Adrienne's Inventions: Electric Business Cards

Idea:
At conventions there are large amounts of people going to large amounts of booths collecting information and leaving their own.  It would all be so much easier if everyone was issued a digital business card that you could just tap at the booth.  You would be able to give them your contact information if you wish, without writing it all out.  They could send you information automatically.  This would eliminate the piles of papers and brochures, saving trees, money and energy.  The interface could be something very user friendly where you type in your ID or log in at the end of or during the conference to access all the brochures/flyers you requested.  You could then star your favorites or mark them for follow up and even comment along with other convention participants or make connections with people so you could meet in person while the convention is still going on.  The people at the booths could create some interesting or interactive online brochures.  The cards could also serve as networking devices by tapping each other to swap contact information with people you are chatting with.  No more messy piles of business cards.  All the contact information could be instantly put into personal databases where they could be pulled into places like your e-mail contacts list (in a specific convention contacts list) or into things like LinkedIn.  RFID technology could work well in this case.   The largest difficulty would be ensuring information privacy and that it was only exchanged at will.

Why We Play Games - Nicole Lazzaro

Annotated Bibilography
In the article, Why We Play Games, the author points out four areas that they believe are important to emotion in game play. These are Hard Fun,  the opportunity to overcome a challenge. Easy Fun, an adventure or something that can hold attention in an enjoyable way. Altered States, the feeling that people get from playing games including distraction from other thoughts and positive sensations. Also The People Factor, is an element that allows for interaction and camaraderie or shared experiences in game play.

My Thoughts
In games, people aren't afraid to fail, in fact they welcome some amount of failure.  In learning it seems that failure can quickly turn people away from the activity.  I wonder if it has something to do with the set up of expectations.  Perhaps in learning failure should be set up as part of the process as opposed to a negative thing.  I have had teachers who encourage failure because it means that a student is trying new things and on the path to finding the right answer.  It seemed much more productive than punishing a failure.  I wonder if there are any studies on encouraged mistakes or positive association with failure in learning.
With games, I've encountered many kids and the study mentions it as well.  There are people who like to just watch other people playing games.  I wonder what is behind that and whether we could take advantage of this for education.  One study showed that out of two people completing an educational language software the one watching learned more than the one playing the game.

Digital Acting By George Maestri 2001

Annotated Bibliography
 In this article, the author talks about creating characters that evoke empathy.  This means that an animator, no matter their medium, needs to be able to understand some of the principles of acting.  Creating empathy for a character can draw an audience in.  One principle that Maestri discussed was the idea of giving a character purpose for every movement.  The purpose can be focused on an object or an idea, but when character's lose focus that's when performances become muddy.

My Thoughts
Can this link back to the article on emotion and design?  Can you create empathy through a design concept?  It seems like some of these principles could sort of cross over.  Everything in an interaction should have a purpose and it's much better to be clear and have an objective for each element in a design.
This seems a bit cut and dry.  The example of the dog looking at the bowl or looking at the cat, seems too cartoonish.  The author says the dog would just be staring into space if he were at 50% focus on each, but it just seems cheap to have the character looking one way then the other.  I don't think people's focus is really always 100% on things and I think that can be played out on screen by a skilled actor or artist and it would make the performance more nuanced.

Interactive Advertising

I saw this advertisement for scrubbing bubbles, but I thought it did an exceptional job of teaching and providing interaction.  If your mouse moved across the ad, the scrubber followed and 'washed away' some of the grime.  It invites you to interact by having you unknowingly complete something at first, then because this is different than a typical ad you are compelled to try again to see if your mouse is really controlling the scrubber.  When you see that it is, those among us who are the least bit OCD will try to clean off the whole thing.  When you realize that the corners won't get clean you feel mild frustration, echoed by the ad copy that appears.  "What about the corners?" Yeah, what about them?  Apparently scrubbing bubbles will clean them for you.  This seemed like a particularly good example because it engages the user, then brings them to a point of mild conflict which focuses attention on a particular point.  Then, the interaction provides the soloution or resolution to that conflict.  It really makes it stick in your mind.  Using this type of scenario for general educational applications could also work well.