THE INSPIRATION
A couple of years ago, we came across Windows of New York by Jose Guizar. Check him out HERE. The illustrations just completely blew us away. It is an on going project wherein Jose illustrates a new window from anywhere in New York every week. The sheer details captured in such an innovative yet routine sight enraptured us. The designers in us just couldn’t keep away. We wanted to do something that was similar to it.
Shut the Window comes out on April 5, 2018 for iOS and Mac App Stores
THE CONCEPT
Fast forward a few months, I was reading about human biases that people are not generally aware of and came across this concept known as ‘Variable Reinforcement’. A response or action is called reinforced response if it generates a reward i.e., a person will be motivated to repeat a response if he or she gets a reward for the same. That’s the well-known theory of motivation. However, when a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of tries, it generates a high and steady rate of response. Which means, when you receive the reward with irregular or unpredictable frequency, your behavior is reinforced even more strongly.
Shutting the window gives you the reward of furthering the game.
You see we had decided that instead of following random games, each game of ours would have a psychological aspect to it. An underlying principle, if you might. And we thought why not combine this with something like the windows of New York. This is more experiment than game. We just want to know how people will respond to this. Think of it as a grand social experiment of sorts. Shutting the window gives you the reward of furthering the game. And the various different windows opening gives you the randomness. Also each window has varying difficulty levels. Rewards keep varying that way.
So this is our take and part homage to Jose Guizar.
SHUT THE WINDOW: FRUSTRATINGLY FUN
Based on real life windows of Amsterdam. Each window is made with great care and love
Based on the windows of Amsterdam, there are 10 beautifully illustrated designs that you interact with. Each one is made with such care. Each one has so much detail. They are taken from the historic buildings in Amsterdam and each one bears testimony to it. We hope you fall in love with them. We will dive deep into each of them from our next blog.
Till then don’t forget to Pre-order Shut the Window on iOS and Mac, it comes out on April 5, 2018. Pre ordering ensures that the app automatically downloads onto your device on April 5.
