Today, while websurfing, I find a cute post calling for playfulness in user interfaces. It reminded me of playfulness for productivity.
While my son was visiting, we taught each other a lot. He taught me how to play StarCraft, and I taught him how to research on the web. I was shocked how error-prone most web sites, even well-reputed ones like Google, are. It was, for example, frustrating to lose the maps address because he clicked just half an inch outside the maps address text field, instead going to the Google Maps home page. (And no not the URL address bar or the Google search bar... but the maps text field. In StarCraft, I had no such problems or costly user interface mistakes.) Similar woes plagued us in Windows Explorer. It got me thinking: would a utilitarian app like Windows Explorer be more usable if explicitly mimicked a game model of UI? Could Al Yang's (hypo)thesis (of a Desktop RTS) be a boon to productivity by making stronger metaphorical models and cleaning up the widget clutter? Vista makes steps in this direction (five to ten years behind Mac OS), but I mean radical changes. Not physical simulations, but explicit game UI to the file interface, Civilization-style file management, a Professor Layton curiosity for troubleshooting error messages.
On reflection, I'm sure this has been tried before... does the idea ring a bell?