Ding & Dent - The 10 Principles of Design, Applied to Boardgames

The Goonhammer group is made up of dozens of multi-talented authors, many of which have other projects outside of the site. In addition to his work here, Raf Cordero has his own podcast, Ding and Dent, which is not owned by nor affiliated with Goonhammer, but is still very cool and good all the same.

In the 1970s, Industrial Designer Dieter Rams sat down and laid out his 10 Principles of Good Design. It was a response to a world that had become “An impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” His 10 Principles have guided product design for decades since. In this episode of Ding & Dent Raf & Charlie kick off a series that will examine how these principles apply to boardgames. They apply them to games-as-art and also games-as-products to see which games succeed and fail. This episode covers Principles 1-4:

1. Good Design is Innovative
2. Good Design makes a product Useful
3. Good Design is Aesthetic
4. Good Design is Understandable

Before that, Charlie talks about King's Dilemma and Detective: City of Angels, while Raf goes into 9th Edition's new Narrative Mode and talks Undaunted:Normandy (previously reviewed here on Boardhammer).

Freestylin' - 2:30 The King's Dilemma - 10:40 Warhammer 40k 9th Edition - 22:35 Detective: City of Angels - 42:00 Undaunted: Normandy - 57:35 Dieter Rams' 10 Principles - 68:20