This post was originally shared on Adobe XD’s INSPIRE, who were kind enough to ask me to blog for themlast week. You can find many a great post from those in the user experience and design fields there. Please check it out.

We at Big Spaceship are always looking to incorporate new perspectives that will inform our thinking in projects, helping us shape insights that ultimately lead to ideas and execution. As we roll into 2010, there are a few disciplines we’ve been dipping our collective toes into that I think will have a big impact on the way we approach the experiences we design.

Of those disciplines, behavioral economics and game mechanics are the two areas I’m particularly excited to learn more about this year. In this post, the plan is to give a brief rundown of each, talk about why they’re interesting and highlight a few starting points for anyone interested. I’m also hoping this post will trigger some discussion and surface more resources to learn about, or other areas of knowledge that intersect with user insights and experience design.

The idea we’ve probably been most excited about, and thus spent a considerable time exploring already, are the principles of behavioral economics. Behavioral economics focuses on understanding the many factors that influence the decisions people make, both consciously and subconsciously.

Let’s see if I can apply a behavioral economics principle to a timely example. Google Buzz takes advantage of the notion (talked about in the fantastic book, Nudge) that most people accept defaults.By making the “public” option the default one, behavioral economics suggests that few people will make an active decision to change it. Google (probably) knows this, and thus the user’s decision to passively accept the default Google has selected makes posts available to everyone (at least once their Google profile is properly populated with personal info).

The principle of good defaults is one example of how we can apply behavioral economics to everyday design decisions. Uncovering how and why people make the decisions they do can help us develop better solutions to the problems they face.

There are a number of great books to look into, if interested. Nudge, by Thaler and Sunstein, is probably the most notable at the moment. Next up (for me, at least) is Herd, which discusses how changes are triggered in mass behavior. Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely, is another on my reading list.

The other area we’ve been spending time learning and thinking about is game design and mechanics. Perhaps it’s our obsession with Four Square’s ability to motivate us into giving up our location details for badges, or the addictive and sharable interactions within Farmville. These are the experiences that inspire us to talk about “play”. Game mechanics provide the rules and parameters game players rely upon for interaction within the game. You’ve found the right mix of rules and freedom when the experience you’ve created is fun for people to play. We’re hoping to extend these principles and thinking beyond gaming to create experiences users are excited to be a part of.

Luckily, we have Jim Babb, who is doing his Masters in game design at the New School, on staff to point us in the right direction. The first book is called Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. It serves as the bible for game mechanics. A Casual Revolution, by Jesper Juul describes the transition from hardcore games to casual games.

Happy reading!