Putting Emotion into Play for 18 Years

XEODesign is the world's first player experience design (PXD) consulting company and leading experts on emotion and the fun of games. Check out Nicole's Fast Company interview to read how emotions make iPhone games more fun!

XEO (zeo) adjective: The thrilling feeling of discovery.

The Four Keys to Fun

Emotion and the Fun of Games. A thought leader in the art and science of game design XEODesign's trend setting predictive mode, The Four Keys to Fun has inspired hundreds of thousand developers worldwide. A practical approach to creating engagement, XEODesign uses this model in our client work as well as to win best game at iPhoneDevCamp two years in a row.

Paint Your UI with Attention. Hear how emotions drive viral distribution,
Free BayCHI podcast. Download XEODesign's free white papers on emotion and games.

The Four Keys to Fun expanded the vocabulary of games from the naming of fiero, the emotion of "winning" and the holy grail of game design, to identifying over 30 emotions involved in what players liked the most about games (everything from Tetris to Halo). We have also coined terms such as Player Experience design (PXD). By mapping emotions to what players liked most about games the Four Keys to Fun predicted the success of the DS, the Wii, iPhone accelerometer games, and now Social Gaming. With XEODesign's game changing design research developers around the world have put more emotion into their games.

Raising the Bar on iPhone, Mobile, and Social Games

Tilt: An Adventure in 1.5 Dimensions™

Tilt: An Adventure in 1.5 Dimensions™

The Four Keys to Fun continues to evolve. To extend and deepen the conversation around emotion and games XEODesign is launching a series of social games through our sister company XEOPlay. Research conducted during the development of these games identified breakthrough engagement factors that we look forward to sharing with our clients. Follow Nicole Lazzaro's updates on Twitter for the latest news and speaking engagements.

PXD Player Experience Design

Fusion Fail - Cartoon Network

Diner Dash - PlayFirst

Getting at What's Fun. XEODesign reviews and player studies for leading game companies and brands such as Cartoon Network, Sony, EA, Nickelodeon, PlayFirst, Go Pets, Sierra Online, Sega, and Maxis have helped improve over 40 million player experiences. Like two wheels on a bicycle to have fun players must find the peddles (UXD/Usability) and steer through a world full of interesting obstacles and choices (PXD/Player Experience).

Emotions Make Game Experiences Great. We help our clients craft player emotions early in the design process when changes are easiest to make. Whether its a Social Game, iPhone App, or software to increase productivity XEODesign offers Design Reviews, Player Studies, Interface Design, Game Design services, as well as strategic consulting to take your team to the next level of play.

The Art of Innovation

Gestures are Fun!

Fly Pen - LeapFrog

XEO The Feeling of What's Next. The future of computing does not end with a keyboard and a mouse. Back in 1998, 5 years before Sony launched it's Eye Toy, and 10 years before Miscrosoft's Project Natal, XEODesign invented a body grammar for ePlanet's camera games, a division of Paul Allen's Interval Research. Later we helped LeapFrog prototype and improve the audio interface for the Fly Pen , the world's first pen-top computer as well as other novel interface technologies such as character recognition. We field tested and help improve the emotion model for Pleo, Ugobe's robotic dinosaur. More recently we've been helping clients add emotion from social features, which we predicted weeks after YouTube was founded would drive viral distribution and become as common as copy and paste.

XEOPlayShops™

XEOPlayShops unlock creativity

Design Emotions = Viral Distribution

Game On. Market leaders such as Nickelodeon, Cisco, D.I.C.E., and Maxis have reached new creative heights with our seriously fun XEOPlayShops.™ With our series of hands on game and play activities participants accomplish brand and user behavior goals by crafting specific emotions from interaction. Whether it's changing the emotion profile of an iPhone game to match your brand or crafting social emotions to drive its viral distribution on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, XEOPlayShops provide a proven approach to creating emotions with tools and techniques for your team to apply to their current project. Whether you run a game development studio or develop enterprise software, contact us for a private in-house XEOPlayShop to put more emotion and social features into play!

UXD User Experience Design

Simplicity AND Expert Use XEODesign supports both beginning and advance use. For Roxio's Toast we created a user interface that broadened the market for the product by featuring the three most popular project types next to the same drop down menu familiar to experts. Our design supports beginners without adding any clicks for advanced users. Over the course of several years we also worked with Roxio on three versions of the Easy CD Creator suite of products.

User Interfaces and Graphics

Framing Expectations. XEODesign has created numerous award winning user interfaces for games, websites, and consumer software. XEODesign has done everything from localizing all 5 CD's of Riven, the sequel to Myst for three markets in 13 days, to a one screen Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover, to wild and crazy concept pieces to inspire a team's imagination, or a lesson in simplicity such as a two button MMO.

Since 1992, our services have improved over 40 million player experiences and helped industry leaders such as UbiSoft, LeapFrog, Sony Online, Sega, Roxio, and Maxis profit by offering more fun for their customers.

XEODesign, Inc. offers deep and unique expertise in the development of interactive entertainment. We have spent over a decade researching design, usability, and game-playing experiences. With our integrated services, we go the extra mile to help make our clients’ products a success.