GOTO Berlin is a vendor independent international software development conference with more that 60 top speaker and 400 attendees. The conference cover topics such as Java, Open Source, Agile, Architecture, Design, Web, Cloud, New Languages and Processes.

Presentation: "Anti-Usability & UX in Games"

Track: UX - Visibility, Usability, Graphics / Time: Thursday 14:30 - 15:20 / Location: Hall 6

UX depends on context. When most people think of a 'good user experience' they think of 'intuitive' interactions and an interface which takes the time to be as helpful as possible. Many games take the exact opposite approach; developers create an arbitrary set of rules players have to follow and place many obstacles in front of people to prevent them from progressing. It's this anti-usability that makes games fun and, in many games, the challenge is to fight the interface itself.

This session will explore the differences between how we assess the usability of, for example, expert systems (with trained, skilled operators) and 'government digital services, which have to cater for the widest possible range of users. And the session will also look at what lessons we can learn from how games designers deliberately insert friction to create more engaging experiences.

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Simon Bostock, London Based Digital Designer

Simon Bostock

Biography: Simon Bostock

Simon is a UX / digital strategy person who's worked on games, intranet, Open Source and 'big website' stuff for a range of clients and agencies. He's currently working for Equal Experts in the UK on one of the UK Government Digital Service exemplar projects – a project bringing GDS-style user-centred design principles to international users.

He's previously worked with Drupal (a lot), games design (social sports games and things for French-speaking Canadians), service design and digital transformation projects (for big pharma/medical devices multinationals) and done a lot of change and knowledge management projects.

His interests are in cyborgs and systems design, and how they overlap with UX. He's just started work on a bookish thing on "network legibility" which will discuss how we might be moving more and more of our decision-making infrastructure to layers of the stack that are largely inaccessible to most people.

Twitter: @i4_1