At some point in my teens I got the notion to build my own board game. I still have a few of those ideas rummaging around my head but nothing near a complete playable game. As luck would have it I recently got the chance to make something similar. It is not a board game per se but a card game with dice. During the development I felt I learned a few things worth sharing.

This winter we got the chance to create supporting material around the yearly Christmas theater show for children on Swedish Radios website.

Setting out we had a very limited time frame and budget. Sadly this ment some really great ideas got axed in the ideation phase. When we finally shortlisted some viable options I was surprised that one of my ideas, a collectible card game based on the characters and fauna from the show made the cut.

The basic idea was a card game where animals and key characters from the fictional drama met to to do battle. Each player would have a set number of cards with different strengths and weaknesses, dice would add some randomness and separate function cards would make the gameplay more diverse and enjoyable. The game it self is not directly connected to the radio shows story but the environments and characters from the show lent them self beautifully to capture the players imagination. This was mostly due to the great work of the projects talented illustrator and designer.

Challenges

Keeping 32 + 8 points of data in your head at any given moment is way past any normal humans capacity. I´m no genius, the only way to make this work was by getting all the cards up on a whiteboard to allow overview and enabling grouping and sorting them by type, strength etc.

Having them on the wall also allowed for easier collaboration and having people outside of the project comment on and contribute to the cards on post-its. It also made it easier to go through them one by one marking errors and adding or striking ideas for the next iteration.

Play testing

Having more than a 100k combinations to try out was a bit daunting not to say impossible given the time constraints for this project. This ment actual play testing focused on finding what aspects of the game where enjoyable and where the rules where flawed. Some of the balancing was solved using a rock paper scissors system. Making sure each card type had a countermove. If you think that sounds a bit simplistic you should watch Sheldon Cooper describe the rules of a slightly updated version:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/x5Q6-wMx-K8

Learning from others failures also turned this game around at an early stage. Following the advice from http://www.sirlin.net/ the game went from having few rare and very powerful cards to making them more or less equally powerful but instead making their properties specialized. For example the weakest card, the bread worm given its special property automatically defeats the polar bear (one of the strongest cards). This also ads a bit of strategy as the player needs to figure out when to hold, play or sacrifice weaker cards.

Ultimately the game does not need to be perfectly balanced. It needs to be fair. Fair in that both or all players have the same chance to select the same cards. Fair in the sense that players have a chance to affect the outcome by applying lessons learned from earlier games. If you can achieve this people will have fun and not get bored as quickly.

We had a lot of fun creating this game. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to test it through it´s various stages of development. If you understand Swedish you can download, print and play this game for free. Let me know if you like it.

And pass it did. At a pace I previously have not encountered. For me 2010 was a year of highs and very few if any lows. We did not win every pitch (nor should we have except for one annoying case) and when we lost we did so for the right reasons. All in all I had a well balanced workload and enjoyed working on several projects where touchscreens created new challenges both from a interaction design standpoint and in our user studies. I had the opportunity to read loads of great books (slight low-point there as I discovered I need glasses). Spring was spent in Japan under the blooming Sakura followed by a trip to Sienna with my co-workers. In August I attended UX week in San Francisco where I picked up a lot of ideas and new energy.

This was also the year I found solid ground for my role as a User Experience Designer, I can see that what I do makes a difference for the end results and this makes it all worth while at the end of the day. If there is one thing I should promise myself to change it would be to stop more often and ask myself if I am doing the right thing. The right thing for me personally to develop my skills and the right thing for our clients, making sure there is tangible value in the deliverable or result of the task at hand.

See you in 2011!

-”Of course, have a seat. I will be ready in about fifteen minutes”.

Delighted I take a seat on one the modern square stools. None of the magazines available are of any interest so I listen in to the ongoing conversations.

The hairdresser I now have an appointment with is a young woman in her early twenties. She is very talkative and from the relentless stream of polite questions I gather she takes a natural interest in her clients. It strikes me that once it is my turn she will inevitably ask me what I do for a living.

*

Finally a great opportunity to practice explaining what I do in a clear and concise manner to someone who is unlikley to have any preconceptions and who seems to share a genuine interest in her fellow human beings. I do some mental juggeling and come up with a variation of my usual presentation simplifying it slightly and adding a few points about why I enjoy my work.

It is my turn now, after agreeing on length, style and sitting through the obligatory hair wash the question comes. I am prepared and fire away on all cylinders. When I finish I feel like I just hit a home run. This could be how I should always present myself.

Oh, so you’re like an office worker?

My heart sinks. I feel slightly frustrated over my failure to convey how meaningful my work is. I want to say no, no, I do important work that makes the web a better place for everyone, instead I hear myself say:

Yes, I guess I work in an office most of the time but my point is…

I can see she has lost interest and on second thought my simplified description probably does sound a lot like ordinary office work. Maybe because a lot if it is?

Realizing that any further attempts will sound like a line out of Office Space I retreat with what little dignity I have left and change the subject.

While this is now a slightly amusing story I can chuckle over with my co-workers it does feel like I left a piece of my ego next to some of my hair on that salon floor. Probably for the better.

Ever had a question on complicated UI Design patterns? Come join the fun.

An operating system with a scaleable UI is no small feat but an inevitable step in the long run given the ongoing development of pixel density in modern screens. I´m hoping this is one of the tricks Cupertino has prepared for “Lion” the next big release of Mac OS X to be previewed on Wednesday at the “Back to the Mac” event.

Got any predictions? Sound off in the comments.

We have moved to brand new offices in central Stockholm. I just came back after three weeks in Tokyo and walked right in to this amazing new environment. Every last surface and space is thought through and has been built according to our needs. Gone is the stale air, noise, bad lighting, cramped workspaces and overbooked conference rooms. Not having taken part in the move everything feels a bit alien and will take a few days to process. One thing is for certain: this will change everything.

That tingling feeling I get every time my phone correctly identifies a (for me) unknown track is only indirectly a result of Apples and Shazams hard work to create a slick user experience. My somewhat vague and fuzzy theory is that it is induced by a momentary feeling of being connected to a large portion of humanity´s accumulated culture. It is not magic but a small step closer to nirvana… through technology.

Had any profound, wonderful or wacky magical moments that were made possible by technology? Please feel free to share in the comments.