Designing emotional engagement and viral distribution without spamming your friends [and] lessons from 11 years in 1 app

The Four Keys to Fun: Designing Emotional Engagement and Viral Distribution without Spamming Your Friends, Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign

Often ignored by usability, neuroscience now proves that emotion deeply connects decision making and performance. Emotions also coordinate the actions between people. Therefore the next design challenge for desktop and cloud applications is not making a UI "easy," but rather making it more emotional and social. The trick is that emotions and social experiences cannot be designed directly.

This presentation covers how the choices in games craft player emotions to increase engagement. In addition to competition there are game mechanics that increase curiosity and others that create social bonding that makes team work possible. We will examine these 4 Keys to Fun plus new social mechanics from XEODesign's research to see how successful social media and iPhone games offer more playful interfaces that increase engagement, loyalty, and viral distribution. By adding these kinds of choices designers can drive user behavior to create more engaging experiences.

From XEODesign's latest player research we will look at:

• How games create emotion and self-motivation
• What mechanics and emotions drive social engagement, networking, and increase social bonding
• How player choices create emotions such as Schadenfreude, Fiero, Curiosity, and Love
• The emotions and mechanics that drive viral distribution.

Comparing examples from social media such as Twitter and Facebook to games on the web, console, and iPhone we draw out the secrets of social play and the emotions that makes something viral. Come hear the latest research results on emotions and games played on iPhones and social networks and what that means for more serious applications.

Living with Jerry's Brain: Lessons from 11 Years in One App, Jerry Michalski, Sociate

Description: Since December 1997, every day, Jerry Michalski has been adding data to the same concept map, kept in PersonalBrain. You can view the results at the link above. He'll discuss:

• What makes the Brain's UX really work for him?
• How is the Brain different from similar offers?
• How is adding to almost a dozen years of data useful and compelling?
• What could the Brain do better? Do next?
• How might we all weave a global brain?

During the session, Jerry will add to his Brain (including notions from Nicole's presentation), all of which will be available online afterward.

Disclosure: Jerry is an advisor the TheBrain.