[comp.cog-eng] Evaluating the 'entertainment' value of a piece of software?

thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Thom Gillespie) (04/28/89)

I've been doing some small experiments on using print and hypertext systems and
I've noticed a factor I haven't seen addressed anywhere. Software or Interfaces
have a certain 'entertainment' value which makes them seem more useful or
pleasurable to users. I'd like to figure out a method for evaluating this
factor and I wondered if anyone has any ideas how to go about it short of 
chi square tests on user surveys or focus groups.

I don't think that you can say that it is pure utility which drives the success
of a piece of software. For example, my kids are always asking me if what I am
doing on the Mac is a game. They never ask me if what I am doing on the IBM is
a game. To them that is work. This might be a silly question but do software
devlopers look at 2 similar products and figure out which is more fun? Or do
they just run out of money?

Just some thoughts.

Thom Gillespie

shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) (05/06/89)

+-- thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie) writes:
| [...] I've noticed a factor I haven't seen addressed anywhere.
| Software or Interfaces
| have a certain 'entertainment' value which makes them seem more useful or
| pleasurable to users.

Ted Nelson coined a term for this -- "fantics."  I quote:

	By "fantics" I mean the art and science of getting ideas across,
	both emotionally and cognitively.  "Presentation" could be a 
	general word for it.  The character of what gets across is always
	dual: both the explicit structures, and feelings that go with them.
	These two aspects, exactness and connotation, are an inseperable
	whole; what is conveyed generally has both.
	...
	 ... technically-oriented people who think that systems to interact
	with people, or teach, or bring up information, cna function on
	some technical basis -- with no tie-ins with human feelings,
	phychology, or the larger social structure -- are kidding themselves
	and/or everyone else.  Systems for "teaching by computer,"
	"information retrieval," and so on, have to be governed in their
	design by larger principles than most of these people are willing
	to deal with: the conveyance of images, impressions and ideas.
	That is what writers and editors, movie-makers and lecturers,
	radio announcers and layout people and advertising people are 
	concerned with; and unfortunately computer people tend not to
	understand it for beans.

Of course, he's not talking about any of us.  :-)

(From Computer Lib/Dream Machines, by Ted Nelson.)
-- 
		Stuart Ferguson		(shf@well.UUCP)
		Action by HAVOC