View Roger’s presentation slides
On Friday, March 17, designer and board game enthusiast Roger Ngim introduced Yale designers to the world of modern strategy board games in his talk, “Designing Interaction: What We Can Learn From Modern Board Games.”
Roger’s presentation began with an overview of the fascinating and rapidly expanding world of modern strategy board games, which has its origins in Germany. Roger has been collecting and playing hobby board games for more than 25 years, shared a photo of his collection of almost 1,000 games.
For designers, board games offer examples of imaginative visual design integrated with functional cues that communicate complex rules and relationships. Because many of these games are sold internationally, designers have developed wordless systems of icons, symbols, avatars, and diagrams that give cards and other game components their properties and “special powers.” As designers, we can learn from these examples and use similar approaches to enhance instructional materials, signage, or anything that shapes or directs human behavior.
Roger has taught courses in games and play at the University of California San Diego, and has lectured and written about games. Roger is an associate director of Internal Communications at Yale and a co-founder of the Yale Design Community of Practice.