Taking a break to get in the flow

One of the most interesting concepts in learning is the idea of "flow," a concept proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe the state of not so challenged that you're frustrated, but not so easy that you're bored. 

When applied to game design, this makes a lot of sense. Tic tac toe is the perfect example on the too easy end of the spectrum; at some moment in time, you realize that you can either win or tie EVERY SINGLE TIME (depending on the relative skill of your opponent). I tried to explain this to my 8 year old a few weeks ago at dinner when she tried to challenge me to a match, and then went on to show her that if she played her first play in a corner or in the center each game, and she made sure to pay attention, she'd never lose. I almost felt bad, ruining tic tac toe for her, but I honestly could not be excited about playing her. It is the game equivalent of absolute boredom for me. 

Opposite for me is any Call of Duty or, more recently, Flappy Bird. Seeing as I can't get past the first or second challenge (in CoD, I have yet to make it past "training"), I give up because my hand-eye coordination is not good enough to make me successful in these games without more effort than I'm willing to invest. In other words, they are too hard and I give up, frustrated. 

What does flow look like for learning? There are metrics we can look to, such as time on task or self-reporting channels like surveys. Research on flow in learning typically relies on experience sampling to gauge engagement. When it comes to flow, it's all about the feeling. So what are those feelings? I like this definition from David Farmer (1999): 

1. Completely involved, focused, concentrating - with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training
2. Sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality
3. Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going
4. Knowing the activity is doable - that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored
5. Sense of serenity - no worries about self, feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego - afterwards feeling of transcending ego in ways not thought possible
6. Timeliness - thoroughly focused on present, don't notice time passing
7. Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces "flow" becomes its own reward

In the end, flow is about optimizing what you're getting out of what you are putting in. When I think about this for learning, it's not just about the feeling, it's about the outcome. I'm in the flow when I am engaged and learning and excited about what I'm doing. I'm feeling proud of my effort and good about myself. I'm having fun. 

The past few months I've been trying to learn a few new things, but the one that has been the most challenging has been learning the ukulele. I hate to admit it. It has been hard for me. Me, voted most musical in my high school graduating class, has been struggling with the ukulele. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, I tell myself. I get frustrated. I am definitely not in the flow. 

This is a small image of my Evelyn Evelyn ukulele
from Amanda Palmer. I love it. I need to play it. 

That's the thing about flow. People tell you to get in it, but HOW do you get in it? When you need to learn something hard, how do you get past the point of frustration to get to appropriately challenged? 

The truth is, you have to practice. You have to persevere. Eventually, things get easier and you get better. But in that point of frustration, you take a risk if you keep pushing. You can start to HATE the thing that is frustrating you. I will tell anyone who asks that I don't like Call of Duty. It's not because it's a bad game (although first-person shooters aren't really my cup of tea). It's because the day that I was trying to learn the controls to make it through the game orientation, I felt pressure. I couldn't do it. I was frustrated, and then I gave up. All of my negative feelings transferred to the game. I know that if I played again, in a less stressful environment, MAYBE I would like it, but I would have to get past my negative feelings towards the game and my previous poor performance. 

It's why people who struggle to read say they don't like to read. 

It's why girls who are told they aren't as good at math don't go into STEM careers. 

It's why women who go into STEM careers have a hard time staying when their work environment is gender biased. 

When we can't get into the flow, it's hard to love something. It's hard to want to do it all the time. We all seek flow. 

So what can you do to get past the frustration? Here are some tips I try:

• Find a patient coach or teacher. Sometimes you just want to feel supported. Don't find someone who wants to do it for you. Find someone who wants to be your cheerleader.
• Walk away for a little while. You may need to take a break before you jump back in. Don't let your negative feelings build up; find ways to shake off your frustration before trying again.
• Break down the task into smaller pieces. In learning the ukulele, I needed to admit I wasn't going to start out playing a whole song. If I just practiced transitioning between chords, and practiced until I was good at it, it felt like a victorious step along the journey to playing my first song. 
• Decide if the effort is worth it. Sometimes, it's really ok to walk away. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because I never learned how to play Call of Duty or because I never scored higher than 4 on Flappy Bird. Some things just aren't worth the effort or frustration. 

The ukulele is worth it. I'm still working up to my first song :)

Raising a generation for the world we want, not the world we have

A few months ago, after experiencing a particularly discouraging incident of gender bias, I came home crying and frustrated. How can people not see this? I thought, probably asked out loud to myself. How often is this going to happen before people will call it out as wrong? How long until everyone, EVERYONE, stops discriminating based on gender? 

I had heard through my "kiddo grapevine" that one of my kids was not a feminist, or at least he had been saying negative things about feminists. My heart literally was in my stomach. He is MY kid! How could he NOT be a feminist? Hadn't he lived with me his whole life? I was in complete disbelief and that night at dinner, I asked him about it directly.

Here's how the conversation went:

Me: "I hear you've been saying negative things about feminists."

Him: "Well, yeah. I mean, I don't get how they want to be treated better than men." 

Me (seeing red, freaking out inside): "Feminists don't want to be treated better than men, they want women to be treated equally to men."
(at this point my husband and other kiddos made some excuse to leave their half-eaten food at the table...) 

Him: "I don't understand. Women ARE treated equally to men. These feminists want to be treated better."  

At this point, I totally broke down into a rant about how women are NOT treated equally, citing numerous examples of bias and discrimination of women in general, but also bias and discrimination that I've experienced personally. I then continued on to point out all of his privileged statuses (sex, gender identity, race, class, geography, able-bodied, apparent sexual orientation...he's at the top of the food chain, I made sure to point out...). My son sat there wide-eyed and in silence, finishing his tacos.  

I believe I ended with, "I can't believe you're MY son, you live with me, and you don't know that gender discrimination exists."

I've been thinking a lot about that conversation, and specifically my son's opinion of the world, since that conversation. The truth is, he's a really earnest, sweet kid and he'd be the last person who I would think would be perpetuating bias against anyone. When I thought about it, I realized that he wasn't. He HAD lived with me his whole life, and what he learned from that has been that women are equal to men. He TRULY, HONESTLY believes that. He couldn't comprehend what feminism is because in his world view, women are already equal to men and he treats them that way.

It was this same kiddo who, when he was five years old, got into a verbal argument with a cashier in a department store because he said, "I like your brown skin." and the man said, "I'm not brown, I'm black." My kiddo responded, "I can see your skin and I'm pretty sure it's brown." The cashier was NOT happy about it, and I had to explain to my 5 year old on the way home why the man was upset with him. I felt the same way, full of sadness and frustration and worry, explaining to him the meaning of and reasoning behind feminism.

I feel disheartened because my son sees the world the way I wish it actually was: where skin color is just a color and everyone is treated equally. I've shown him that through my example, through what I've modeled in my own behaviors and attitude. And now I have to teach him that's not what the world is really like. While the lessons have been heartbreakingly easier around race and sexual orientation because of tragedies and recent victories in the news that lend themselves to discussion at the dinner table, gender discrimination continues to be mostly invisible. It's not, of course, but besides catcalling, discussions of campus rape and sexual consent, and GamerGate, there aren't big news stories. It's just the everyday-ness of discrimination and bias that continues and continues and continues.

Even though I know I have to start pointing out reality, I wonder what it would be like for a generation to grow up taking for granted that people should be treated equally regardless of their sex. What if we succeeded in teaching our kids that all people should be treated equally and with respect? If all little boys were raised believing that girls could do anything they could do, how would our world change as they grew into adulthood and challenged and then changed organizational and cultural bias? I want to live in my son's world where we don't need feminism. I hope by showing him the world we live in now, it doesn't cloud his view of the way things should be and how he has already been living in this world where he is more likely the exception than the rule. 

Because video games: games, flow and the evolution of our brains

The summer between 5th and 6th grade, having just moved to a new town in northern Michigan after the school year ended and thus not knowing anyone yet, I found a passion that still fuels me: video games. We had an Atari 2600 and while my sister roamed our new neighborhood to make friends, I settled in to beat Pac-Man. I played for hours and hours, until I got so good at avoiding ghosts and eating fruit that I rolled the scoreboard.

My mom eventually kicked me out of the house to go find my sister and play. She coined the term "mush brain" and continued to repeat the same refrain, even as I moved on to Frogger and Pitfall and eventually to Centipede, from which I still have the remnants of callouses from the rollerball controller.

That phrase, mush brain, never made sense to me, as I knew that counter to what my mom might have seen as me zoning out, I was actually concentrating REALLY HARD. I didn't want to be disturbed, not because I was catatonic, but because I was intensely focused.

Fast forward 25 years, as my 9 year old son is standing in the middle of my living room, a Wii controller in each hand, focused so completely on Punch Out (which had been my birthday gift, fwiw) that he doesn't hear us telling him it's time for dinner. My mom called him a mush brain. I stopped her and said, "No, look. Watch him. He's solving the pattern for each boxer. He's concentrating. He's doing hard work."

I happened upon a conversation on a friend's Facebook page today, where he reflected on the damage that video games cause to how our brains function. I flashed back to my own experiences as a kid, and to watching my kids now. Maybe video games DO change the way our brains work, but I think it's for the better. Video games are enormous feedback experiences where each move you make has a consequence - an increase in score, a goal accomplished or failed and, of course, game over. Games teach us to practice, to keep trying, to fail and have another go. Games teach us persistence. Games teach us problem solving, logic, complex decision-making and pattern recognition. Video games improve our fine motor skills. Collaborative games teach team work, communication skills and leadership skills. And beyond all of that...games might be our first experience of flow, that deeply focused attention that some might dismiss as mindlessness rather than mindfulness.

And yet, so many people jumped on the "anti-video game" band wagon in the comments. It's so easy to vilify, to oversimplify the evolution of our brains due to the influences of technology and to ignore the actual research that disproves your opinion. It's so easy. "Games are bad." It is so easy to point fingers and cite circumstantial evidence to counter honest to goodness research and data that shows the benefits of games. This is no means unique to games; we see the same arguments against gun control, feminism, climate change...debates where research shows clear data but passionate opinion somehow gets weighted equally.

Examples of games research to check out:

Karl Kapp's answer to the question (with research!) of "do games teach?" 

An article in Psychology Today on benefits of playing video games 

The educational benefits of video games (written by a professor who studies gambling addiction)

Video games for training surgeons

Just to name a few...and a few resources on flow to check out if you're interested:

Game Design Theory Applied to the Flow Channel 

Wikipedia reference on Flow

I don't have a real picture of us playing, but this is how I imagine me and my son.

Let me be clear: I don't think kids should be playing violent first person shooters. Video game ratings systems are there for a reason and while I tend to focus on the positive impacts of video games, if you're letting your kid watch Game of Thrones or play Call of Duty? Yeah, there are going to be negative impacts. There's plenty of research on the impacts of exposure to violence in video games (and other media forms) on children, as well as the danger of video game addiction. Two points here: Too much of ANYTHING is bad for you, especially for children. And correlation does not equal causation. While there have been lots of correlations drawn between playing violent video games and violent behavior, there is no causal evidence (meaning that playing video games does not cause you to be violent).
Let's be smart out there, people...but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

When I worry about how our brains are changing, I think about how we're less likely to engage in deep reading and reflection. I think about how attention spans have shortened, likely because of television commercial cycles and mobile content. I worry about how difficult it is for our brains to discern meaning with the endless stream of information, opinions and misinformation that is broadcast to us through multiple media channels all day long.

I don't worry about video games. Video games have taught me how to fail, pick myself up and try again. They have strengthened my focus and concentration. And my son who conquered Punch Out with focused concentration on pattern recognition? He just won Santa Barbara's Math Super Bowl for 6th grade with a perfect 50/50. So much for being a mush brain.

Learning through "infuriating feedback"

One of the things that I'm most passionate about doing well when designing learning is providing feedback. In immersive design, practice without feedback is useless, and often can reinforce the wrong behaviors. For example, if you're trying to perfect your golf swing, heading to the driving range and hitting a bucket of balls without the guidance of a golf pro to help critique your form may lead you to practicing a whole bucket full of bad swings. 

Yet very rarely do any of us perform a task in a vacuum; we're constantly bombarded with feedback, both subtle and obvious, that reinforces what we're doing well and discourages us from continuing less than stellar behaviors. We love hearing the good stuff, getting that positive reinforcement. In game design, quick victories are by design to make players feel good, feel confident, hoping to hook them in to continue playing even as game play becomes more difficult and complex, and victories and positive reinforcement are harder to come by. In "real life," the same dynamic exists. I love to hear the feedback of people after I speak, to hear how something I said struck a chord or helped them make a connection or see something in a different light. Even better, I love when people compliment my kiddos, as that provides me with some positive evidence from non-biased sources that I'm doing ok in the toughest job that I have.

Negative feedback, critique and even punishment surround us every day too. I am always amazed as a mom about how often I have to say, "chew with your mouth closed," or "put some clothes on," or "put your dirty laundry in your hamper, not just on the ground next to it." More subtle things, like a look from my boss or my husband, are enough to make me pause and consider what I just did to elicit that reaction. In game design, negative feedback design creates for interesting play dynamics; losing points, finding yourself in a death spiral that you just have to wait out, or an abrupt game over when you make a bad decision are all ways to provide critique to your play performance and prompt you to try again and do better.

This continuous flow of positive and negative feedback help us learn and shape our future behavior. Other factors contribute to our decision-making, but ultimately, it is the balance of potential risk and reward that are in constant competition to determine the decisions that we make, and we depend on this river of feedback to help us determine if we're on the right path.

Which leads me to the best boss I ever had. 

Imagine you're at work, managing a big project and people and faced with situations and decisions that are new to you. You have a one-on-one with your boss and you go in prepared to describe the situation and get insight and feedback on how to proceed. When you enter the office, your boss is nose to the laptop and barely acknowledges you're there. You know that you have limited time, so you ask if you should get started. "Yes, go ahead," your boss says, still not looking up from the laptop. 

You start describing the current status of and issues with the project. You describe what you've done so far to resolve issues as they've come up, and you end with the current dilemma and request advice on how to proceed. 

To which your boss replies, still not looking up, "what do you think you should do?"

Infuriating. If I knew what to do, I'd just do it! I want guidance, I want insight, I want feedback!

I had a couple of meetings that went exactly like this with my boss. Every time I left those meetings, I was pissed. How rude! What am I supposed to do? Why didn't my boss give me any advice?

And yet...

I was getting feedback. My boss was saying: "you don't need me. You actually know how to proceed. I trust you to figure this out. If you make a bad decision, that's ok, you'll come back to me and I'll repeat this again and you'll try something new, until you find the right answer."

It was these "non-feedback" meetings that gave me confidence to make decisions. They helped me learn to reflect, consider options and take my best guess. Sometimes I didn't make the best decision, but often I did. As I worked with my boss longer, our meetings became less about resolving issues and more about personal development and strategy. 

Coaches, mentors and managers can give helpful advice and guidance in some situations, but the best way they can be leveraged is to challenge you to do your own thinking and growing. When you're designing practice in immersive learning, consider designing with infuriating feedback: opportunities for reflection and safe failure. Not only will you build confidence in decision-making, but you'll be teaching leadership and reinforcing risk-taking and experimentation. 

TMI

I'm on a panel tonight on information overload at an event for the Association for Women Communications in Santa Barbara. A few days ago, we held a quick "panel prep" meeting, and as I listened to the other women on the panel describe their professional focus on helping people manage not just information overload, but finding balance in their busy lives, I couldn't help but feel more like one of their typical customers and less like someone qualified to share the stage with them.  Six kids, full time job, my book just out...I could use some expert advice on information overload!

I've been reflecting on how I manage my life, my engagement with social media and my interest in technology. I don't think I've ever really thought about it, but I have implemented some strategies to keep me sane. I'll be talking about these tonight, but as I'm preparing for the panel, I thought it might be useful to capture some of the ways I find balance and how I've learned to manage too much information.

1. I don't watch TV.
Seriously, we don't even usually have the television on in my house, and if we do, it's usually one of the kids watching something on Netflix. I don't have the news streaming in the background, I don't have a television in my bedroom (an neither do any of our kids), and if there is a tv show that I want to watch, we watch it streaming online. I haven't watched tv for years, and I have to say, I haven't missed it.

2. I have a separate Twitter account for news.
I don't think it's unusual for people to have multiple Twitter accounts, but I have two: one for news monitoring, and one for everything else. If I want to know what's going on in the world, I check my news account and monitor the feed. I could also use Tweetdeck or another filtering tool for this, but I have found that having a separate account is easier for me to manage, and allows me to moderate what information I take in, when.

3. I don't use a computer at night.
I do use my phone and iPad, but I have found that they are much easier for me to put down. I also typically use my mobile devices for playing games at night, if I use them at all, so I don't usually take in new information while I'm using them. I find that when I'm on my computer, I tend to spend more time at night working, when I really need to disconnect and rest. This policy also allows me to honor my next strategy...

4. The evening is for family.
I spend most of my day on my computer. From the time I get home until the kids go to bed, my time is focused on them. There were many years, especially when I first started my company, that I never turned off my computer, never stopped working. It was brutal and impacted everyone in my family. Over time, I've learned to separate my work time from my family time. It has made a huge impact on me, and has made the time I do spend working more productive, because I'm always working against self-imposed deadlines.

5. If I'm feeling overwhelmed, I go to the beach.
I'm lucky; I can walk to the beach from my house, so when I get that overwhelmed feeling, off I go. The beach may be it for me now, but in the past, taking a bath, working on a creative project, or playing a game were all ways I could decompress. Everyone has something that takes them from hectic to calm; find yours and use it liberally.

6. Understanding the value I get from social media.
Facebook and Twitter go on, and are no worse off when I take a break. Stepping away sometimes actually gives me more perspective on what value social media brings to me. It helps me set boundaries and "rules" for what information I subject myself to and when I open those gates. Sometimes when I see the negative stuff, I have to remember that 1. I have a choice of what information I allow in, and 2. People who are negative and hurtful through social media are likely also that way in real life. If I wouldn't have a drink with them in real life, why would I "hang out" with them through social media? Block, unfriend and unfollow are great curation tools for TMI.

7. Quiet and focused energy.
Yoga is my friend. A brisk walk or workout is an active way to clear the clutter in my head, but taking a few minutes to meditate can also help me refocus. They both really do the same thing for me: extract me from the information stream and help me focus on my health, energy and what's really important.

I'm sure I've employed other strategies that aren't coming to mind, and I'm also sure that you all have even better tips and advice to share. Please add your own information overload strategies in the comments, and I'll share them with the panel tonight!

It's a sin

Today I served as worship associate at USSB and read the following reflection on sin, sloth and service.
______________________________
I recently visited Las Vegas for a conference, and it struck me that Vegas is a vacation destination that promotes sin as it's main tourist attraction. It is Sin City after all, with the tag line "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," as if anything that you do in Vegas is understood to be ok even if it's not ok anywhere else.

Vegas really banks on the allure of the "sexy" sins in the Seven Deadly Sins list: Greed. Gluttony. Pride. Envy. Lust. Everywhere you look in Vegas, you see the promise of these sins in excess, from the  photos handed out on the sidewalks that most closely resemble trading cards of scantily clad companionship for an evening, to the adult version of sippy cups filled with frozen mixed drinks, to the urgently blinking, ever present lights of the slot machines promising the possibility of riches. Even wrath is starting to make an appearance on The Strip; there are ads everywhere for gun ranges where you can fire machine guns and high powered assault rifles to work out your aggressions.

What's interesting is the Deadly Sin that doesn't feature in the advertising for Las Vegas: sloth. Sloth is not a sexy sin; sloth represents laziness, inaction, wasting time. It's funny, but Sloth is the sin I'm most offended by, and the sin I fear most for myself.

I walk through most of my days feeling an internal pressure to do more. Get more work done. Do more housework. Spend more time with the kids. Finish that knitting project. Write another blog post. Schedule that appointment. The To Do list never ends, and at the end of each day, I usually make a list of what I didn't get done to set myself up for failure the next day. It becomes a never ending cycle. While my intentions are always pure in seeking a sense of accomplishment, the truth is, I know I'll never do everything I want to do. I'll never solve every problem and I'll never feel good enough. I'm forever seeking that golden ring of achievement beyond reproach, especially from myself.

I once had a conversation with a good friend who asked, "do you think you will ever feel satisfied?" And I wanted to answer yes, but when I thought about it, I couldn't think of a condition or state when I would feel like there was nothing left for me to do. There are small moments when I feel a glimpse: when ALL the laundry is done. When I received an award for my book. When I sold my company. When another parent compliments me on one of my kids. I feel for a moment like I've accomplished something meaningful. And then I start reviewing the list of what else I need to do. I'm constantly trying to outrun the shadow of sloth.

What drives this feeling in me is a desire to change the world, to leave this place better than I found it and to be a good example to the people I'm raising into adults. One of those young people is traveling on the YRUU trip over spring break to the Hopi reservation, and her trip has sparked anew my own To-Do list for service and activism.

The opportunity for activism was one of the things that appealed to me when I attended my first Unitarian Universalist service. Not just the opportunity, but the explicitly stated value of action for UUs. Here at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, our mission is "Living with integrity, Nurturing wonder, Inspiring action." Inspiring action is one of the three components of our mission. How better for me to inspire action than by example? How better for me to change the world than with others who want to do the same?

If one of the core values held by Unitarians is action, then sloth may be our most deadly sin. And more, I wonder, if Unitarians are attracted to action as a spiritual practice, is this feeling of never doing enough common in our membership? From the friendships I've made in this congregation and from my relationships with the ministers and staff here, I would guess that I'm not alone in my feeling that I always have more to do.

As I think about this pressure to do more, and as I look at the teens preparing for their mission trip, I am reminding myself that my action, my contribution, my efforts are measured not by one rally, or signed petition, or service trip, but by the values I hold and the way I engage with the world every day. Today, that might mean having a dance party with my 7 year old or finishing the laundry or giving my husband a break and cooking dinner for once. Tomorrow, that might be me attending a rally or speaking at an event for women in technology or mentoring a young person interested in game design. All of these things will in their small way make the world better. I need to keep reminding myself that showing up with good will and intent and living my values are ultimately what makes the world a better place.

Maybe Vegas has it right. Just like the allure of Vegas in allowing us to dip our toes into sin a little bit without abandoning our values and responsibilities, relaxing every once in a while might just be the break I need to remind myself that even if I don't accomplish everything on the list, allowing myself time to play, rest, reflect and take a deep breath aren't symptoms of sloth but are actually necessary to make me whole, balanced and able to take on tomorrow's to do list and the world.

Design lessons learned from Candy Crush

If you haven't been pulled in to the addictive mobile gaming wonder that is Candy Crush...I applaud and pity you. Congratulations on avoiding one of the most addictive gaming experiences I've had lately, and I'm sorry you haven't seen the brilliance and subtle evolution in its design.

I am here

Like any game that holds my interest for more than a couple days, I've taken some time to look at the elements of what makes me keep going back. We could all learn from the simple design strategies and application of cognitive science that makes Candy Crush a bar-setter for micro-transaction social games.

1. Don't introduce (or force) the social component until people are really invested. 
One of the things I hate about most social games is that they want you to get social right from the beginning. When I start a game, I don't know if I'm going to be playing it tomorrow, so what are the chances I want to invite my friends to a party I'm not sure I even want to be at yet? Candy Crush lets you keep playing and playing, and offering you to connect to Facebook, but waiting until late in the game to really push that incentive.

One of the things I don't like about the design is that after I did eventually connect to Facebook, my only options to move up a level were to ask my friends to help me or to pay $.99; I lost the option to play the mini-games gated every 24 hours to get to the next level. It pissed me off...and has resulted in my paying up. So maybe it's not a bad design decision after all...

2. Designing the social component around "help." 
One of the things that I find interesting about how Candy Crush pushes the social element is by framing social connection around helping other players. At each log in, the game recommends 5 of my Facebook friends who I can send a life to; more often than not, I say yes. I'm not giving up anything by sending friends lives, and it makes me feel good, like I'm helping someone out. It's also nice to see when people send you a life - like an unexpected pick-me-up to let me try to clear the jellies one more time.

To level up, you can also ask your friends for help. It doesn't cost them anything...they just have to send you a life. From a design standpoint, this giving and requesting doesn't impact your game play, but it DOES impact how often you log in. The more you log in, the more you play. The more you play, the more likely you are to get into a situation where you are compelled to make a microtransaction.

3. Leveling doesn't need to be a steady, consistent build.
I'm not going to lie, there have been some boards on Candy Crush that have taken me DAYS to pass. In the triumph of completing one of those boards, I have gone on the the next and beat it on the first try. My response? Hell yeah! I'm awesome! And then I realize that I'm falling right into the design strategy...Make me really work for some levels so that I feel like there is a big challenge I've overcome, then continue that "win high" with quick successive victories that eventually lead me to the next big challenge. When I'm stuck for days, it is the combination of those hard won victories and quick wins that keep me engaged and playing.

4. Social "shaming" can promote micro-transactions. 
One of the interesting design elements I mentioned previously is that once you connect to Facebook, you don't have the option to unlock the next episode through a 3-step game path that requires a 24 hour wait to start the next board once you've completed a board, in essence making you wait at least 48 hours to unlock the next episode. Instead you have the option of asking your Facebook friends for help in unlocking the next episode, or you can pay $.99.

When I first realized this, I was indignant and was NOT going to pay for the episode...I sent out a request to my friends. Shortly thereafter, I received from my friends the lives I needed to unlock the episode and on I played. Then I finished the next episode, and was faced with the same decision: ask friends or pay. I paid. Why? For one thing, it was quicker...paying immediately unlocks the next episode. For another, I really didn't want to be "that girl" asking my friends for help in unlocking episodes all of the time. It's one thing for me to send extra lives to my friends when I log in, but it's another to be begging for help. In the balance, $.99 seemed a small price to pay to leave my friends out of my game play.

5. Offer buy-outs at the highest point of need.
One of the common themes you'll hear from Candy Crush players is that when you get to the last move on a board that's particularly challenging or that you've been trying to beat for days, and you're one or two moves away from beating the board, you will pay the $.99 for 5 more moves. In that moment, you are weighing the dollar you could spend against the hours you've already invested, and the potential more hours that you might spend to get that close to winning again. Almost everyone I know has done it and when I've asked, the sentiment is consistent: it's worth it.

6. If the challenge seems surmountable, people will stay engaged.
Candy Crush is just a next gen Bejeweled, right? Let's be honest, we're just talking about matching candies on a board and trying to overcome each board's unique challenge. But, it's just a matching game. It's not rocket science, and it takes about 3 seconds to figure out the navigation and how to play. This is a game that is easy to start, easy to drop, can be played in small moments and that has established a well-balanced challenge-reward ratio. In other words, the challenge is not in figuring out how to play, it's in persistence and managing the time tension. These are attainable by everyone, making playing Candy Crush appealing to just keep on playing.

7. Use time as a tension point. 

The perceived value of time is important in promoting desired behaviors, like offering buy-outs at the time of need, described above. My time is valuable and I'm investing it in playing a game...how much is it worth it to me to pay for a next episode instead of waiting for my friends to help me out? How much is it worth it to pay for a few extra moves to beat a board versus playing that board over again, especially as you invest more and more time into beating a challenging board. The more you play a board, the more valuable that extra moves microtransaction becomes in saving you additional time to try again. The crying heart taunts you with the countdown clock of when a life has regenerated so that you can try again, creating another aspect of tension around time.

8. Make your success social. 

Candy Crush has a "Candyland" like progress map that shows you how far you've progressed along the path in comparison to your Facebook friends. I'm not going to lie, I look how far ahead of me some people are and strive to pass certain people (hey, I'm competitive! What can I say?). For each board, it shows you who has achieved the top 3 scores for that board from your friends as well. That helps benchmark what winning scores look like, as well as add in some competitive elements. When I see my sister on the top of a score board, I inevitably think, "Oh I can beat her!"  This one-two punch of a social progress bar, and a leaderboard for each game board keeps my competitive side active throughout the game, even though actual social interaction through the game is limited to providing help to others. It prompts both the "I'm going to beat you" and "here, let me help you" emotions that satisfy different types of game player motivations.

Every once in a while a game comes along that really hits the sweet spot (pun intended) of challenge and engagement that creates a pool of rabid fans. The design decisions implemented in Candy Crush should be a lesson for all designers who are seeking behavior-driving strategies in their designs. As with all design, it's important to know what behavior you want to elicit and design towards those metrics. From a product management perspective, I'd love to see the product plan for Candy Crush. From a learning designer perspective, it's important for me to identify what emotional responses simple design decisions in a matching game can elicit.

PS. I'm stuck on level 147. And that's my sister at the top of the leader board. Please send me an extra life, thanks.

Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power & the fear of hypocrisy

First post of the new year, and I'm not starting out lightly...

Earlier this week, my friend Brian McGowan posted this tweet:

I spend a lot of time thinking about behavioral change, organizational change and performance improvement as an immersive learning designer, and lately even more than usual as I finish my book. We even designed a game on personal resilience in The Change Game. Suffice it to say, expertise in change and resistance is required for what I do every day.

I just never considered fear of hypocrisy as a motivation for intentional ignorance.

Some people might call it self deception, or denial...but those things are different. Those labels refer to people who actually know something but convince themselves that what they know isn't true. There are a number of reasons why someone would deny something they know to be true and not being a psychologist, I'm not going to examine those motivations. While self deception might be interesting to explore as an obstacle to change, I'm more interested as to why someone would intentionally choose not to collect the information they should have to make an informed decision.

Brian's tweet, and the subsequent exchange with Julie Dirksen, got me thinking about what that decision-making process might look like. As a rough pass, I've flowcharted it here:

I'll walk you through my logic...

If you have a question, you have a choice: seek the answer to the question or don't. I won't get into the validity of different data sources...let's just assume that you have a limited set of resources to pull data from and getting informed means that you look at all of them, and staying ignorant means that you don't look at all of them (ignorance then can refer to collecting data from only one, or a known biased, source).

After you decide to research the answer to your question, or not, you have a choice: change what I'm doing, or stay the course. Either way, there's a chance that you will succeed and a chance that you will fail. For the sake of this discussion, I'm also not going to explore the likelihood of success or failure based on your level of being informed versus ignorant...there is probably data out there that shows a higher likelihood that you will be successful if you're informed, but I'm focusing more on motivation and perception here, not the actual validity of the decision.

Whether you decide to change or not change, if you made an informed decision and are successful, your perception will justify your motivation to make an informed decision: knowledge is power. If you decide to change while remaining ignorant and are successful, you'll likely think of yourself as lucky, or perhaps even credit your own intuition or intelligence on making the "right" decision, which would reinforce risk-taking behavior. If you decide not to change and are successful, then you'll also likely credit your own intuition and intelligence, but instead of reinforcing risk-taking, you're reinforcing resistance to change.

So, what if you fail? Here's where I think things get interesting. If you change and fail, and if you were informed, you might blame bad data on the decision to change. You might also blame things like lack of experience, lack of knowledge on how to operate in the new environment, or not anticipating the full impact of the change...in other words, you'll likely think that you weren't informed enough. The same rationale holds true for the decision to not change that results in failure, but with a twist...if I was informed and decided not to change, was it because the data told me not to change or was it because I ignored the data that informed me I should change? And if I knew that I should change, and I didn't, does that make me a hypocrite?

But, if you fail, and you were ignorant? You can default to "I didn't know!" Informed failure requires the person to take responsibility for the outcome; ignorant failure allows the person to divert responsibility.

Organizationally, and in regards to learning innovation specifically, I hear a lot of objections to exploring new design strategies that sound like "our people aren't technology savvy" or "we don't have the money for those types of initiatives" or "our company isn't ready for that." But are you sure? I'm guessing your people are much more technology savvy than you think, that "these types of initiatives" are a lot less expensive than you imagine, and that while your company may not be ready for change, companies that don't change don't succeed.

On a personal note, it takes a certain type of emotional fortitude to deal with the data that research may turn up, and some people, and some organizations, truly don't want to have to face the decision to change. As part of the Twitter conversation with Brian and Julie, Julie shared a link to an article on self-deception, and research was shared out that showed "ignorance is bliss," that people who remain ignorant are happier. I don't disagree with that; shirking the responsibility of knowledge puts you in a childlike position of letting others make the informed decisions for you. There are lots of times I'd love to "not know"...how much work there is to be done to fix broken systems, how much injustice exists in the world, how many problems there are to tackle, big and small. I'm sure life would be easier and I'd get more sleep.

But then I read a comment on the Noam Chomsky interview on self-deception and I believe the same  applies to intentional ignorance. Choosing to be uninformed is bigger than just displacing responsibility of action; deciding to be ignorant defines who you are, either as an individual, as an organization, or as a society. The brackets are my addition, with apologies to Richard for applying his thoughts to a different, but related, topic:

RichardSabi

It is interesting that people respond with indignation to the idea of liars {the ignorant} being happier. Some commentators said it was obviously not the case.

Ah, for me the question is rather, what is the pay off for living without self deception {ignorance}?

Could it be self-respect, the ability to appreciate beauty even in a flawed world, resiliency and fortitude, and dare I say it, spiritual maturity?

May. 07 2011 04:52 PM

I do believe that knowledge is power and with great power comes great responsibility (attribution to Voltaire and Stan Lee). While it may not make us happier to be informed, I believe it makes us better. Fear of hypocrisy is a poor excuse for remaining ignorant; better to resolve yourself to informed action than remain in the dark. An informed society is a higher functioning society, an informed organization is a higher performing organization, and an informed person is a more responsible decision-maker.

In 2012, may you be better informed and ready for the changes ahead, because there are always changes ahead...

You can't measure learning, but you can measure behavior

I'm overstating it a bit with the title of this post, because sure, you can measure knowledge acquisition by pre-testing and post-testing, or iterative assessment. I know, I know...we can measure how much someone knows because we have standardized tests! (I really hope the sarcasm is evident in text...)

I spent the last three days at the mHealth Summit in Washington, DC and 19 hours manning the Ayogo booth, talking to amazingly interesting people about the potential of games to improve health outcomes. What mattered to everyone? It wasn't what people know...amazingly, most everyone actually knows what they need to do to be healthier. The challenge is to get people to actually DO those healthy things that will help them better manage their diabetes, reduce their risk for cardiovascular disease, etc.

When it comes to health, but really when it comes to ANYTHING, there is a knowing-doing gap. We all know this...so then why are we as a learning profession settling for assessing knowing? Knowing is not doing. The proof is in the behavior, and behavior can be easily measured.

We live in an age where everything we do is tracked. Do you carry a cell phone? Your wireless carrier knows where you take that phone all day, every day. Do you use a credit card or bank card? All of your purchases are tracked. Do you log onto the Internet? Every site that you visit is logged and recorded (yeah...I know...you delete the history. That just means your kids won't see those sites your visiting...but your Internet service provider still knows).

All of that data, and more...everything you post on Facebook, Twitter...everything you email...anything you do is trackable now. And more ways to track behavior are being created every day...sleep monitors, pedometers, glucose monitors...there is data EVERYWHERE and its all about you. And me. And the guy sitting in traffic next to you who's using his gps.

With all of this data, we can start making predictions about future outcomes. We can target specific communities or subsets of employees, populations, learners. We can provide information to the most relevant audiences in the most appropriate places.

As learning professionals, we should be thinking more closely about the implications of that data and what it means to know so much about a person's current status and the implications for her future status. Can we change the future? Why yes...yes we can. We can observe current behaviors, predict future outcomes, and use our expertise in learning and performance improvement to change behavior to improve those future outcomes.

We have access to so much behavioral data. How do we get people to change their behavior, when we know that people operate in a world of short-term benefit over long-term reward? We're not going to change those behaviors through knowledge training...we'll only change them through behaviorally-focused training. Games, simulations, contextualized practice...immersive learning environments are the bridge between having access to data and changing behavior for better results.

We can, and already do, measure behavior in almost every aspect of our lives. Learning professionals need to stop focusing on knowledge and start focusing on behavioral change as the basis of our design practice or risk obsolescence (see: Instructional Design is Dead). Our jobs aren't about making sure people know things...they are about making sure people can do things better. We can design those experiences and measure those outcomes. If we aren't doing that, we're not doing our jobs.

Gauntlet thrown.