Great design analysis of Angry Birds
This just got passed around the office: a UX design analysis of Angry Birds, touching on mental models of mechanics, feedback response times, short-term memory management, the importance of mystery (almost exactly equivalent to what I called “delight” in my book), the audio design, and the visuals and branding.
It’s like a little master-class wrapped up into a blog post, and a potent reminder that designers in other fields are perfectly capable of doing much of what we do — indeed, are often more expert in some areas. It behooves game designers to go learn the lessons outsiders can teach us.
In most commercial software interfaces, response time management is completely overlooked even by those who claim to be UI design experts. The developers of Angry Birds managed response time in a way that goes far beyond simply “faster is better”.
For example, in Angry Birds, it was possible for the programmers to have made the flight of the birds fast – very fast, but they didn’t. Instead they programmed the flight of the angry flock to be leisure pace as they arc across the sky heading for the pigs’ glass houses. This slowed response time, combined with a carefully crafted trajectory trace (the flight path of the bird), solves one huge problem for all user interfaces – error correction. The vast majority of software user interfaces have no consideration for how users can be taught by experience with the system to improve their performance. This problem is a vast and complex issue for screen-based trading systems where error correction is not only essential, but also career threatening.
via Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: a cognitive teardown of the user experience.
7 Responses to “Great design analysis of Angry Birds”
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I love deep analysis like this. Thank you for linking to it. 🙂
I like that section about response time management. I want to forward it to every MMO designer contemplating an arcade-style combat system. Silly rabble, twitch is for tweens.
Maybe this is more aimed at UI designers, because I find few useful insights from a game designer standpoint.
For example: managing response time. Sure, and Doom could have had 100% hitscan weapons. And Peggle, Scorched Earth, and Worms could instantly calculate the result. But nobody actually thinks that’s a good idea! That’s why game developers have already been doing this right for decades.
And don’t even get me started about the claim that your game should be “simple yet engaging.”
I did like the mention of mystery, however. Mystery and surprise are often forgotten in game designs, to the game’s serious detriment.
It will be interesting to see how the carefully balanced aspects of the app translate into the physical game the Mattel is producing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzFUV4yb4RE&feature=player_embedded
@Yukon,
I like that section about response time management. I want to forward it to every MMO designer contemplating an arcade-style combat system. Silly rabble, twitch is for tweens.
Much as I hate twitch, I really, really need to point out that a lot of us MMO players are tweens. 😛
Forgive me, Michael. ‘Twas the lure of alliteration lead me astray. “Twitch is for kids” is the better construction.
I can accept that a lot of MMO players are tweens. I’m somewhere ‘tween puberty and retirement myself.
Skimmed through the analysis and I agree, it was pretty good, though I ignore the birds in line so I am not quite sure about the memory aspect. I also find the controls annoying. (So I wouldn’t personally buy it.)
On visuals: I sometimes wonder how much the icon and title in appstore affect sales. I think a lot. “Angry Birds” makes your curious, why are they angry? I think one aspect of Angry Birds is sinful empathy. I feel sorry for the birds, and guilty for sending them off to die for nothing. That makes watching them crash kinda funny (“Oh no, did I really do that?”)