Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they're siblings that grew up in different houses. They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design. This book will show you how.

Game design can provide pragmatic and often surprising solutions to the challenges of designing experiences for websites and desktop software. This book will describe game experiences and show you how you can appropriate them to influence user behavior, bring abstract ideas to life, and explore new forms of interactivity successfully. With gaming now a ubiquitous activity among a vast worldwide customer base, the conventions and cognitive models emerging from it are not merely relevant to the design of conventional user interfaces, but indeed impossible to ignore. Designers who incorporate game competencies into their toolkits will be able to discover new avenues to success.

Why buy this book?

1. You will discover new strategies to solve real problems of design.


2. You will gain exposure to UI innovations developed in a robust parallel industry.


3. You will adapt yourself to a world where games are a primary way that people interact with computers.