Notes

If you haven't Heard of It

This post began as an email to some researchers that I work with. They study user experience, especially with families. (They're the ones who developed the fun Nokia/Sesame Street-related stuff). Today I was thinking about the email and realized I was not able to post it on this blog without permission. I find it fascinating.



My nine year old son Alex played with me recently over at our house After a while, Alex wanted to show his friend Minecraft Pocket Edition, which I recently purchased for our iPads (we each have one, my best investment so far in his education). We had spent a couple of hours creating virtual castles and underground hideouts together on Saturday. It was very enjoyable.



If you haven't heard of it, Minecraft is an independently developed block-building-slash-survival game that hit it big over the last year, and they just came out with a tablet version a few weeks ago for both Android and iPad. The tablet version of Minecraft is a light version. There's no zombies, fighting, etc. like in the PC version, only the ability to build stuff. It was initially hard for me to purchase the iOS version, as it costs $7 on the iPad, but Google has been promoting games for Android, and Minecraft was on sale for 10 cents, so I bought it for my Motorola Xoom (which I use mostly for testing). This was when I realized how enjoyable the game was! I quickly purchased the iPad version, and Alex and I have played with it ever since.



Although I wasn't certain that Alex's friend would be interested, it was a huge success. Because the Android and iPad versions of the program are compatible, we could all jump into the same world with all three tablets at once. We spent two hours in the living room with our own tablets, excitedly building cool things together and separately and then hopping around the virtual world to see what others had created. There were no puzzles or challenges, no blasting bad guys, and no tackling them. It was pure virtual creation.



To me there's so many parts of this experience that I find to be quite unique:



- Minecraft PE isn't a game in the traditional sense. It's a sandbox. Minecraft PE is a sandbox, similar to Lego blocks but cooler because you actually create the world you're creating. The interface is simple, anyone can play and have fun with no prior experience - not normal for many video games or virtual worlds. It's incredible how quickly you go from building a little tunnel or shack, to wanting to clear out 10 acres of land to create the biggest castle ever. It was amazing to see the boys leap ahead of themselves only to scale back, support each one another and so on. - Sharing what you have constructed is a wonderful social aspect. I had to remind both boys at times to take a look at the work of the other, as they were so engaged in their activities that they couldn't stop. Once they did there were a lot of 'Oh! Games Games And More Games Cool! I want to help! Then come see mine" This is the first time I've ever seen this kind of lesson in any kind of game. - Being able to join the two boys and guide them along when they were stuck was great (in terms of new ideas or simply getting lost - one boy tunneled down to the border of the virtual world, and then could not figure out how to return to the surface. It was a bit of a nightmare.) ) - Cross platform compatibility - this is almost obvious, but it really allowed all of the above. The boys eventually found the game Hide and Go Seek. This was quite funny, especially considering you could make your own endless tunnels.



It was really fascinating to watch the boys launch into the game together, start creating new stuff and having fun without effort. Even though we all sat facing each other using our respective devices, the experience was still more personal than a co-op game, where you communicate with grunts and elbows. Instead, we were sitting in the living room, and would look up and talk to each other, leaning over to see what the other was doing, etc. All in a much more normal and social manner as opposed to, say sharing a screen.



Again, I am truly amazed at the leap forward tablet computers are making. Touch can make UIs so more accessible and intuitive. The tablet's form factor melds seamlessly into social situations without creating barriers such as gaming consoles or laptops. console.



This is yet another example of the technological leap tablets are a part of. It's not like tablets are a third-party computing system that is oddly related to the mobile phone and PC, but it's now evident that tablets will be the dominant computing device of the future. Perhaps they'll be referred to as PCs with touch interfaces or huge mobile OSes, but the design factor I believe we've been waiting decades for is finally here and it's just as good as we all believed it could be, or better.


My Website: https://poesia-infantil.com/