Over so often I get asked what fundamentals of game design apply to the design of learning games – a very difficult question to answer that. In my opinion, every sort of principle ever used in the design of commercial video games applies to the creation of digital learning games as well. My opinion is that game design can’t really be reduced to a set of guidelines that instructional designers can follow to design games that teach. I’d even go so far as to say that game design is more of a philosophy than anything else, once you imbibe that philosophy the gaminess starts to permeate all your design, it fundamentally changes the way you think about user interface and experience design.
Abhijit Brahme | March 30th, 2010
We often create scenario based courses for the engineering industry. Because they are for engineers; we consider the best way to represent graphics and animations is to use 3D isometric views with orthographic projections.
Trained engineers and technicians find it easy to read this type of graphic [if rendered properly] as it has clear projections on all three axes. All the lines in this type of drawings are parallel to their respective axis; so there is no distortion in the drawing no matter what the size of surface it’s drawn on.
I just concluded a week-long trip to Saudi Arabia – my first to the middle-east region. Apart from a delayed immigration & customs clearance at Riyadh (which I am told is a norm at Riyadh) the experience was wonderful. Saudi Arabia is like any other developed country – you can see wide roads, big cars (GMC trucks abound), tall swanky buildings, malls with all the expensive brand names. The usual transnationals – McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts all make their presence felt. I also found some great Indian food too.
1. Using Twitter for Learning – Fifty-five articles on how to use twitter as a learning tool. You’ll want to look at some if you are considering using twitter for learning in any form.
2. A Collection of Social Media Infographics – Helpful to use infographics in presentations, reports, articles, etc. A cool resource, these graphics also give great ideas on how data can be represented visually.
Interaction design is almost always a synthesis of traditional methods and approaches from varied established disciplines. When I write about interaction, most people reading it view it in the context of software or some form of digital technology.
“Interaction” isn’t only about technology or software. Industrial designers are taught to design ‘things’ that engage people and facilitate their relationships with those things.
Earlier this month, Tom Kuhlmann talked about 10 things to do before your eLearning course goes live. His post makes great sense but what really caught my attention was the statement he began with.
“It’s amazing how fresh eyes can find things you might have overlooked during production. So, before launching your elearning course, it’s a good idea to have others review it. You want to discover any hidden issues before the big launch.”
When eLearning came into being through its early predecessors in the form of CBT and then WBT one of the primary reasons and its drivers was increasing acceptance of its potential to save costs due to the inherent advantages in centralizing (more with WBT) content, the reduction in logistics costs, persistent storage and to an extent uniformity in content delivery. It soon caught on as a medium which is now used as a part of learning strategy (in context of workplace learning) and not only helped companies save costs on a recurring basis but it evolved as a ‘learning’ delivery medium.
Adobe Flash Professional is undoubtedly the most popular tool for custom eLearning development. With the help of its inbuilt programming language ActionScript developers can code interactions, communicate with servers, program animations etc. The latest version of ActionScript- ActionScript 3.0 [AS 3.0] was released in 2006. It has many new APIs and better performance which were not available in the previous versions of ActionScript [AS 1.0 & AS 2.0] and is well backed by a great Flash developer community that has contributed in developing many open source frameworks/classes/APIs.
