Your Interface Seems Familiar

This article from UX Matters — entitled “How Zelda Paved the Way for Zynga” — puts into words something I’ve noticed but not yet named. Designers, marketers, and software/game/app companies are (consciously or unconsiously) tapping into a shared memory of early 8-bit video games to make their own work instantly familiar, and likable. It’s kind of a long article, so I’ll excerpt the pay-off here: “We all have a rich history of interaction with technology… It is the lens through which we view every interaction we have with technology… Our ability to recognize these influences opens the door to… inspiring positive emotions in the people who use our products and eliciting an immediate understanding of their interaction models.”