a pared down version of the smart.fm website — a path that thinking of it as a “mobile version” might lead us down. Instead, we want the iPhone app to complement the website — not replicate or miniaturize it — and to support the larger experience of learning anytime and anywhere.

Now, what I find fascinating is how they build up a visual language that in a simple yet effective way shows the user achievements. The visualization of achievements and progress, in itself, is an important part of playful design. The use of leaves that become flowers adds up exquisite color and a good sense of wonder in the mastering of learning.

Here are some images of the good work:

Aki Järvinen has an interesting couple of posts about how to create social games on platforms like Facebook.

In these posts he points out Valentina Rao’s work conducted on the popular social network, which in turn analyzes the concept of third place, brought by the urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book The great good place.

Being home and workplace the first and second places, Oldenburg argues, there must be a third place, the place of relax, socialization and playfulness. The latter are the two main characteristics of such places, empowering social relationships through fun. Oldenburg describes the third place as recreational spots, such as cafes, bars and bookstores.

But it should be clear that even social networking sites must be metaphorical third places. And playfulness should be a primary feature to have in mind when designing and building communities.

Now that’s interesting.
Foursquare is a geo-based social network, in which you can track your friends and invite them for a drink if they’re near and stuff like that.
But you can earn badges for different actions you make, for places you explore and so on. Dennis Crowley, the mind behind Foursquare, said to the New York Times that inspiration for the game came from the exploring joy you can experiment in The Legend of Zelda game series.
You explore places, you find objects, you learn and enjoy it.
Kudos.
Too bad it’s limited to few American cities. Can’t wait to see it in old Europe.

First of all, let me apologize for having pretty much abandoned this place. I was out in San Francisco looking for new ideas, I played a game with Jane McGonigal, I met the guys of Playtime Antiboredom Society and all in all I had a great time. But, enough with personal statements.

I just discovered that finance managing service Mint is trying to make saving money more fun by implementing game-like features in the platform. That could really be a nice example of playful design, and it’s more important as it is applied to a very serious software. Raph Koster have some thought about the idea, and an interesting insight about Ultima Online status-symbols.

Unfortunately the new features are for now in private beta (and I cannot try them anyway, as Mint doesn’t support Italian banks) so if someone is trying it, I would be happy to hear comments about that.

Joe Lamantia summarizes his talk at the Italian IA summit.
He worked as a consultant for the website of the PS3 game Killzone 2. And he discovered how much games and social media have in common.

From the functional to the psychological, it seems there really is an ‘architecture of fun’ for both games and social experiences. It is just another example of how architecture of any (and all) kinds is an enormous influencing factor on peoples’ experiences.

Some of the insigths on the slideshow come directly from Nicole Lazzaro’s job at Xeodesign, and are extremely useful when connected with concepts like flow and the magic circle.

I’m waiting to embed the talk here, since Joe promised a complete slidecast.

This new article by Christina Wodtke on A List Apart gives a sneak peek into the second edition of Information Architecture: blueprints for the web.
I found it extremely interesting, and I started making parallels with the concepts of playful design. Take for example point 1, which comes straight from an architecture paper:

Conflict: Children love to be in tiny, cave-like places.

Resolution: Wherever children play, around the house, in the neighborhood, in schools, make small “caves” for them. Tuck these caves away in natural leftover spaces, under stairs, under kitchen counters. Keep the ceiling heights low—2 feet 6 inches to 4 feet—and the entrance tiny.

Which is making me think about safe places in games. They could be the save point in a survival horror game, or just safe zones in a metaphorical sense (think about the chosen word to stop the game in hide-and-seek).
The concept of a safe place (a way to temporary escape the magic circle, if you want to put it formally) is extremely important in a game, because it can provide rhythm in the developing of the action.

It’s nice to see how all those elements connect, intersect and combine themselves.

Web applications can be considered as virtual spaces. There’s no need to be Second Life to be a virtual space. And I will drop the “virtual” adjective too, because I think there’s nothing virtual about the relations and the experiences happening on those spaces.

I think I will call them “experiential spaces” (or maybe “possibility spaces” *wink*). The name is not important, though. Raph Koster has this great article about empowering social interactions inside a whatever space. And I think they should be kept in great consideration when designing a social web application in a playful way. Check it out.

Dopplr is a nice little internet service tracking your travels across the world.
And, of course, is a really good example of playful interaction. The site, though simple, uses a lot of entertaining and cool features: color codes defining the places you visit, stats like your carbon footprint and so on.
Recently they provide all the users with this great infographic, summarizing everything about your year of travels. Just great.

Check out the comment by Brandon Schauer on Adaptive Path blog which sees the Dopplr idea as a long wow moment.