Joe Lamantia.com

I’ll be speak­ing at the Ital­ian IA Sum­mit next week on some of the excit­ing work Medi­a­Cat­a­lyst has been doing in the area of mas­sively social on-line games. We’re the dig­i­tal agency behind Killzone.com, the inte­grated on-line com­mu­nity for the Kil­l­zone game series, which is just about to release it’s sec­ond install­ment (sell­ing well — Kil­l­Zone 2 is #10 on Ama­zon, in pre-orders alone).
I think hybrid expe­ri­ences that com­bine games dynamism and sophis­ti­cated social spaces are a very impor­tant part of the future for inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences, and the orga­niz­ers have been kind enough to offer us the open­ing keynote, so if you can get a ticket to Forli, we’d love to see you in the audi­ence.

Here’s the full descrip­tion of our talk:
Co-evolution of a Socially Rich Game Expe­ri­ence and Com­mu­nity Archi­tec­ture
What form will the next gen­er­a­tion of inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences take? The exact nature of the future is always unknown. But now that every­thing is ‘social’, and games are a fully legit­i­mate cul­tural phe­nom­e­non more prof­itable and more pop­u­lar than Hol­ly­wood films, we can expect to see the emer­gence of expe­ri­ences that com­bine aspects of games and social media in new ways.
One exam­ple of a hybrid expe­ri­ence that com­bines game ele­ments and com­plex social inter­ac­tions is the cross-media envi­ron­ment formed by the pop­u­lar Kil­l­zone games and their com­pan­ion site Killzone.com. By design, the Kil­l­zone games and the Killzone.com site have co-evolved over time to inter­con­nect on many lev­els. In the most recent ver­sion (planned for pub­lic release in early 2009), the game con­sole and web site expe­ri­ences work in con­cert to enhance game­play with sophis­ti­cated social dynam­ics, and pro­vide an active com­mu­nity des­ti­na­tion that is ‘syn­chro­nized’ with events in the game in real time. The hybrid Kil­l­zone envi­ron­ment allows active game play­ers and com­mu­nity mem­bers to move back and forth between game and web expe­ri­ences, with simul­ta­ne­ous aware­ness of and con­nec­tion to peo­ple and events in both set­tings.
Lead­ing games researcher and designer Nicole Laz­zaro calls these hybrid expe­ri­ences ‘Mas­sively Social On-line Games’. In these types of inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences, play­ers build mean­ing­ful his­to­ries for indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters and groups of all sizes through com­pet­i­tive and coöper­a­tive inter­ac­tions that take place in the linked game and com­mu­nity con­texts. Game mech­a­nisms and social archi­tec­ture ele­ments are designed to encour­age the accu­mu­la­tion of shared expe­ri­ences, group iden­ti­ties, and col­lec­tive his­to­ries. Over time, design­ers hope shared expe­ri­ences will serve as the basis for a body of social mem­ory.
This case study will fol­low the co-evolution of Kil­l­zone and Killzone.com, revis­it­ing major busi­ness and design deci­sions in con­text, exam­in­ing the chang­ing nature of the com­mu­nity, and con­sid­er­ing the lessons learned at each stage of the devel­op­ment of this early exam­ple of the next gen­er­a­tion of mas­sively social on-line game.

In case you couldn’t make it to Ams­ter­dam for EuroIA 2008, or if you were in town but pre­ferred to stay out­side in the warmth of a sunny Sep­tem­ber Sat­ur­day than ven­ture into the mar­velous Tsuchin­ski the­ater, I’ve posted the slides from my talk Frame­works are the Future of Design.
Enjoy!

The I.A. Pod­cast (by Jeff Parks of I.A. Con­sul­tants and Box­e­san­dAr­rows pod­cast fame) just pub­lished the sec­ond of two inter­views dis­cussing research on ethics, design, social media, and con­flict.
Play and down­load the sec­ond inter­view here.
Sub­scribe to the iTunes and feed­burner feeds for the I.A. Pod­cast here.
These pod­casts are based on the Design­ing Eth­i­cal Expe­ri­ences series I’m writ­ing for UXMat­ters: watch for pub­li­ca­tion of the final arti­cle later this sum­mer.
Thanks again, Jeff!

Under­stand­ing Juicy Ratio­nal­iza­tions, part 3 of the Design­ing Eth­i­cal Expe­ri­ences series, just went live at UXMat­ters.
Here’s the teaser:
From “The Big Chill“
Michael: “I don’t know any­one who could get through the day with­out two or three juicy ratio­nal­iza­tions.“
“They’re more impor­tant than sex.“
Sam: “Ah, come on. Nothing’s more impor­tant than sex.“
Michael: “Oh yeah? Ever gone a week with­out a ratio­nal­iza­tion?“

Design­ers ratio­nal­ize their choices just as much as every­one else. But we also play a unique role in shap­ing the human world by cre­at­ing the expres­sive and func­tional tools many peo­ple use in their daily lives. Our deci­sions about what is and is not eth­i­cal directly impact the lives of a tremen­dous num­ber of peo­ple we will never know. Bet­ter under­stand­ing of the choices we make as design­ers can help us cre­ate more eth­i­cal user expe­ri­ences for our­selves and for every­one.

Under­stand­ing Juicy Ratio­nal­iza­tions is the first of a pair of arti­cles focused on the ways that indi­vid­ual design­ers make eth­i­cal choices, and how we can improve our choices. This sec­ond pair of arti­cles is a bit of eye-opening win­dow into how peo­ple make many of the choices in our daily lives — not just design deci­sions. Or, at least it was for me… Read­ers will see con­nec­tions much broader than sim­ply choices we explic­itly think of as ‘eth­i­cal’ and / or design related.
The final install­ment in the Design­ing Eth­i­cal Expe­ri­ences series is titled Man­ag­ing the Imp of the Per­verse; watch for it some­time soon.
With the pub­li­ca­tion of these next two arti­cles, the Design­ing Eth­i­cal Expe­ri­ences series con­sists of two sets of matched pairs of arti­cles; the first arti­cle in each pair fram­ing a prob­lem­atic real-life sit­u­a­tion design­ers will face, and the sec­ond sug­gest­ing some ways to resolve these chal­lenges eth­i­cally.
The first pair of arti­cles — Social Media and the Con­flicted Future and Some Prac­ti­cal Sug­ges­tions for Design­ing Eth­i­cal Expe­ri­ences — looked at broad cul­tural and tech­nol­ogy trends like social media and DIY / co-creation, sug­gest­ing ways to dis­cover and man­age likely eth­i­cal con­flicts within the design process.
It’s a nice sym­met­ri­cal struc­ture, if you dig that sort of thing.  (And what archi­tect doesn’t?)
For com­muters / multi-taskers / peo­ple who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, Jeff Parks inter­viewed me on the con­tents of this sec­ond set of arti­cles, which he will pub­lish shortly as a pod­cast.
Thanks again to the edi­to­r­ial team at UXMat­ters for sup­port­ing my explo­ration of this very impor­tant topic for the future of expe­ri­ence design. In an age when every­one can lever­age professional-grade adver­tis­ing the likes of Spo­tun­ner, the eth­i­cal­ity of the expres­sive tools and frame­works design­ers cre­ate is a ques­tion of crit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance for us all.

I’m happy to announce I’m speak­ing at EuroIA 2008 in Ams­ter­dam, Sep­tem­ber 26 — 27. My ses­sion is titled ‘Frame­works Are the Future of IA’. If the excit­ing title isn’t enough to sell you on attend­ing (what’s more com­pelling than a case study on an open struc­tural design frame­work for self-assembled user expe­ri­ences and infor­ma­tion spaces…?), here’s a descrip­tion:
The Web is shift­ing to a DIY (Do It Your­self) model of user expe­ri­ence cre­ation, where peo­ple assem­ble indi­vid­ual com­bi­na­tions of con­tent and func­tion­al­ity gath­ered from many sources to meet their par­tic­u­lar needs. The DIY model for cre­at­ing user expe­ri­ences offers many ben­e­fits in pub­lic and con­sumer set­tings, and also inside the enter­prise. But over time, it suf­fers many of the same prob­lems that his­tor­i­cally made por­tals unus­able and inef­fec­tive, includ­ing con­gested designs, poorly planned growth, and inabil­ity to accom­mo­date changes in struc­ture and use.
This case study demon­strates a sim­ple design frame­work of stan­dard­ized infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture build­ing blocks that is directly applic­a­ble to por­tals and the DIY model for cre­at­ing user expe­ri­ences, in two ways. First, the build­ing blocks frame­work can help main­tain find­abil­ity, usabil­ity and user expe­ri­ence qual­ity in por­tal and DIY set­tings by effec­tively guid­ing growth and change. Sec­ond, it is an exam­ple of the chang­ing role of IA in the DIY world, where we now define the frame­works and tem­plates other peo­ple choose from when cre­at­ing their own tools and user expe­ri­ences.
Using many screen­shots and design doc­u­ments, the case study will fol­low changes in the audi­ences, struc­tures, and con­tents of a suite of enter­prise por­tals con­structed for users in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, oper­at­ing units, and man­age­r­ial lev­els of a major global cor­po­ra­tion. Par­tic­i­pants will see how the build­ing blocks pro­vided an effec­tive frame­work for the design, expan­sion, and inte­gra­tion of nearly a dozen dis­tinct por­tals assem­bled from a com­mon library of func­tion­al­ity and con­tent.
This case study will also explore the build­ing blocks as an exam­ple of the design frame­works IA’s will cre­ate in the DIY future. We will dis­cuss the goals and design prin­ci­ples that inspired the build­ing blocks sys­tem, and review its evo­lu­tion over time.

The con­fer­ence pro­gram includes some very inter­est­ing ses­sions, and Adam Green­field (of Every­ware reknown) is the keynote.
Ams­ter­dam is lovely in Sep­tem­ber, but if you need more rea­son to come and say hello, Pic­nic 08 — with a stel­lar lineup of speak­ers — is just before EuroIA.

The I.A. Pod­cast (by Jeff Parks of I.A. Con­sul­tants and Box­e­san­dAr­rows pod­cast fame) just pub­lished the first of two inter­views we recorded recently, talk­ing about ethics, design, social media, and con­flict.
Play and down­load the inter­view here.
Sub­scribe to the iTunes and feed­burner feeds for the I.A. Pod­cast here.
Stay tuned for the sec­ond inter­view!
Thanks Jeff!

Video of my BlogTalk pre­sen­ta­tion ‘What hap­pens when every­one designs social media? Prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions for han­dling new eth­i­cal dilem­mas’ is avail­able from Ustream.tv. The res­o­lu­tion is low (it was shot with a web­cam) but the audio is good: fol­low along with the slides on your own for the full expe­ri­ence.

More videos of BlogTalk ses­sions here.

UXMat­ters just pub­lished part 1 of a two part series I’m writ­ing on ethics and design titled, Design­ing Eth­i­cal Expe­ri­ences: Social Media and the Con­flicted Future.
Here’s an excerpt, to whet your appetites for a prac­ti­cal take on what’s often seen as a philo­soph­i­cal sub­ject.
Ques­tions of ethics and con­flict can seem far removed from the daily work of user expe­ri­ence (UX) design­ers who are try­ing to develop insight into people’s needs, under­stand their out­looks, and design with empa­thy for their con­cerns. In fact, the con­verse is true: When con­flicts between busi­nesses and customers–or any groups of stakeholders–remain unre­solved, UX prac­ti­tion­ers fre­quently find them­selves fac­ing eth­i­cal dilem­mas, search­ing for design com­pro­mises that sat­isfy com­pet­ing camps. This dynamic is the essen­tial pat­tern by which con­flicts in goals and per­spec­tives become eth­i­cal con­cerns for UX design­ers. Unchecked, it can lead to the cre­ation of uneth­i­cal expe­ri­ences that are hos­tile to users–the very peo­ple most design­ers work hard to benefit–and dam­ag­ing to the rep­u­ta­tions and brand iden­ti­ties of the busi­nesses respon­si­ble.
Stay tuned for part two, which will share a set of sug­ges­tions for how design can man­age con­flict and work toward the cre­ation of eth­i­cal inte­grated expe­ri­ences. Mean­while, let us know what you think of the ideas here, or at the UXMat­ters site.