I am very excited about Heavy Rain. Not on the pretence of the game being the next step in interactive storytelling or a more mature gaming experience. Besides what looks to be a good story set to beautiful visuals and a dynamic score there is a promise of better interaction. This game will tackle the issue of the dreaded Quick Time Event. Quick Time Events are best described as cut scenes where the actual gameplay is limited and the interaction is often of simple nature, e.g. press a button repeteadly at the right moment. The ambitions where originally even higher as the develepors had Sonys upcoming motion controller in mind. What Heavy Rain will try to do is create unique interactions for moves and actions and have them map more naturaly to physical actions from real life. The game will make use of all available inputs of the six axis hand controler and make use of multiple simulatinious inputs to create these more natural mappings. How well they manage to execute this remains to be seen but it would be good for the console game industry as a whole if Heavy Rain changes the traditionaly unimaginative QTE and replaces it with something a bit more immersive.
In the user experience field, the small details that go beyond expectations and make the difference when it comes to an enjoyable experience, are often called delighters. Many times delighters spring from a single team members will to show off their talent, out of love for a project or love for the end user. Activities that make your site more enjoyable should however not be left to chance but rather be planned for in advance. Planning for and thinking about enjoyability throughout your project can set your site apart from the competition and engage your users emotionally.
There has also been some talk about playfulness lately. Playfulness is another example of how to achieve enjoyability. Emil Ovemar UX Director at Bonnier R&D recently wrote a good post on playfulness.
Whatever you choose to name your attempts at making your site enjoyable, delightful or fun to use, you should approach these activities with some caution. Trying to make your site enjoyable may never come at the cost of the foundations of good web design (structure, interaction design, usability, etc). Enjoyability activities must also be aligned with your clients design strategy, brand and identity. Without this, doing any of the following will likely only help you waste time. Read on for some examples.
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