On the Floor

You might remember the first time you were dropped into the 8-bit world of Super Mario Brothers. Limited colours, unfamiliar mechanics, threatening turtles. With a little bit of work, you figured it out - how to interact with the world and find out that the princess was, indeed, in another castle.

 

At some point, you bumped the underside of a question block and discovered that some considerate individual had placed coins everywhere. That coin looked like this: a collection of orangey-yellow pixels. How did you know it was a coin? It made a proper coin sound effect, with animation reminiscent of a coin spinning. It had enough coin-ness to be convincing, even though a real coin looks nothing like this.

 

That blob of pixels was presented, and accepted, as a coin because it built an idea in the mind of players - a picture that looked more like this - the golden coin archetype.

 

How does this tie into design? A large part of what designers think about is user experience. Before pen is put to paper or mouse to Photoshop document, there's planning: how best to communicate the ideas that our clients want to present.