Skill Atoms and Skill Trees

If you haven’t looked at Daniel Cook‘s presentation from WordCamp 2010, you should:

He talks about new ways of dealing with features. We tend to “simplify, hide, or chop” them up, because our model of how people use products (a pyramid with most users as beginners at the bottom of the pyramid, working up to a small number of users as experts at the top of the pyramid) is wrong. It’s the job of designers, Cook feels, to “pull users towards mastery” instead of simplifying features for the lowest common denominator. How to do that involves game mechanics, namely what he calls skill atoms and skill trees.

Cook’s model for skill atoms looks like this:

A skill atom is a cluster of action and understanding around a single command. “If I do X, Y will happen.” A skill tree is made up of skill atoms. “If I do X, Y will happen and then I can accomplish Z,” where Z is a set of interconnected activities. A skill tree builds upon the mastery of a skill atom, so that learning how the system works is additive and engaging.

I really like this alternative model for thinking about “playing” applications.

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Monday, June 28, 2010, at 11:03 am. Filed under Interaction Design. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.