How Do You Know That?
The best way to know what you're getting is to not buy it. Though you may be able to take some guesses and make a reasoned judgment, there will almost always be something left out. The good news is that even if you don't know, many other people have already tried it out for you. Over at the MacHeist blog, a guest writer posted his experiences with how Apple products have changed over the years. Here's an excerpt, but you can read the whole thing at MacHeist.
"When I first first got my Powerbook in 2001, it was difficult to know what to do with it. Keeping up on updates was daunting. The Internet was just starting to take off and there were no reviews of early Mac OS X releases anywhere online. After being an early adopter myself, I wanted to reduce the learning curve for my Powerbook's owner who had never been on the Internet before and wished she could own a Powerbook that had all of the capabilities of one that was two or three years old. I had to figure out what external Firewire drives to buy, what programs I needed to download, how the Mac OS X installation discs worked, and how to track down drivers for my peripheral devices. I started sharing all of this information with the people around me."
So if you've got it in you, share your experience with new users. Make it easy for them to get up and running and give them a ton of information so that they can try it out for themselves. If someone is going through your app or game and he/she has issues or questions, be there. Be present. Be willing. But most importantly, be transparent.
My favorite example of this is a game called The Cave . It's a simple game that I released for iPhone and iPad back at the end of September. It's built on the Nitrous Framework , which I wrote for my students in my Game Design 101 course at NYU. In The Cave , you're an explorer exploring a cave and you navigate it by following and lighting up light bulbs. The problem is that during your exploration you uncover mysterious artifacts that while make your cave look ancient don't actually do anything. I used this game as a platform to teach my students about hacking your games and to make it easy for them, I made those mystery items hackable. You can edit them and they'll be automatically replicated throughout the game so that you can try new things in the game without having to re-install or recompile.
I did this because I felt like I owed it to my students. Let me tell you about how I've tried to help out my students over the past year. In my Game Design 101 course, we're working on an iOS title called Crops . When we started working on it, I programmed a decent framework for building 2D games in Cocos2D . It's not as good as the framework I wrote for my students at NYU, but it's good enough. We have an excellent teaching tool that is also easy to use: a template for each class. A template is basically a skeleton, one that you can fill in with your own content and tweak as you go. I've been really happy with how they've used it to get started on making games at my school and I'm really proud of these students too.
I decided to release The Cave on my own because the more people who tried it, the better. I figured that if I showed the work I'd done for them, they would know that the game wasn't just cobbled together from what I had done for them. This meant that they would be more likely to continue giving me feedback and asking me about things that didn't make sense or feel right.
I didn’t do this because I thought it was exciting, but because I wanted to support my students.
When you make stuff, show it off. When you receive feedback from people in your community, show it off. When you test your apps and games, show it off. I want to see what you're working on, making and playing. Show it to me in a way that's useful.
People like me find the information they need because they trust the source and the person who provided it. They like to see if they can figure out why someone would make a game or app in a certain way or what kind of hardware they have in order to create new experiences for them. When I look at an app or game, I really want to know what went into it and how the creator got from point A to point B – and guess what? So do other people. Take some time and make something for them to use, too.
An Interesting Approach
As mentioned before, it's not enough to just make something that's interesting. You have to figure out how people will access it and how they'll use it. As you learn more about how people use apps and games, think about what experience you want them to have. What problem are they trying to solve? What kind of mood are they going through? How much time do they have? Asking yourself these questions is a way of figuring out the likely avenues that your audience will follow in order to accomplish what they want to do with your app or game.
When you start thinking like this, it's important not to let your experience with the web negatively affect your design. If you're bringing an app or game to the desktop, there's a lot more going on than just creating something that feels good and looks nice. You're also responsible for making sure that people can access it reliably.
You might have a really interesting app or game that you think the world needs but if they can't get it, they might never try your app or game again. It will be missed opportunity with no way of knowing whether this person really liked what you had to say or if they just happened to have an iPad one day when you were updating your site.
Conclusion
The obvious question that many people will ask is: What apps or games do you like? I have some ideas but I'm still on the fence about whether I want to reveal them right now. Showing you what I like will give you an idea of what I'm looking for, but it also puts a lot of pressure on me to figure out how my app or game can be better. People trust me because they know that I care deeply about them and I would never try to get them to use something that wasn't as good as it could be. So this isn't an easy question for me to answer.
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How Do You Know That?