How many lives do you have and where is the #$% phone.

Posted by Gregg on February 14, 2008 in Entertaining Me is Easy |

So I was trying to put my 4 year old to bed when he asked to play ninja/alien/robot. A game where we shot invisible lasers at each other from all appendages and attacking each other with fake swords, all the while blocking with fake shields. Well after a while Noah unleashed a stunning invisible laser blast to my head and I collapsed to the floor. I laid there a minute before Noah sprung from his bed, stooped down and informed me, ‘Daddy, you still have two lives left.’ I thought, one you have been playing entirely too much Atari classics, and two that is probably a common thought among many a child and adult alike.

game over

Thanks to Pacman, DigDug, and many 8/16/32/etc creations we are stuck with the idea of 3 lives to accomplish our goals. But that only holds true for the geeky kids who played video games, every one else is stuck with the thought that we have one measly life.

On a similar note I was reading a classic board book to my daughter called ‘Goodnight Moon’. Throughout the entire telling I ask her to find all the items listed as the bunny says goodnight. All is well untill I ask her to find the telephone. She has no clue where it is. Then I thought, she has never seen a phone that has a cord let alone a rotary dial.

goodnight moon phone

The next edition will have to insert a legend or replace the phone illustration with a blackberry.

So for these two kiddos who have a combined life of 6 years between them we can already see inherent patterns that shape their views and interactions with the world. The just is, if you go out and design a game that has 2 players instead of 3 it will fail miserably. If you design an application interface that instructs the user to navigate to a phone with a picture similar to the above expect some frustration and delay when the users of tomorrow are searching your page for a cordless or cell.

Eventually I showed Sophia where the phone was, though at first she did not believe me and I had to endure 2 more invisible laser/sword battles before my son would finally go to sleep.