LeftoverPi

It's ok if it's ugly, the teacher is going to force the students to use it, so all I need to do is make sure that the learning outcomes are there.

All these things might be true, but none of them are a good reason to ignore aesthetics in the design of educational software.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not advocating "swinging the pendulum the other way", and claiming that aesthetics are the only important thing or the most important thing. But the very first time that the potential user sees it, it might well be the most important thing. If you don't have something interesting to back up the pretty icon or splash screen, they will be gone in a couple of minutes. But if you don't have an interesting icon or splash screen, there's a good chance they will never come.

Now, you might be in the

It's ok if it's ugly, the teacher is going to force the students to use it, so all I need to do is make sure that the learning outcomes are there.

camp that I mentioned earlier. I understand that, living in the society we do, that could be considered a reasonable position. That doesn't stop it from making me sick.

My fervent hope is that the future of education will leave ideas like that on the dung heap where they belong. So part of the reason that I believe that aesthetics matter is that I believe that freedom matters. We should write our software so that a child free to use any software will still be interested in ours. If children are to be free, and also to learn, it follows that we must make good software that they want to use. And the bootstrap step seems to me to be pretty tied up with good aesthetics. They aren't going to be drawn in by the thought that maybe that plain-looking icon on the desktop will lead them to understand algebra.

The icon should be intriguing. The splash screen should be intriguing. And the play should start out interesting and keep getting more interesting.

And how do I know all this? Massive parallel computation, actually. By thousands of commercial game software developers, all trying to create the next great video game success.

What do they have that educational software developers typically don't? A non-captive audience. Computer games are, more or less by definition, things kids choose to do in their free time. If the game isn't good no one buys it and the company doesn't make money.

It costs these companies money to create aesthetically pleasing designs. Do you think they spend money for fun? I don't. I think that the practice of paying attention to aesthetics came from the crucible of the free market. If you want kids to choose to play your games, you need to make them aesthetically pleasing.

There are a lot of other things that matter--a game should be easy at first and get harder, it should build on the knowledge you gained in your previous play, etc. But if no one ever gets interested in the first place, you won't need to worry about holding their attention.

If you go to the effort of making something really great, don't disrespect it by leaving it in an ugly wrapper. Make the outside as good as the inside. Give it the presentation it deserves.

Because in this game, looks matter.

Many of the ideas described above were refined and/or generated in discussions with my brother, an instructional designer with a particular interest in aesthetics. So if anything up there seems kind of off-kilter, that's probably due to his influence. :)