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100 Most Influential Women in Technology
~ Fast Company Magazine "How
The iPhone Accelerometer Game Tilt Taps
Into User's Emotions"
The
Wonder Woman ~ Fast Company Magazine "How
The iPhone Accelerometer Game Tilt Taps
Into User's Emotions"
“It
would be impossible to overestimate the
extent to which Nicole Lazzaro's research
has contributed to a better understanding
of play in the context of videogames.” -
Chris Bateman, author of 21st
Century Game Design |
Nicole Lazzaro, the founder (in
1992) and President of XEODesign, Inc., has twenty
years expertise in Player Experience Design (PXD)
for mass-market entertainment products. Widely recognized
as one of the top women working in video games and
a pioneering, leading figure in mobile and social games, Fast
Company considers Nicole one of the 100
most influential women in high tech, and
Gamasutra voted her one of the Top
20 women working in video games. Nicole
has spoken at the US State Department, and has been cited by Wired, Fast Company, ABC News,
CNN, CNET, The Hollywood Reporter, and Red Herring. She
has improved over 100 million player experiences
and has worked with EA, Ubisoft, D.I.C.E., Lucas
Arts, Disney, PlayFirst, The Cartoon Network, and
Nickelodeon on such popular franchises as three of
the Myst series, Diner Dash, Fusion Fall, Mavis Beacon
Teaches Typing, Jeopardy Online, as well as creativity
coaching for the designers of The Sims.
Nicole was the first person to
use facial expressions to measure player experiences
and has done ground breaking research on the relationship
of emotion to games: 4k2f.com
Published in 2004 her research
discovered that people’s favorite player experiences
(PX) generate strong emotions to create engagement. Called
the Four
Keys to Fun, Nicole found that best selling
games offer at least three of four play styles: the
Hard Fun from challenge and mastery, Easy Fun from
exploration and role play, Serious Fun for relaxation
and real work, and People Fun from the excuse to
hang out with friends. The Four Keys to Fun framework
for how games create engagement with emotion has
inspired hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide
to craft more emotions from play including world
famous authors such as Raph Koster, Jesse Schell,
Tom Chatfield, and Jane McGonigal. With the Four
Keys to Fun developers access player's emotional
response to innovate early in the development cycle
where there is much less risk.
Nicole has an undergraduate degree
in Psychology from Stanford University where
she also studied film making and computer programming.
Find out more about Nicole's research
in chapters she has written for the following
books:
1. Beyond
Game Design: Nine Steps Toward Creating Better
Videogames, (2009). Editor Chris Bateman
2. Game
Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (2008). Editors Isbister
K. & Schaffer, N.
3. Beyond
Barbie® and
Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming
(2008). Editors Kafai,Y., Heeter, C., Denner, J.,
Sun, J.,
4. The
Human-Computer Interaction Handbook,
2nd Edition by Jacko and Sears 2nd Edition (2007).
Editors Jako, J. & Sears,
“If you care about Interaction
Design, you should own this book. Exhaustive coverage
by world authorities. … one book that covers
the gamut. Highly recommended, highly practical.”
— Don Norman, Northwestern University and the
Nielsen Norman group, Author of “Emotional
Design” and “The Design of Everyday Things”
“Comprehensive and thorough coverage of all
the important issues related to user interfaces and
usability. A useful reference work for anybody in
the field…”
— Jakob Nielsen, Author, “Designing Web
Usability: The Practice of Simplicity” and “Prioritizing
Web Usability”
Free white papers on emotion and
games are here: http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames
An avid photographer, Nicole enjoys
sharing her unique perspective on Flickr.
Contact Nicole here: nlazz at xeodesign
dot com
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