Playful Design

Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they're siblings that grew up in different houses. They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design. This book will show you how.

John Ferrara has worked as a user experience practitioner since 1999 and began designing video games in 2001. His nutrition education game Fitter Critters was a top prizewinner in the 2010 Apps for Healthy Kids contest sponsored by Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign, and it is currently being tested in public elementary schools. In 2011 he co-founded Megazoid Games, which focuses on creating mobile, social, and educational player experiences.

John works as an information architect at Vanguard and has done significant work in the past for Unisys and GE. He holds a BA in Communication Arts from Hofstra University and an MA in Communication Studies from West Chester University. He gets really excited about things like search algorithms, human evolution, artificial intelligence, and independent films of the 1990s. He freely admits that he probably plays too many video games, but swears up and down that he's got it under control and can stop at any time. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his beautiful wife and superhero daughter.