Christina Wodtke is currently consulting, teaching, coaching and acting as an advisor to startups. Most recently she led new product development and reinvention as a general manager of Zynga.com at Zynga, was general manager of Social at Myspace, principal product manager at Linkedin, and senior director of design at Yahoo! back when Yahoo! was pretty neat.
As well, she likes founding things: She founded a startup where she developed the collaborative blogging tool PublicSquare; founded Boxes and Arrows, an on-line magazine of design; and co-founded the Information Architecture Institute. She may found again.
Along the way she wrote the bestselling Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, and has spoken on the topic of the human experience in information spaces at conferences worldwide. She writes still at Eleganthack.
There is a right way and a wrong way to introduce change to your userbase, and sadly the bully-tactics of facebook and Apple have become the norm. But if you are a small company, you can't afford to impose change sloppily on your userbase. You need to get it right. This workshop will be highly interactive, with exercises and discussions so we can focus on your goals and needs as you introduce new products and revamp the old.
The web world thinks of game design as the next silver bullet, and companies are slapping badges and progress bars over every annoying thing they wish users to do. But as users tire of everything looking like a game, “gamification” is starting to get discarded as just another fad.. Games have been core to human experience since ancient times, and the game industry now makes more than the movies industry. If we want to create amazing experiences for our users, there is plenty to learn beyond the tricks of Gamification. I’ve studied game design from the people who actually make games, such as Dan Cook (Triple Town), Mark Skaggs (Farmville), Amy Jo Kim (Rockband) and Erin Hoffman (Sims Edu) and it has transformed my design practice. Let me share what I have learned. Come and hear how mastery, mysteries and meaningful choices can make your site a pleasure for your users.
Take Aways
* When to use game mechanics, and when they’ll backfire
* How to make your personas more powerful with play-style
* Replace tutorials with more integrated and pleasurable teaching.
* Understand key game mechanics, how they work and how to use them
* Learn how to use the power of games appropriately to drive engagement and retention.
* Practical approaches you can use back in the office monday morning.
Ideias e Imagens is Portugal's top UX Consultancy. We handle research, information architecture, interaction design and perform usability and accessibility evaluations.
www.ideias-imagens.com
Phone: (+351) 914 950 126
E-mail: info@ux-lx.com