A few months back I revisited a favorite game of mine — Portal. Portal is an extension of Valve’s Half-Life series. In it, the player controls the protagonist from a first person perspective (you know, a first person shooter…). You begin your adventure locked in a cell in some kind of testing environment/laboratory. After being released from the cell, you’re directed through a series of increasingly complex puzzle situations in which your goal is to progress through one test chamber and move to the next. Here’s where the “portal” comes in. The solutions to these puzzles require the use of a portal gun, which creates two interconnected portal ends. Here’s Wikipedia’s description of this interesting tool:

The portals create a visual and physical connection between two different locations in three-dimensional space. Neither end is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through one portal will exit through the other.

In the image above you can see how looking into the orange portal results in looking out of the blue portal. Check out the images at the end of the post to see more examples. You can also play a web-based 2D version here to get an idea of how portals work.

Anyway, you should definitely go get the Orange Box and play Portal. But, I’m not writing this just to give a game recommendation. There’s a lesson that, as a UX designer, I want to learn from Portal.

Painless Acclimation

In spite of the little to no practical experience I have with inter-spatial teleportation, by about five minutes into the game I had become proficient at it. While I’d like to credit my own cleverness and adaptability, in reality it was the skillful job Valve did of acclimating me to the rules and conventions of Portal that turned me into a capable and competent player.

Valve is known as much for its great storytelling as it is for its gameplay, and they go to great efforts to keep the experience seamless and immersive at all times. To that end, Portal’s training system is built right into the storyline of the game. The sophisticated use of progressive disclosure (i.e. only showing the player what they need to know to accomplish a discrete task) combined with in-game symbols and occasional vocal instruction, transforms players from novices to experts in a way that is so integrated with the game that the transition is hardly noticeable.

Players put their skills to use as they move from one test chamber to another, and finally, in a plot twist, the player breaks out of the testing environment and escapes from the facility. The in-game training culminates with the player putting it to use to counter the system in which is was acquired.

What About Commercial Software?

If game-based software can provide in-product training in such an integrated way, why can’t commercial, tool-based software? Why do I have to pop in an Adobe DVD and struggle to follow along as I attempt to mimic what the guy in the video is doing? Why is the help menu so worthless? Why are training and tutorials from 3rd party sites so much better than the ones from the software producer?

To some degree there’s a difference between video game and software development in that video game producers deliberately seek to challenge and confound users (to an extent) with their products, while it’s just an unfortunate byproduct of most software. And, while games keep you on a predetermined “path to victory,” the best software eventually gets out of your way and is used to do things that the developers may not have even thought of (Valve gives us a picture of this in Portal when the player escapes from the testing facility).

I don’t believe those differences should stop software developers from exploring more effective and integrated training solutions. I know this is not an easy thing to do. At KA+A, we know through experience that the training and help components of software are difficult to manage. But it’s time to stop neglecting them and treating them as an afterthought. This is one of those situations where a longview will reveal benefits for both software makers and users.

The Takeaway

No post would be complete without some bullet points, so I’ll close with a list of software training ideas I believe we can learn from Portal:

• Integrate training directly into the application
• Provide users with some “quick wins” that build confidence and create a sense of accomplishment
• Don’t treat users like they’re stupid – keep this in mind when facilitating “quick wins”
• Disclose tools and techniques in a way that prevents sensory overload – i.e. progressive disclosure
• Look for unique places to include tips and help – but don’t get in the user’s way
• Facilitate discovery – make it possible for users to learn on their own
• Make it easy for the user to get your training out of the way when they’re ready to “escape”

Strategically placed portals result in a view of oneself from a perspective completely independent of their actual position in space.

An example of the in-game symbols that serve as instructions for players.

Eventually the tests become more complex and challenging.