iPhone and Wii

No, I didn’t buy an iPhone. But I got my hands on one over the weekend and played around with it for a few minutes. First impression. Wow. It’s fun just to navigate around with your finger and spin your contacts up and down. Great interaction. And it looks fantastic. The word on the street is this completely changes everything. And I agree.

(Read Daring Fireball’s complete review.)

I also finally got to play with the Wii this weekend. My first game of boxing was a bit awkward. I got KO’d by some girl I didn’t know and was out of breath at the end. I played a couple more games and found that the interaction for that was great as well. I felt like the knowledge and skills of the real-life sports could be translated and applied to the virtual game. The games weren’t difficult to learn because my body was the controller.

I watched some folks create Miis, and I think there is definitely more potential for visual representations of self that interact in virtual environments. I suppose Second Life is like this, but not quite as accessible to the masses. Perhaps too much so linked to being on a computer. The folks creating Miis seemed to be having the allusive fun that designers strive for. They weren’t just creating avatars of themselves, but extending and exploring what they could be.

How do you design products and services that do that?


Comments

One response to “iPhone and Wii”

  1. Sounds like a good thesis paper topic to me…