The wonderful world of tools made by small teams, solo-devs, and shareware (weird, beautiful, and experimental things to be creative in + an analysis on building for approachability) – The Candybox Blog
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February 15, 2020
Games tools
Since starting development on the Electric Zine Maker I’ve been hoarding links to interesting, unusual, strange, small, or just cute tools.
This has grown to be a strong area of interest as I’ve been diving into what even makes a tool approachable… How much experimental UI or humor is too much? Do people even want tools that are goofy? What else is out there from creators making small and interesting tools that solve a variety of creative problems?
Before I begin, you should definitely go check out Galaxy Kate’s work on Casual Creators. She has done A LOT of work in this field, and should be considered a go-to resource for this. I haven’t dug into everything from her, but that’s seriously the best place to start.
When I was already well into development of the Electric Zine Maker someone pointed me to this document from her, and it was 100%. Especially the segment where she talks about the "blank canvas" issue (in which people have a hard time with being presented with something "empty").
These are all things that I find myself tackling while building a tool that I’m trying to make as approachable and fun as possible, AND while still maintaining its experimental qualities (without chasing people away because it’s "too weird").
All that said, designing an art tool that breaks away from our standard ideal of what an art tool should be (software that surrounds maximizing productivity and output), and going in the direction of it being different, with different intentions, can present you with a lot of interesting problems to solve.
It’s so much like designing a game, especially if you view what you’re making as an "art toy"… I don’t know why we keep the two apart when we talk about them. A lot of the design challenges between the two are similar.
My own exploration of this space has leaned heavily into trying to understand what made old edutainment software so special to people. When we talk about tools that are different, many of these examples come up. For example, Kid Pix keeps being mentioned when describing the Electric Zine Maker.
I don’t think it’s so much about nostalgia. I think a lot of this has to do with…
1) The tools were fun, goofy, lighthearted environments.
2) They were simple. The things done in them were kept simple. This made the creative environment less overwhelming, and more approachable.
3) The lack of professional "polish" to these tools made it less intimidating to make things in. If the tool looks "amateurish" then it’s OK to be amateurish in it too! (this is probably the controversial point tho)
Consider older creativity focused edutainment software that we so fondly look back on… In my UI post I mentioned a few examples, but here are a couple more that I think are interesting to pick apart for the...