Interactive Design in Digital Entertainment

Fabrice Florin
fab@sirius.com

Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University February 9, 2001

How do you design interactive entertainment for a broad audience? What are useful guidelines for creating fun, lively experiences on personal computers, the web and other digital platforms? How does social interaction fit in these media-rich environments? How can designers grow this medium? In this talk, we will review empirical lessons from three different interactive designs: an annotated movie, a party game and a creative expression tool. We will present an evolutionary design approach, based on multiple iterations and frequent user feedback, as a practical methodology for discovering what works best in this new medium.

Over the last 20 years, Fabrice Florin has developed a wide range of leading-edge products for TV, multimedia and the Internet. As VP of online entertainment for Macromedia, he led the creative development of shockwave.com, a popular web site featuring a broad mix of games, cartoons, music and greeting cards. As head of independent developer Zenda Studio, he created online environments and multiplayer games for Compaq, Disney, Electronic Arts and Sony. A founding member of Apple's Multimedia Lab, Fabrice pioneered new uses of multimedia, developing widely acclaimed CD-ROM titles and interactive TV applications. Prior to that, he ran Videowest Productions, creating a new genre of music video programming on ABC and MTV.

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