Situated Research's Blog

These days, everyone is struggling to catch up on digital marketing.  In the rush, too much of the thinking is often left to impressive young web developers who seem to know a lot about all of the new technologies however they lack experience in functionality.

Your business on the web is far too important to leave to a bunch of techie people.  In their quest to show off their dazzling skills, the web developers often forget that your digital strategy needs to fit into overall strategy.  The result is usually wasted money and missed opportunities.

Here are a few simple rules that will help you get the most out of your web development and digital strategy. Read more »

2010 appears to be a breakthrough year for gaming technologies.  In case you haven’t heard, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and many others in the gaming industry have just announced their latest releases at this year’s E3 Expo in Los Angeles. The E3 press conferences revealed trends toward motion-based game controllers, 3D technologies, controller-less gaming, and an array of retro game titles that are back on the scene. Read more »

(CNN) — Goodbye computer mouse, keyboard and monitor.

Say hello to a new, simpler era of human-computer interaction — this time, with no clunky hardware standing between you and digital information.

In this new world, there are options aplenty. Read more »

Matthew Sharritt, President of Situated Research, has an article titled “Designing Game Affordances to Promote Learning and Engagement” appearing in a special issue of the Cognitive Technology Journal. The issue, focusing on “Games for Good”, contains our article (starting on p. 43). Read more »

When Glenn Harrington donned a motion capture suit complete with more than 40 reflective spheres he wasn’t being turned into the latest video game character, but helping to design car manufacturing jobs that are less physically stressful on workers. Read more »

Rockstar Games was nice enough to send us a copy of Red Dead Redemption to try out. After spending time playing the game, we recommend grabbing a copy. Read more »

If Mario was first designed in 2010, he’d probably have to adopt some of our modern trends. Using eight images, game designer Zack Hiwiller shows us what Super Mario Bros. might look like, if it was made with modern sensibilities:

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TR10 mobile 3-D: Digital Depth synthesizes 3-D scenes from existing 2-D video for smart phones. Read more »

A critique of a common method used in video game usability research

Many video game usability practitioners employ a method to test usability within video games, called the ‘RITE’ method, short for Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE). Pioneered at Microsoft Games Studios and Microsoft Research, the RITE method has been adopted by many usability research organizations besides the teams at Microsoft.

While the RITE method has some advantages, such as the ‘rapid iterative’ ability to suggest changes to designers and test them in successive passes, it may fall short when looking for usability issues that lie beneath the surface. Read more »

You might think making games is all about putting 40 percent awesome in a box, throwing in a pinch of zazz and calling it a SKU, but that’s not true. Games, you may have noticed, are all around us, all the time.

In the video below, Carnegie Mellon professor and ex-imagineer Jesse Schell lays out a vision of the future in which our lives become, essentially, one big RPG.

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The future of the Web is everywhere. The future of the Web is not at your desk. It’s not necessarily in your pocket, either. It’s everywhere. With each new technological innovation, we continue to become more and more immersed in the Web, connecting the ever-growing layer of information in the virtual world to the real one around us. But rather than get starry-eyed with utopian wonder about this bright future ahead, we should soberly anticipate the massive amount of planning and design work it will require of designers, developers and others.

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My iPhone-savvy 2½ year-old daughter held an iPad for the very first time last night, and it turned out to be an interesting user-interface experiment. Read more »

How the machines will come out and meet us in 2015

The user interface is big business right now. In truth, it always was, but it’s taken the mass popularisation of the iPhone to bring it the public agenda. Until then, a good interface was one which you didn’t notice. If no one mentioned it, then it was doing its job. It was allowing the user to perform the task they’re looking to do with minimal fuss, but when the famous talky tablet turned up, it brought with it something that would change this principle for consumers everywhere – a touchscreen. Read more »

Sid Meier is known as the mastermind behind some of the most respected and influential video games of all time, such as Civilization, Railroad Tycoon and Pirates.

But in his pursuit of conveying a realistic experience for players, he says his logical mind wasn’t taking into account enough what was going on in players’ heads.

“Gameplay is a psychological experience,” Meier acknowledged during his GDC keynote. Today he is director of creative development at Firaxis Games. “By acknowledging that gameplay is actually a psychological experience we … can end up with a better game.”

Meier outlined specific psychological elements that occur in players’ minds, such as “The Winner Paradox.” Game designers are supposed to give gamers a challenge, but the gamer at the same time expects to win. “In the real world you don’t always win, however in the world of games, you always win” in some capacity, Meier said. Read more »

Tapping on arm allows users to scroll through menus and select options

Touchscreens may be popular both in science fiction and real life as the symbol of next-gen technology, but an innovation called Skinput suggests the true interface of the future might be us.

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University unveiled Skinput recently, showing how it can turn your own body into a touchscreen interface. Read more »