co-founderSecret Lab.
Jon Manning is a co-founder of Secret Lab, where he makes games and does research. He has an actual PhD about jerks on the internet, has written about a dozen technical books for O’Reilly Media, and wrote two games for ABC’s Play School and one for Qantas. He’s currently working on Button Squid, a top-down puzzler for iOS, and is fond of making cool tools for rad devs.
You can find her at home in Auckland, New Zealand with her husband and daughter.
Books
The Kerbal Player’s Guide: The Easiest Way to Launch a Space Program
Mobile Game Development with Unity: Build Once, Deploy Anywhere
Learning Swift: Building Apps for OS X and iOS
iOS Swift Game Development Cookbook: Simple Solutions for Game Development Problems
Swift Development with Cocoa: Developing for the Mac and iOS App Stores
iPhone and iPad Game Development For Dummies
Learning Cocoa with Objective-C: Developing for the Mac and iOS App Stores
Recent Articles
NBN helps Secret Lab’s apps see the light of day
Paris Buttfield-Addison & Jon Manning win Tasmanian Pearcey Award
9 41 9 42: The secret of Apple’s recurring numbers
Videos
YOW! Connected 2015 Patrick Buttfield-Addison & Jon Manning – Watch This Face
YOW! Connected 2015 – Jon Manning & Paris Buttfield-Addison – How Do I Game Design?
Talks I've Given
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Science vs Art & Data vs Behaviour in Pricing
Featuring Jon Manning
If you are a pricing professional looking to incorporate data analytics into your strategy or deciding which school of thought you fall into, this is the episode you do not want to miss out on.
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How Do I Game Design? Design Games, Understand People!
Featuring Jon Manning
In this session, you’ll learn about game design: the art and science of constructing enjoyable, engaging games. We aren’t doing any coding, and we’re not talking game engine development – instead, we’ll be taking a deep dive into game design theory, using it to...
engineering -
How Do I Game Design? Design Games, Understand People!
Featuring Jon Manning
In this session, you’ll learn about game design: the art and science of constructing enjoyable, engaging games. We aren’t doing any coding, and we’re not talking game engine development – instead, we’ll be taking a deep dive into game design theory, using it to...
architecture-&-design -
Building Containerised Microservices with Swift
Featuring Jon Manning
There’s nothing better than containerizing things. Everybody loves microservices. Brand new programming languages are the new hotness.
In this session, we’ll combine all three: we’ll explore the use of Swift for the construction of microservices, which we’ll containerize...
iot -
How Do I Game Design? Design Games, Understand People!
Featuring Jon Manning
In this session, you’ll learn about game design: the art and science of constructing enjoyable, engaging games. We aren’t doing any coding, and we’re not talking game engine development – instead, we’ll be taking a deep dive into game design theory, using it to...
general-mobile-development -
Watch This Face: Designing the Same App on Multiple Wearable Platforms
Featuring Jon Manning
On the face of it, Android Wear and the Apple Watch are very similar: they’re both wristwatches, they’re both closely tied to your phone, and the tech media are unaccountably excited about both of them. But how do their differences affect you as a developer? This session explores what...
general-mobile-development -
How to build games for children
Featuring Jon Manning
In this session, I will summarise what we think makes a good children’s app from both a design and a technical perspective, with examples from our own work and others. Attendees will come away with a set of solid dos and don’ts for building mobile games for children.
What gestures are...
iot -
Building iOS apps for IoT devices: a case study of the Holiday by MooresCloud
Featuring Jon Manning
Connected devices that support ‘hackable’ software development are becoming increasingly common: the Lifx, the Holiday by MooresCloud, Philips Hue, and so on.
This talk will explore the development of a number of iOS apps built for the Holiday by MooresCloud, including a device...
iot