A fun usability article from the IBM developerWorks site: “Everything I need to know about usability, I learned at the arcade”.
By necessity, repetitive tasks are streamlined in games. This isn’t always true for productivity software; with the latter, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether a particular common task will be convenient at all. Game designers try to avoid designs that will result in players complaining of pain after a couple hours of play; designers of productivity software don’t seem to consider this at all.
It’s a good point – people are more willing to walk away from games which are hard to use, so there’s more pressure to get it right. [via RRE]