UX Week Notes / Don't Forget the Humans / Kaiser

Don't Forget the Humans- Service Design
Christi Zuber & Chris McCarthi - Kaiser 

9 million patients - big organization
3 designers - small but mighty

Patient centered
Human centered - If your designing just for the patient, you're forgetting everybody else: doctors, nurses, etc.
UX means mediating the relationships btwn all these people.

Journey home board - gives patients and clinicians a common understanding

Drawings
Nurses - medication error
What you ask them in words and when you ask them to draw it, you get totally different responses

Video ethnography. Video insights to bring back to clinicians.

Stop photography... Time-lapse video.  1 photo every minute in the world of nurses.  1 photo every minute in the world of patients.  Create empathy.

Innovation center.  
Co-Design. Enactments.... 2 day innovation session with doctors and patients. Lightweight video. Handmade constructions. Trigger to pay attention: when there's chuckling or grumbling.

Designers role is to lead the design with the lay co-designers.  Create change agents within the organization.

Try small tests of change.  Throw it out there and see the response.  "Leave me alone" vest.  Trigger to be focused, don't be multitasking.  Trying things really quickly, get feedback.  Don't give yourself a chance to fall in love with them.

Glyphish.com... Great icons for apps

Download now or preview on posterous
Service_Design.pdf (35 KB)

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UX Week Notes / Mediated Culture / Michael Wesch

Mediated Culture - New Future of Whatever
Michael Wesch - anthropologist
Guy who made the Web 2.0 video in a basement in Kansas

Media are not just tools. When media changes, relationships change. We reorganize our lives and the way we do things. Conversations change, and its the conversations that form our culture.

Whatever...
In the midst of unprecedented cultural change and incoming stimuli... Whatever.
MTV generation
I find it hard, I find it hard to change... Whatever.
Generation Me
Search for identity and recognition
In this critical moment they're bombarded by new media.

McLuhan. We shape our tools and our tools in turn shape us.

Web is not just about linking information. The Web is about linking people.
Web 2.0 video
User generated content
User generated filtering. Digg
User generated User generated distribution. Blogging. These days were all about blogging.
Google picks it up. User generated prioritization.
Web 2.0 video made in basement in Kansas beat out superbowl videos.
Long slow death of the middleman.

If we were to reform government digital, it would look quite different.

We know ourselves through our relationship with others
20,000 videos addressed to the YouTube "community"
What kind of community is it?
Webcam mediates the YouTube community. You don't know who's going to watch you, what context, when.

6 decade decline of community. We now bowl alone.
Cultural inversion. Express individualism. Value community. Replay. ReCOGnition. Watching. Anonymity. Physical distance. Hatred as public performance.
Freedom to watch humanity without fear or discomfort.
Media creates distance. Media connects us in different ways. Sometimes the distance connects us in deeper ways. Create new forms of understanding.

Hero for our mediated culture. Free hugs.
Global conversation. New voices. No longer a one way conversation.

Designing the new possibilities of human connection.
Collaboration of layers upon layers.

Kenya Ushihiti - citizen documentation of Kenyan elections
Open Street maps - citizen created, not google Future: I care. Let's do whatever it takes to make a difference.

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UX Week / Mediated Culture / Michael Welsch

UX Week - Don't forget the Humans - Kaiser Talk

Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck

SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics


SCVNGR Game Dynamics Playdeck

Guide To This Document: This list is a collection of game dynamics terms, game dynamics theories that are interesting, useful and potentially applicable to your work here at SCVNGR. Many of them have clear applications within the SCVNGR game layer (progression dynamic, actualization), many of them don’t… yet (status, virtual items). Many of them are just interesting for your general education on game dynamics theory (epic meaning, social fabric of games). Many of these game dynamics concepts are well known and are sourced from all over the internet and from researchers such as Jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost and Jess Schell and articles on gamasutra (which I highly recommend reading). Others are used exclusively internally here and won’t make any sense outside of HQ. Along with a link to this document, you will have received these dynamics in a set of flash cards. Please memorize those. If you’re on the engineering / game-design team you can access our internal game dynamics visualizer (with the most up to date dynamics) through your account. Download the SCVNGR app for iPhone& Android (if you haven’t already) and start playing. Find places where these game dynamics exist or places where you could implement them by building on the game layer using our tools, or others.

1. Achievement

Definition: A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. These are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.

Example: a badge, a level, a reward, points, really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.

2. Appointment Dynamic

Definition: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dyanmics.

Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.

3. Avoidance

Definition: The act of inducing player behavior not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.

Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.

4. Behavioral Contrast

Definition: The theory defining how behavior can shift greatly based on changed expectations.

Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can’t access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)

5. Behavioral Momentum

Definition: The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.

Example: From Jesse Schell’s awesome Dice talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn’t spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”

6. Blissful Productivity

Definition: The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimized as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours / week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.

7. Cascading Information Theory

Definition: The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.

Example: showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.

8. Chain Schedules

Definition: the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.

Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.

9. Communal Discovery

Definition: The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.

Example: DARPA balloon challenge, the cottage industries that appear around McDonalds monopoly to find “Boardwalk”

10. Companion Gaming

Definition: Games that can be played across multiple platforms

Example: Games that be played on iphone, facebook, xbox with completely seamless cross platform gameplay.

11. Contingency

Definition: The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: 10 orcs block your path

12. Countdown

Definition: The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.

Example: Bejeweled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels

13. Cross Situational Leader-boards

Definition: This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an “equal” opportunity to win.

Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can’t pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.

14. Disincentives

Definition: a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioral shift

Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps

15. Endless Games

Definition: Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.

Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content)

16. Envy

Definition: The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.

Example: my friend has this item and I want it!

17. Epic Meaning

Definition: players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk where she discusses Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.

18. Extinction

Definition: Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioral momentum.

Example: killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up

19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.

Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared

20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.

Example: kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge

21. Free Lunch

Definition: A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.

Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it for cheap. There is no sketchiness b/c you recognize work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.

22. Fun Once, Fun Always

Definition: The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.

Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.

23. Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: wait N minutes, collect rent

24. Lottery

Definition: A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.

Example: many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.

25. Loyalty

Definition: The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.

Example: fealty in WOW, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favorite customers)

26. Meta Game

Definition: a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total gameplaying audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.

Example: hidden questions / achievements within world of warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests

27. Micro Leader-boards

Definition: The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.

Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetizer

28. Modifiers

Definition: An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.

Example: A X2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.

29. Moral Hazard of Game Play

Definition: The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.

Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth b/c it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”

30. Ownership

Definition: The act of controlling something, having it be *your* property.

Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.

31. Pride

Definition: the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment

Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.

32. Privacy

Definition: The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won’t take an action because I don’t want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).

Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).

33. Progression Dynamic

Definition: a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.

Example: a progress bar, leveling up from paladin level 1 to paladin level 60

34. Ratio Reward Schedules

Definition: Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: kill 10 orcs, get a power up.

35. Real-time v. Delayed Mechanics

Definition: Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.

Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed causes ambiguity which can incent more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.

36. Reinforcer

Definition: The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.

37. Response

Definition: The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs

38. Reward Schedules

Definition: the timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.

Example: getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville

39. Rolling Physical Goods

Definition: A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.

Example: top scorer deals, mayor deals

40. Shell Game

Definition: a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.

Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling

41. Social Fabric of Games

Definition: the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.

Example: From Jane McGonicgal’s TED talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.

42. Status

Definition: The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.

Example: white paladin level 20 in WOW.

43. Urgent Optimism

Definition: Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s TED talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.

44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.

Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realizing that.

45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is acheived.

Example: kill something like 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge

46. Viral Game Mechanics

Definition: A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people)

Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in

47. Virtual Items

Definition: Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.

Example: Gowalla’s items, Facebook gifts, badges

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How Honda Succeeded in the United States

How Honda Succeeded in the United States | Blog | design mind
http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/how-honda-succeeded-in-the-united-states.html

The success of the Super Cubs eventually translated into success with larger bikes, and Honda went from no presence at all in the U.S. market in 1959 to 63% of the entire market . In the process they took a hatchet to the import market, dropping the share of British bikes from 49% in 1959 (when Honda started in the US) to 9% by 1973. By 1980, British bikes’ sales were less than 2.5 million, down from a high of over 35 million less than ten years earlier.

What is striking about the story of Honda entering the US motorbike market is the lack of planning ahead of time. As Kawashima recalled, “In truth, we had no strategy other than the idea of seeing if we could sell something in the United States”.

It’s easy in hindsight to look at Honda’s growth in the motorbike market (and its subsequent expansion into cars in the 1970’s) as a carefully planned strategy that inexorably built market share based on low-cost products which undercut incumbents. In fact, this was much the conclusion reached by the Boston Consulting Group when hired by a group of British motorbike manufacturers to find out why their US marketshare was cratering. But BCG was forced to look at the events retroactively and as so often happens when seeing events from a distance the messy richness of the details gets lost, along with it much of the truth. BCG applied standard strategy consulting models and smoothed out the dynamism of the story to turn it into an orderly decision-making process on the part of Honda.

In fact, there was no grand plan at all. If they had doggedly pursued their initial course of pushing the larger bikes with Buddha-moustache handlebars, as directed by Mr. Honda, things could just as easily have turned sour and today Honda would be just a footnote in automotive history. Honda’s open and entrepreneurial approach is a perfect example of what Gary Hamel calls “lucky foresight”, arguing that new business concepts are always combinations of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need.

Richard Pascale argues that Japanese companies approach strategy in a fundamentally less dogmatic way than their American counterparts:

"Their success, as any Japanese automotive executive will readily agree, did not result from a bold insight by a few big brains at the top. On the contrary, success was achieved by senior managers humble enough not to take their initial strategic positions too seriously… The Japanese don't use the term "strategy" to describe a crisp business definition or competitive master plan. They think more in terms of "strategic accommodation," or "adaptive persistence," underscoring their belief that corporate direction evolves from an incremental adjustment to unfolding events."

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UX Week / Nicole Lazzaro / Play Workshop

Nicole Lazzaro: Play Workshop

Exercise: tap, clap, snap, snap. Say game, sport, or toy. Next word that starts with last letter of previous word. On snap.

Exercise: Quest blindfolded up to fourth floor to identify fruit of the day. Engenders feelings of trust from perfect stranger. 10 minutes. Eg. Passengers on a bus who go through an accident together... Instant community. I know more about a person from an hour of play than a lifetime of conversation. --Plato

Social token... The Mango. Something that is symbolic in nature but embodies a bigger experience. "ack the shrimp". We're laughing and you're not. Further engenders social bonding.

As a game designer, you don't create emotions directly. You create features and events that mediated the emotions.

Exercise: Pacman
Features (verb) ==> Emotions

Exercise: Emotion words on people's backs. Guess what word you have. Lessen inhibition. Embarrass ourselves. Pressure.

Common ground, agreed on principles, ideas. Game can't happen without this framing.

Miller's Magic Number (from cog sci): 7 (Seven)
Memory: Remember what came first (primacy), what comes last (recency). Things in the middle fall out.
Bigger list? Chunk into groups of 5

Best selling games tend to have 3 out of 4 of these emotions: hard fun, easy fun, serious fun, people fun.

Second life: can do lots of easy fun, but not enough structure (hard fun)

Design for non-games: Design for leveling up (may not be explicit). At most 7 (-2) choices at a time. Revealing over time. Accommodate different levels of users. Users still facing a challenge: how do I master sorting my grocery list?

Fun to master things
Fun to accomplish, show up your skill. Boss monster (hard fun). Once you finish the boss monster and you level up, we drop the challenge level and you're back to easy fun (exploring). Heightens sense of mastery.

Power-up: temporary change in gameplay. Move them emotionally, embedded reward. Completely changes the game!

Diner Dash: stockbroker opens greasy spoon. Waitressing game.

Levels: longterm goals broken up into achievable steps.

Hard Fun & Tilt Factor
Increase the number of players by keeping the game mechanics simple, mobile, and frictionless.
Temptation is to add features and take advantage of friends, spam friends to max installs and create illusion of social capital.
Winning mechanic should reward depth, not play to edges (fringe)-- people who don't play

Viral Distribution
What you're doing with the game mechanics requires invitation of people in my network to participate.
Discover
Sample - try, free to play, free layer
Play
Invite friends
Convert friends (2-10% will convert to paying customers)
Retain

Easy fun
The joy of figuring it out
#1 reason people start games is because they're bored.
So easy, so rote = boredom

Huffington Post: badge to grow the population. Community badge (earned by flagging as inappropriate that the official moderator agrees with; percentage correct). Badge to get community to self police. Make sure badge really encourages the behavior you want... Can't game the system. Leveling up: after you reach the level 2 badge, you can police the level gardeners. WikiGardening

Easy fun
Imagination Creates Curiosity
Balance btw Expected and Unexpected.
Too predictable (disinterest). Too novel (disbelief).
Choices
Explore, experiment, fool around, role play, ambiguity, detail, fantasy, stepping stones, uniqueness
Enable fun failure states. Will Wright does this with SIMs (blowing up the nuclear reactor). Encourages discovery by removing fear of bad consequences.

Easy fun gameplay for everybody
Offer small simple and appealing gameplay with drop dead simple participation
- single concept
- simple mechanic
Appealing & easy participation: Zombies


Barbie, GI Joe (lack of detail) - allows you to impose more of yourself, your imagination

Serious Fun
Completion
Badging - social fun, easy fun
Repetition & Rhythm - Tap Tap Revolution

People Fun
Separate players, decrease the emotion. If playing in different room, less connection.
Share doesn't equal spam. Offer features that foster social emotions to weave social bonds btw players.
People fun have more emotions than the other 3 keys combined.
Create shared experiences, not eyeballs.
Make part of game making/maintaining friends
Game is the message passed between friends

ARG Alternate Reality Game

Friendship =/ capital money =/ facts

Web 2.0: It takes 2 people.

3 Laws of Social Play for social games:
Friends / Messages / Actions
Connect: it takes 2 people
Feedback: draw circles back, not one-way lines
Social Tokens: symbolic in nature that increases with value with use. Requires open meaning. Amusement (just about us, btwn us, private joke). Social Grooming (keeping in touch, periodic refreshes to maintaining that friendship). Admiration and Ranking (you get it when 50 of your friends deem you worthy -- social mechanic, social gameplay. I can't buy my own harness, but you can get me one.). Reciprocity (pleasure & pride in someone you helped succeeding).

Social emotions drive viral distribution. Metcalf's Law: the value of a network increases with the number of nodes

*** In social media, the relationship is the message. *** Riff off McLuhan
Gratitude, reciprocity, trust, embarrassment, "cool" is a social emotion

Stepping into a game. Step into this circle of magic. Suspend normal rules: can just thrash you're friend. Causes you to focus: your whole brain in one place.


Sent from my iPad

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UX Week / Nicole Lazzaro / Why the Future of UX is Play

Nicole Lazzaro, founder XEODesign, Inc
Why the Future of UX is Play: The 4 Keys to Fun, Emotion, & User Engagement

Pdf of 4 Keys to Fun: Xeodesign.com/uxweek
Slideshare.com/nicolelazzaro
Nlazzaro@xeodesign.com
@nicolelazzaro @nicolelazzaro, play experience designer
"I make games more fun"
Worked on Myst Series, take clients to next level of play
Undergrad degree in cog sci at Stanford: how people think, how to get people to tell their story (documentary film), how to program a computer

Worked on Tilt: first iPhone accelerometer game

How to use emotion to do your job of IX better.
For too long IX has focused on serious metrics
Emotions help people learn.

How will we pay in 2020? What kinds of experiences would people want to have?
Unlock the potential of 6B people and improve the quality of life through play?

What's missing? Cognition is only 1/2 the story. Emotion is silent partner to choice.

Experience design: 2 wheels on a bike
Ux usability
Player experience: emotion

Emotion helps us
Focus
Remember
Decide
Perform
Learn

Hard fun
Easy fun - exploration, imagination
Serious fun - meaning and value
People fun - social interaction "it's easy to tell what games my husband likes the most... I hate it, I hate it, I hate it"
He likes hard fun. Challenge. Clear obstacle, overcome with practice over time. Personal triumph over adversity. If at the very moment they want to throw the controller out the window, they succeed.

Danger of points: be careful what people chase. Can unbalance the game.

Mint: simplify the world. Amplify the feedback. Mastery.

Work is hard fun. Frustration ==> Accomplishment

Adding curves add more fun (racetrack): novelty, offers, moments of interaction that enliven the user experience.
Novelty vs expected.

Easy fun. Inspires and refreshes. Grabs attention and stimulates us. Brings your attention just here. Keeps you from running right by. Pure sense of interaction: tilting, shaking.
Increase curiosity.
Mystery egg in Farmville.
Google logo: promotes curiosity: I need to know what happened on lost this weekend. Inspires imagination.

Game. Simplify the rules. Amplify the feedback. Minimize the consequences.

Serious fun. DanceDanceRevolution to work out. Give motivation to Serious fun = Swiffer (bejeweled) Aspire and acquire. Apple iphone UI = bejeweled board. Enhance the sense of progress. Clear vacuum cleaner. I'm getting my work done. HHD defragment.

Reward = money?
Positive message?
Learning about environment?

What is the reward at 5 min? 15 min? 30 min?

People fun. Social bonding. Excuse to interact with friends. Mango. You had to have been there: social token. Something that increases in value with interaction. Gestures have a social-emotional profile. Petting my iPhone makes me happy.

Octorina: create sense of wonder and connection

Cute characters change the perception of play.

Wii: game designers design the emotional space between people and the game. Laughter. Breaks through the cognitive, increase connection.

Social emotions drive viral spread: social bonds.

Games = motivation systems. Innovate faster than productivity apps. Not user, but player (role play, ui to enhance role-play). Interaction design sends emotional message. Social emotions drive all of Web 2.0.

Player experience design. What's the interaction to create the emotion?

My vision of 2020: Everyone goes to work with the expectation of play.

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How Honda Succeeded in the United States | Blog | design mind

Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck

UX Week / Jeffrey Veen / How the Web Works

Jeffrey Veen, How the Web Works

Jeffrey Zeen, cofounder TypeKit
Cofounder Adaptive Path, core = web

If we understand how the web works....

Frederick Tudor storage:
Business model opportunity: getting ice in the summertime for a cold lemonade 200 years ago
Harvesting of ice from

Dr John Gorrie
Hypothesis: Humidity causes disease Invented mechanical refrigeration for tropics

GE
Refrigerators

None of the providers made the transition!

Gold Rush
Federal Express and Wells Fargo cut the roads: beginning of pony express
Telegraph = Victorian Internet
Moved to ebanking by telegraph

Napster + MP3 + Internet = iPod
Waves of structural change
Disruptive Ice. Health
Gold. Communication


The qualities that contribute tooth success of the web is what makes us successful as well.
"Native to the Web"

Rough Consensus: Directional, even if details in question.
Running code - if you can touch it, people can understand it.

TypeKit - mocked up on Photoshop to make it feel "real"

"If you're not embarrassed when you ship you're product, you've waited too long."
Reid Hoffman

The velocity and responsiveness to your users will set the tone on the user experience. Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration. Rough consensus. Get to running code as soon as possible.

Information wants to be free.

Web. This is where information and our memories will be stored. We have an obligation to protect the Web.

I love the web and I've dedicated my whole career to it. I hope you do too. Because there's still so much of it to the Web.

@Veen: the web is fundamentally different from anything & ppl creating for it have responsibility of protecting it #uxweek (via @OvaWorks)


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UX Week / Wellings & Gray / Turning a developer-driven organization into a UX company

Paula Wellings & Cameron Gray (Adaptive Path)
People don't want features- turning a developer-driven organization into a UX company

Designer - very interested in how and why people do things
Like puzzles - people puzzles
Inflection points - sensitive period for change

The team
Design strategist

The plan
Grok the situation
Understand the existing product
Generate a shared vision - concept workshop
Design

5 critical moves
1) There are no quick wins (wizards & contextual help, visual design). Change the organization. People with new jobs. Time. A year.
2) Everybody plays. How to avoid too many cooks in the kitchen. Leverage knowledge of the organization. List all the known needs. Identify the ones I really must meet. I need to know I'm really connecting with my customers and that that there're getting. Gather every good idea. Everybody can prioritize.
People want to be part of their future.
3) Tools to think with. Differentiate and clarify the competitive landscape. Represent customers so they are the focus of the decision-making. Principles that put customers first. The system is the face of the trainer.

Empower people to focus by saying no. Simplicity. Tools to push aside VP's pet project.

4) Encourage fishing. Change your thinking. Change your vocabulary.

"Pizzability." Whole company would get together over pizza to watch usability sessions. Test with real users. Submit an idea. Community questions and answers.

Agile team that releases something every 4 weeks.


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UX Week / Adam Mosseri / Data Informed Design, Not Data-Driven Design

Adam Mosseri - product designer, Facebook mossier@facebook.com
Data Informed Design (Not Data-Driven)

Adam: 2 years at Facebook

Who makes the decisions: small teams

Structure of core team - how FB works
Product designers: product strategy, ix design, visual design
Researchers
Engineers
Product manager- also responsibility for quality of the product, mini CEOs

Record 4 terabytes a day
Data helps us understand how users use the product, how to improve

Photo uploading story: 200m? uploaded a day, largest photo site on the web

How we use data - Use data to optimize a workflow
Hypothesis generation
Hypothesis evaluation

*** Waterfall analysis ***
Of users who try, only 87% reach steady state
57 52 up,oaf
4% successful

85% only selected one photo

How we use data - Sanity check

How we use data - Evaluate designs

Healthy skepticism of being overly data driven:
Very difficult for any set of measures to fully capture what you think is important

Attempts at quantifying engagement
Raw reads and writes - but not all writes are created equal
85% of writes generated by 20% of users. If we optimize for heavy users, sub optimizes light users

Overreacting to data can lead to micro-optimizations. (but missing the whole)
Optimizing for a local maximum, but missing a bigger structural change. Miss disruptive opportunities.
Dangers of chasing local maximum

Why we're wary of data: Real innovation invariably involves disruption.
The greatest risk is taking no risk

Group with 20,000 members: I automatically hate the new Facebook homepage

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UX Week / Andrew Crow / In-house design teams

Andrew Crow, Adaptive Path
In-house design teams: the sole of your organization, Zappos case study

In-house design teams are our users
But they face challenges ( politics, unclear definitions,

3 things that challenge in-house teams and keep them from doing best work
- don't have the resources to do what management is asking us to do
- don't have the skills to do the things we're asked to do
- you're going to tell my boss the same thing we've been trying to tell them for months but for some reason they'll believe you.

Zappos core values:
Deliver Wow through service
Embrace & drive change
Create fun and a little weirdness
Pursue growth and learning
Do more with less

1) Time. And realistic priorities.
What's important for the end user?
What's important for the business?

Design has a seat at the table in project planning
I'm going to need this this and this. And I'm going to need this and this from you to be effective.

Executive support: our sword & shield. We need it. Otherwise we will fail. Pull them onboard.

2) Skills. Training & hiring.

3) Credibility. Credibility comes from trust which is based on positive experiences that stem from opportunities to show value.

Find something in your office that doesn't have a good user experience and fix it. And leave a little note, "This fix brought to you by the user experience team."

Know your audience.

Build ***complete*** experiences.
Web plus One.

Continually look for opportunities to showcase value by taking on projects outside your space, cross training others


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UX Week Keynote / BJ Fogg / Persuasion & Behavioral Change

BJ Fogg keynote@UXWeek
Stanford professor
Persuasion & Behavioral Change

What changes behavior?
- Epiphany
- Changes in context
- Babysteps

Realities of human behavior
Mistake: design for the ideal context, for the ideal human
1. We're lazy
2. We're pack animals
3. We're creatures of habit

The Information-Action Fallacy (IAF)
Information doesn't equal action!
We're not rational creatures!

The Attitude-Behavior Fallacy (ABF) If you change attitude, you can change behavior
Persuasion equals changes in attitude? No, it's behavioral change!

Fun, Social, Easy!
If you want to create something that works, follow something that's already working.
Something humans have been doing for thousands of years

Not all behavioral changes are the same

What causes behavior?
- Trigger, call to action, prompt - new: now through social media, through more than one friend
*** Put "Hot Triggers" in the path of motivated people! ***
if you're not doing this, your product will fail!
Technology can do this!
"Hot trigger" - something I can take action on right now
Email, Twitter, Groupon, Mint

The most effective persuasion doesn't feel like persuasion at all.
I just want to get from point A to point B, help me!
But we go to Facebook or Twitter to get triggered (distracted, amused)

What's the role of motivation?
Not as big as most people think!
Good news: humans are (fairly) predictable. Most humans are mostly the same. Context is different.

Core Motivators
Pleasure and Pain (sensation)
Hope and Fear
Acceptance/Rejection (Belonging)

Ability - More important than motivation, people need to be able to do it
If it's not working, make it easier!

Motivation

B=MAT
Behavioir = Motivation + Attitude + Trigger
All three need to happen at the same moment

B=TAM
Start with Trigger
Then Ability
Motivation last

In behavioral change, ability matters more than motivation.

Behavior Grid .org
Green behaviors - New: Try me. Overcome concern. Conversion, one time.
Blue behavior- Familiar
Purple behavior - intensify
Gray - do less
Black - stop doing it

What daily habits do you need in your customers?
Leverage paths customers already have.

Behavioral Wizard - online tool
behaviorwizard.org

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Visualized: world's most trafficked websites and their favicons -- Engadget

Gamestorming!

Blog to keep track of:
http://www.gogamestorm.com/

Think back to the last time you played a game. What was the game? Why did you choose to play? Was it a simple game like tic-tac-toe, or something more complex, like Monopoly, Scrabble or Chess? Or maybe it was a game of basketball? Did you play with friends? With family? Try to recapture the feeling you had as you played the game. How did it feel? Would you like to have more of that feeling at work?

Games come naturally to human beings. Playing a game is a way of exploring the world, a form of structured play, a natural learning activity that’s deeply tied to growth. Games can be fun and entertaining, but games can have practical benefits too.

This blog is about knowledge games: games designed to help you get more innovative, creative results in your work. We’ll show you not only how to play knowledge games but how to design them so they fit your own specific work goals.

O’Reilly press release for Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers.

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An implausibly illustrated introduction to HTML5 Web Workers

My secret project, Leonardo Sketch, is go! http

Tweet by joshmarinacci

Feature: integrated creative commons Flickr search

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How to Incorporate Badges Into Your Website

Android's pursuit of the biggest losers

This is the kind of super thoughtful, insightful post that makes me realize we won't miss newspapers: http://goo.gl/D2Jy (on mobile)

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Apps vs. the Web

Designing iPhone apps - what you need to know. Apps vs. the Web, by @chockenberry . http://j.mp/a6lCmW (via @zeldman)

http://m.alistapart.com/articles/apps-vs-the-web/

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Third-Party Email Sign-Up Done Right 08/17/2010


I'm not a fan of partner and third-party emails. It's not that I don't believe they can be effective; it's just that most marketers go about it all wrong. Many marketers:

 

  •       Don't ask, they assume.
  •        Don't provide options.
  •        Don't make the sign-up process clear.
  •        Don't set expectations.

     

    I have some good news. I recently opted in to receive emails from CafePress after purchasing a T-shirt on their site. After hitting submit, I was redirected to this landing page [click image to enlarge]:

    Cafe Press

    Right out of the gate, I love it. Thinking about what most marketers do wrong, CafePress got nearly all of it "right."


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    LukeW | Touch-based App Design for Toddlers

    homemade by jill: alphabet flashcards

    Don't believe in the power of Powerpoint?  Check out what HomemadeByJill can do:

    http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2010/08/alphabet-flashcards.html

    "I made the cards in Powerpoint using the cutest clip art I could find, and a few simple images I made myself (like the balloon and  kite).

    "There are two cards for each letter (I wanted to capture all the long/short, hard/soft letter sounds), so I plan to put the matching letter cards back to back, have them laminated, and loop them on a metal ring.  I think I'll make flashcards for colors and numbers as well.

    "If you'd like a copy, click here to download the pdf."

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    Come, email our printer

    Yay, ePrint and ePrintCenter on CNet Austalia. #WorkedOnThis


    HP ePrint

    Sent from iPhone

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    The post Hurd HP opportunity

    Why I still work at HP... and still want to *believe*.

    Former CTO Antonio Rodriguez (someone I have gut busting admiration for) captures the spirit so well in his blog.

    Long live the HP Culture of Bill and Dave as the shiny soul of the company.


    "The results of my efforts on that front are the subject for another post; here I'm just going to talk about the two types of executives I met during my two years there.

    "The first represented the Bill & Dave world: they believed that everyone in the company had to constantly evaluate their own "contribution" to HP, put their head down, and make a difference. Most had Bill & Dave stories of their own, whether it was driving either of the founders to the airport when they were busy visiting one of the company's outposts in Colorado or Idaho, or sitting through a review where Hewlett would encourage a feat of engineering prowess or Packard would explode about "not being able to make a dime" on some engineering breakthrough.

    "The second had been teleported in from the central casting departments of other big tech companies that Hurd respected. They used terms like "value add," and "thinking ahead a few chess moves," relished the abstract concept "competitive advantage" and attached totemic reverie to the "P&L reviews" even when it was clear that this was an exercise in cargo cult management. They were also often quite a bit more concerned about managing their "brands" in the face of their SVP, EVP, and eventually Hurd reviews.

    "I spent most of my time with my fellow HP executives telling the first kind of folks that the transplants weren't playing the same game as them— that no matter how much it sounded like they were trying to achieve the same goals, there were other motives at work."

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    Design for the Loss of Control!


    “Enterprises currently expend considerable resources trying to impose control on a situation that increasingly appears like it not only can’t be controlled, but almost certainly doesn’t need to be.”

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    Open vs. Closed Innovation: How Much Evil Is Just Right? - DavidRogers.biz


    "One of our liveliest discussions was on the subject of open vs. closed models of innovation. We examined the contrasting approaches of Google vs. Apple."

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    David Packard" “More organizations die of indigestion than starvation” - Bob Sutton

    Reading this, I feel proud I joined in '96 when these guys were alive.


    I have blogged about it before, but it is a good time to revisit David Packard's wisdom.  His quote in the title is wonderful. The worst managers and companies often seem to be doing too many things, making things too complicated for insiders and outsiders, and suffering from scattered attention rather than a sharp focus on what matters most.  If you think about Apple, a big part of their brilliance is how few things they do -- they have a remarkably small product line for such a big company, for example.

    I especially love Dave's 11 Simple Rules, which he first presented at a company meeting in 1958 but are just as valid now as they were then.  Here are the first five:

    1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be "a breeze." 


    2. Build up the other person's sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along with him. 

    3. Respect the other man's personality rights.Respect as something sacred the other fellow's right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.

    4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical "phony" who stoops to it. 

    5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.

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    Young people: A phone is for talking?

    Reminds me of my Masters Thesis at Stanford back in '99.  Feels like an Ron ago.


    TEXTING GENERATION DOESN'T SHARE BOOMERS' TASTE FOR TALK

    urban-teenagers-texting.jpegAccording to research byNielsen, nearly all age groups are spending less time talking on the phone, reports The Washington Post.

    quotemarksright.jpg Boomers in their mid-50s and early 60s are the only ones still talking.

    The fall of the call is driven by 18- to 34-year-olds, whose average monthly voice minutes have plunged from about 1,200 to 900 in the past two years, according to research by Nielsen.

    Texting among 18- to 24-year-olds has more than doubled in the same period, from an average of 600 messages a month two years ago to more than 1,400 texts a month, according to Nielsen.

    Young people say they avoid voice calls because the immediacy of a phone call strips them of the control that they have over the arguably less-intimate pleasures of texting, e-mailing, Facebooking or tweeting. They even complain that phone calls are by their nature impolite, more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving text.quotesmarksleft.jpg

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    Customer reviews help both doctors and patients

    Useful tool for bringing the "whole customer experience" to light?


    Social media meets health care
    Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent / Aug 9, 2010

    A. Patients stick to things they think they are qualified to evaluate. I think doctors don’t recognize the whole patient experience, but patients do: whether the parking was accessible and whether the receptionist was polite and whether they got into the room and sat for 45 minutes or whether they were seen promptly and were able to communicate with the doctor in a way that was pleasing to them. It is notable we saw very few reviews saying they got the wrong diagnosis, or surgery was bad.

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    Mobile-friendly: The mobile web optimization guide

    A force of nature?

    It's easy to see why people wish to make their sites mobile friendly; Gartner research suggests that by 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. And don't forget other visits from devices such as games consoles like Nintendo Wii, DSi, web-enabled TVs, in-car browsers and the like.

    Many customers are already using mobile devices as their main method of Web access, particularly in emerging markets — theJuly 2009 Statistical Report on Internet Development in Chinastates that the proportion of [people] accessing the Internet by mobile increased enormously from 39.5% in late 2008 to 46% in June 2009, while the proportion of using desktops and laptops decreased. That translates to 150 million people. In the developed world, many have a mobile device as their secondary method of accessing the Web while they’re out and about.

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    Don’t Be Ugly By Accident! « OkTrends

    Brilliant example of datamining ambient (pre-existing) datasets.  What else can we learn by deploying correlation searches in the deluge of data that's floating invisibly around us?


    If you're anything like me, you usually think of your pics in terms of content: Here's me smiling. Here's me looking tough. Here's me in Hawaii with that wacky turtle. And so on. Today, however, we'll analyze photography from a numerical angle—we'll discuss flash, focus, and aperture instead. We feel like people don't really think about these things when they choose a profile photo, and yet, as we shall see, their misuse can seriously mess you up.

    As always, our data comes from dating siteOkCupid, one of the largest, and most interesting, datasets on the web. This article aggregates 11.4 million opinions on what makes a great photo.

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    Beautiful "Evites" from @iizLiz

    http://www.paperlesspost.com - online invites that look high-end/ classy. Makes evite look "ghetto"

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    LukeW | Fast and Real

    A good reminder for us...


    Real

    Real refers to using realistic data and environments to design. Get your hands on as much actual data as you can. The more real data you consider while designing, the better you'll be able to define the right product experience.

    Real data is not Lorem Ipsum. That just fills space and results in layouts based on "wishful thinking" instead of reality. Designing without real content/data is art at best. Decoration at worst.

    Real data also gets you to a scalable designs.

    The other part of real is environment: realistic context. Get into the actual code your product will run in as fast as possible. Look at your designs on the actual device you are targeting. Get out to where your product will actually be used.


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    The $75 Google Android Apple iPad Tablet, Sort Of - Gady Epstein - Beijing Dispatch - Forbes

    It's coming!  These Chinese low-cost Android devices may not be ready for primetime yet, but if history is any guide they will be.  It all depends on how quickly/effectively Google is able to perfect its free, open-source Android UI, so design-driven companies like HTC and Motorola no longer enjoy competitive advantage from dropping custom UI shells on top of Android to make it usable or attractive.  

    Google's hiring of WebOS head Mathias is indication they're pointed in the right direction.  Google would like nothing more than Google-powered Android/Chrome devices to be everywhere, as ubiquitous sockets for its real business of monetizing off web services.

    For today's big name tech HW companies, the big question is how valuable their brand names and entrenched marketing/distribution arms are -- in the wake of no name, low cost upstarts.  I've been wrong before, and history also shows HP and Dell laoptops/netbooks dominating in ways that are antithetical to my hypothesis.   

    An excerpt:

    "Apple has yet to roll out the iPad in China, and Google’s business plan hit a rough patch here this year, but Chinese masterinnovators

     imitators in the innovation knock-off hotbed of Shenzhen are racing ahead to give consumers what they want: iPad-look-sorta-like tablets that support Google’s Android operating system, at prices starting below $75.

    "It’s the best of all worlds! Unless you want everything a real iPad or real Android device like the new Dell Streak really has to offer, and you want to pay for it. Or, you know, an HP tablet that runs on Microsoft Windows, if you’re into that. Why do that when you can get an ePad or a FlyPad via Taobao, the popular online marketplace? A quick search finds this Android-supporting iPad ePad starting as low as 554 RMB, or $82. Why pay nearly 10 times that much for an iPad, the company asks, when you can get this made-in-China product, with “Chinese characteristics,” instead? And another seller openly admits their product is a “shanzhai” (rough translation: pirated) iPad,selling for as low as 520 RMB, or $77."


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    The End of Outsourcing (As We Know It)

    Interesting... A technology lifecycle / Web 2.0 model for human labor?  Where new-fangled web companies have the natural competitive advantage?  

    An excerpt:

    "In the next five years outsourcing as we know it will disappear. The legion of Indian service providers will be sidelined or absorbed. U.S. and European companies that pioneered this corner of the high tech industry will suffer similar fates if they don't wake up. Who will emerge as the new leaders? Google (GOOG) and Amazon.com (AMZN), brands that we associate with search and retail, will become better known for outsourcing.

    "Ludicrous? Not if you follow this industry. Desktop computers yielded to laptops. Web portals AOL (AOL), MSN (MSFT), and Yahoo! (YHOO) are giving way to social media sites FacebookTwitter, and LinkedIn. Software once distributed by disk is now available as apps over the Web—often for less than the cost of a slice of pizza. And so it goes. The same Darwinian process is creating a fresh ecosystem in outsourcing, one that will usher in an era of consolidation and a new way of working with clients."

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