A game of a different color: design for accessibility

In an earlier post, I deconstructed the design of Candy Crush and sang the praises of a lot of the smart decisions that the designers made that improved engagement, increased replayability and fine-tuned the concept of social. It was clear to anyone who read it that I love Candy Crush (I've now passed my sister and am holding steady at level 213). But this week, my husband deleted Candy Crush from his phone, frustrated because he could no longer engage with the game as I can.

John is severely color-blind. I learned early on in our relationship that I couldn't use color as a reference to things. Instead of color, I would have to rely on shape or size or location or any other identifying characteristic to describe something to him. It made me realize how much I rely on color as a differentiator, and challenged me to notice more details about things so that I could have more effective conversations with him.

For weeks, we've been playing Candy Crush together. We cycle through different games, but this one had stuck for awhile. I'm a lot more competitive than him, so John had lagged behind a bit in his quests. Over the weekend, he got to the level where Candy Crush introduces bombs. On previous levels, John was able to differentiate game pieces by their shape. He even gave them names: Werther's, Mike & Ike's, lollipops...John had figured out a work around to the color coding and so could play just like me. When he got to the bomb levels, however, there was no work around. John would have to ask me or the kids what color a bomb was, which frustrated and annoyed him. After getting past a few levels with our support, he finally gave up. Candy Crush had introduced a design element that prevented him from being able to play the game.

This isn't the first game he's had to give up on. Even board games that have color-coded die force John to rely on others to navigate the game play (I'm looking at you, Smart Ass). He gets frustrated that simple design elements could easily be included to overcome reliance on color, but that designers are only focused on color-abled players. Did you know that 1 in 6 men are colorblind? This is a huge, significant player population.

In our family of 8, we have 2 colorblind family members and 1 bionic boy that is 85% deaf.  For us, helping each other navigate the world without reliance on color and sound is a way of life, and a big part of our lives is playing games. While we understand that there are some limitations of design that just can't be overcome (it's never going to be easy for Vardan to play football because he can't hear his teammates on the field), what's particularly frustrating is when there are easy ways for games to be designed that provide access for the broadest possible player populations.

So, here is my request:
Dear game designers, please consider that a significant portion of your players have disabilities. Your design decisions have a serious impact on the playability of your game. Design standards exist to help you identify how to overcome many of the design traps that can alienate players with disabilities. Please use them. And if you decide to not use them, make it a conscious decision - you can't claim ignorance towards designing for accessibility anymore.

Oh, and while I'm at it?
Dear Santa Barbara, painting your curbs red or green to indicate where street parking is available is a complete accessibility fail. Seriously? Red and green? For the love of all of your colorblind residents, please reconsider your design choices there.

Sincerely,
a person who believes accessibility is not a design constraint but an opportunity for BETTER design

Misery loves company

My second service as Worship Associate at USSB is this Sunday, and since we're still in the month-long theme of "despair," my reflection is another serious one (I really hope my next service's theme is "joy" or "love" :)! The theme this week is "Misery Loves Company" and I'm posting my reflection here.

I have a friend I refer to as Eeyore. Eeyore, if you know the character from Winnie the Pooh, always sees the clouds instead of the sunshine. Despite her gloomy outlook, I know I could count on her to be there for me whenever I need her, because she has been. She's the friend who's known me the longest and best, the friend who no matter what life threw at us, I knew we'd be there to hold each other up. For years, through budding careers, new marriages, new babies and world travel, we shared in each others' lives and struggles.

Our friendship was easy when times were good. We seemed to run on parallel tracks and these connections of work, marriage and motherhood kept us bonded as we traveled down our happy paths, finding support and love and sisterhood in our shared experiences. 

Then, slowly, life wasn't so happy anymore for either of us. We shared in this transition too. Eeyore embraced our time together as a place where all of her grievances against life could be shared. Every interaction with her, every girls' night out, every "catch up" lunch was filled with a laundry list of everything bad in her life. Her ex is crazy. Her other friends don't call enough (I suspect I don't either). She hates her job. She doesn't have enough money. She feels trapped in her new relationship. Her clothes are getting tight and she doesn't have enough time or will power to diet and exercise. She worries she's drinking too much. She wants to go on vacation but she doesn't have the time or money. 

There was a time, looking back on it, maybe too long of a time, when both of us participated in commiserating. I, too, had relationship drama, money problems, self-image issues. Our conversations, with each of us taking turns sharing our problems, were a safe place to work through all the bad stuff. We were both deep in places of sadness, grief, depression and with each other, we didn't have to hold back or pretend that everything was ok. Neither of us were fine and it seemed like our friendship was the one place where we could embrace where we were without shame or guilt or ego. 

And then something changed. More accurately, I changed. It wasn't enough for me to talk about the bad stuff anymore; I wanted to do the work to make things better. I started focusing on the good things in my life and realized that even in the darkest hours, there were still good things - lots of them. I started moving on. It didn't happen all at once, but I noticed that when we met for lunch, I'd start feeling frustrated or annoyed, maybe at her or maybe at myself reflected in her, that every conversation was a repeat of the last. We had been stuck in despair together, a support system for each other when it seemed like no one was listening. But I wanted out. I had hope. It was becoming clear to me that she didn't.

There are certain crossroads that we come to that are so subtle that we don't even realize we've past them until we're well down our new path. So it was with Eeyore and I. I had taken a sharp left at some point while she was forging straight ahead. My new path was lifting me up and my heart was becoming lighter. Every day it was easier to breathe. Talking to her was a harsh and unwelcome reminder of where I had been and where I didn't want to be again.  It felt like she was clinging to me, trying to hold me down with her as I was struggling to claw my way up. The very things that had drawn us together and strengthened our friendship were the things that were making it impossible for me to maintain it. 

When I would talk about selling my company, she’d answer “it must be nice for you. Too bad I’m stuck in my job forever.” If I’d bring up the cooperative parenting my ex and I had established, she would invariably respond with a story of her ex’s attempts to disrupt her efforts to have a peaceful relationship for the sake of their kids. She seemed to be bitter, almost angry, that my life was getting better while she still felt stuck. I started to feel guilty that I could see the silver linings when she could only see the clouds.

I tried to lift her up with me, encouraging her to try new strategies: take a class! Stop responding to your ex’s abusive emails! Let’s plan a trip! Let’s go shopping! Her answer to everything was “I can’t.”

It is hard to let someone you love move on without you and it’s difficult to leave someone behind. I finally had a glimpse of light and I needed to grab it without a shadow eclipsing its warmth and promise. Eeyore and I stopped getting lunches. I suspect that as difficult as it was for me to hear her continued despair, it was just as difficult for her to see me happily moving forward. We each needed a different validation and our parallel paths had diverged so much that we couldn’t see each other reflected in our own lives and experiences any more.

I still feel the loss of our friendship. There are things I’ve wanted to share with her, happy things and yes, new sadnesses and frustrations, too. Our conversations now are strained, shallow – only touch points of the realities of our daily lives. While I know Eeyore values our friendship as much as I do,  we both seem to have come to the place where we know that we need to love each other from a distance to allow ourselves to grow beyond the things that once bonded us together.

There is mourning that comes with letting go of despair; the mourning of what you lose when you let go of the people who once held you up but have begun to hold you back. As we move past despair, we grow and evolve and our hopes and dreams change. We should hold the people who have helped us get there in our hearts, even if, for awhile, we cannot hold their hands. 

Actually, everybody IS doing it: ageism and tech-savviness

I have the luxury of working from home as my schedule allows, or in my case, as has happened with some frequency over the last couple months, working from Starbucks. I see and hear the most interesting things while I'm sipping on my iced decaf Americano with soy milk and researching online communities or piecing together the business case for a particular product direction. Last Friday was no exception.

While I am continually intrigued by the two guys who sit in the corner playing RPGs ALL DAY every day I've been there (seriously, they sit there throwing back iced mocha grandes, sitting across from each other and NEVER talking), there was a particular conversation I had last week that I can't get out of my head.

As I was engrossed in some deep thinking and writing, I felt someone walk up to my chair. It was an older man, probably in his mid- to late- sixties. He was examining my laptop when I looked up. He asked me if it was a MacBook Pro, and I said yes...I'm on my third one and I really love it, except they run hot and if I don't pay attention or use a cooling pad, it will burn my legs. He chuckled,  turned to the even older gentleman sitting at the table next to me, and said, "See! I told you they get hot and we'll have to get you a cooling pad!"

He went on to explain that he was trying to figure out what laptop to get his father. We went on to discuss the pros/cons of getting a MBP versus a MacAir, and I told him the big difference was the internal DVD drive in the MBP, to which he adamantly explained, with hands gesturing to the sky, "Who uses DVDs anymore? Everything is in the cloud!"

We talked for a few more minutes, this man in his 60s, his dad in his 80s, and me, the young whipper-snapper breathing down the neck of 40, about what this octogenarian wanted to do with his new laptop and which type might be better. After determining that the main priorities would be reading news, playing online games and using social sites, I told him that an Air would probably be fine, but he should figure out his graphics and video needs for the games he wanted to play before he made his final decision. They thanked me and off they went, coffees in hand, arguing about when they could make it to the Apple store.

I was reminded of this conversation when I saw a link posted by Dr. Jane Bozarth on Facebook from Pew Internet Research that shows 43% of Internet users over 65 are on social media sites.  And then there's this research report, which shows more than a third of gamers are over 36 years old (also, 45% of gamers are women, but that's for another post). Or this study, another from Pew Internet Research, that shows 45% of people 50-64 and 18% of people over 65 have smartphones.

She's 100. She's a gamer. 

Technology is not simply for the young and the idea that we should be designing for the next gen is overlooking a significant portion of the population that is embracing technology to improve their lives today. I was, but shouldn't have been, surprised by my conversation in Starbucks last week. It was a real-life example of what the research is telling us: everyone is adopting technology and our designs should account for the unique characteristics of different populations, but should not assume that any particular demographic (e.g., gender, age, or shoe size) makes someone more or less likely to be passionate about or eager to learn or use a new technology. Yes, there are resistors, but their resistance is more likely tied to their personality than their age.

Feel free to cite the above research when someone says their employees "aren't technology savvy." :)

Putting yourself out there

At the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara's new members' luncheon this spring where John and I were celebrating officially joining the congregation, Rev. Aaron McEmrys leaned over and said to me, "You should join the Worship Committee." We were actually in the middle of a whole group discussion, and the comment was a whisper, almost as if he had slipped me a note in the middle of class. My heart almost literally stopped. How did he know, how could he have known, how much that one sentence would mean to me?

On our first date, as I was throwing everything I could at John to scare him off, I told him that I wanted to go to seminary. He didn't flinch, but even as I talked to him about it, I was terrified.  With many of my crazy ideas, reality (at some point) settles in and I realize what I've gotten myself into. Usually, this pertains to something fun, like driving cross-country or creating our own prom. Sometimes, it's big stuff, like starting a company or writing a book. In all of these things, when I start out down the path, I'm excited, not scared.

It is different when it comes to my spiritual beliefs. As passionate as I am about my own journey, what terrified me was leading others in their journeys. How could I teach anyone else anything about spirituality when I have so many questions myself? How could I be worthy of that awesome responsibility?

Yet, I wanted to try. When Aaron invited me to join the Worship Committee, I said yes. And then I signed up to help lead the service on August 4th. The monthly theme was despair (great, uplifting theme for my first service!). The service ended up including a puppet show put on by our kiddos and John supporting the service on stage, doing the candle lighting and helping with the puppet show. I was honored to be trusted to help lead the service and honored to have John by my side as I put myself out there (literally, actually...Ken Ralph, who was the other lay-leader for the service, built an extension for the chancel so that we could do our reflections closer to the congregation).

I am so very grateful for my amazing partner and family, and for Ken Ralph, Rev. McEmrys, the Worship Committee and USSB for trusting me. Yesterday was amazing and everyone's support got me to take the risk of putting myself out there and work through my fears.

Below is my reflection that I shared with the congregation yesterday. I'm already looking forward to the next service I'll help lead later this month (two services on despair!) and more committed than ever to working, seeking, persevering and honoring the title of our service: "Pounding the Stone."


Finding my religion 

Growing up, whenever someone asked me what religion I was, my mom told me to tell them "Christian." The truth was, we weren't really anything...I suppose if pressed, I would have said yes, I believe in God, and I do remember praying, but I never had any sort of religious education. By high school, I was starting to feel a gap. I had lots of questions and I wanted answers. I decided I would find my own beliefs, not blindly believe what someone told me I should. 

The first real connection to religion I felt came when I stumbled across excerpts from the Old Testament and the Torah. That's it! I thought...I'm Jewish! I told my mother that I wanted to be Jewish, and she patiently explained to me that being Jewish and practicing Judaism were different, that I could practice Judaism but that by bad luck of birth, I would never BE Jewish. It felt like a door closed on me that day, but I kept searching.

I took a comparative religions class my senior year and was introduced to Hinduism with its beautiful gods and Buddhism with its centering meditational practices I still use today. I learned more about Muslims and Christians...the basic facts, really, but enough for me to question the validity of organized religion. Over and over again, the stories the same: my beliefs are right, yours are wrong and you should be punished for not thinking the same as I do. And the Jews...usually the target of the other religions, the perpetual underdogs, but with idiosynchrocies in their own right...I realized I couldn't convert to Judaism after all, as I was NEVER going to give up bacon cheeseburgers. 

In college, I read the Bible cover to cover. Yes...even every "beget" in the Book of Numbers. I read more of the Torah and continued my study of Jewish history. I read much of the Quran. I read Siddhartha and books on Native American mysticism. I researched the Mormons and Mayans and the practice of VooDoo and HooDoo. I read story after story of near death experiences, watched the tv psychics who claimed to speak to the dead and researched ghost stories. I did everything I could to try to see the patterns, to see what all of these religions and spiritual connections were trying to tell us, to understand the underlying thread that ties together religious beliefs and tries to answer THE question of the meaning of life. 

In graduate school, I attended a Lutheran church and went through classes to be baptized. Every week I came to class and argued with the Pastor about the content of the homework he had assigned to me. I didn't even really buy the concept of baptism by that point, and I was disillusioned that I could disagree with so much of the Lutheran religion but by showing up each week and arguing, they would baptize me anyway. What was the point of it all?

At the end of all of my seeking, and after reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I decided that as an answer to “What is the meaning of life?” 42 was as good an answer as any. 

Many years later, recently divorced with three small children, my parents having moved back to Michigan from living with me in Pennsylvania, in the midst of a destructive relationship from which I was desperately trying but couldn't seem to break free, I started questioning whether "42" was really enough of an answer, and whether it was enough of an answer for me to give my kids as they started asking inevitable questions. I felt alone, more alone than I had ever felt in my life - I felt alone in my soul. Reaching that point, the bottom of the pit of despair, is not always a sudden, shocking drop. Sometimes falling into despair is a slow descension, as bit by bit, every belief you have is challenged, everything you hold true is shown to be false. When I looked in the mirror, when I looked at my life, I didn't know who I was anymore and I didn't know how to find her again. 

What do you do when you realize that your life is not what you want? How do you move forward when you don’t know what will make you happy? I didn’t know where to start. It became difficult to face each day, to wake up to that loneliness, knowing that I didn’t want to be in this place of sadness, but not knowing what to do to change my life and move forward.

Religion seemed an unlikely answer to my despair. I had studied, researched, analyzed and tried on so many beliefs, but none of them fit. I was still asking the same question: what is the meaning of all this? What is the point of suffering through all of this loneliness, pain and sadness? I couldn't answer it for myself, and I couldn't answer it for my children. 

In a desperate conversation, I expressed all of this to a friend. She listened to everything I had to say, then simply said, "you sound like a Unitarian. You should check out your local congregation and see what you think." I was skeptical, but despair can drive you to try one more time.

The first service I attended was almost exactly two years ago today. I went alone, sat in the back of a converted Colonial house in West Chester, PA on a metal folding chair. The room had a Shaker feel - wood floors, white walls with quilts hung for decoration. I listened to Rev. Deborah Mero lead the sparsely attended summer service. It was the first time I had been to a church led by a woman. Not long into the service, she lit the chalice and invited anyone to come up and light a candle, and if they so chose, to share with the congregation the reason for lighting it. She called it "caring and sharing," and as I watched that week and each week after, members of the congregation would come up to light a candle, sometimes alone, sometimes as a family, and take the microphone to tell of the death of a loved one, or thank someone for an unexpected kindness, or to celebrate a birthday or birth. Sometimes candles would be lit for a political cause, or for someone none of us had ever met but had heard about through the news. Sometimes no one would come up to light a candle at all. The "caring and sharing" each week helped me get to know the congregation and, when I eventually found the courage to share myself, gave me the opportunity to let others get to know me, too. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad - lighting candles together was my favorite part of the service, because it was completely unpredictable and undeniably human. It was what showed me, more than anything else, that I am a Unitarian. It let me know that I belonged, I was not alone, and that sometimes, even when you think you've tried everything, you should give it one more try.

As this is my first service assisting as a Worship Associate, I'd like to share with all of you the experience of sharing together our Joys and Sorrows. Ken and I will be bringing the microphones down into the congregation. If there is a joy or sorrow you’d like to share, please let us know. In the interest of time, ten people will share with us today and John will light a candle for you as you share with all of us.

To begin, I’d like to light two candles today, first, for my first Unitarian family back in West Chester and for Rev Deb as she prepares for her retirement. Thank you for raising me up from despair, not through any special outreach, but just by sharing yourselves with me. And second, for my new Unitarian family here in Santa Barbara: thank you for welcoming me and my family so warmly, for giving me an opportunity to continue my seeking surrounded by support and enthusiasm and love. 

[congregation lights candles]

And now I light a candle for all of those joys and sorrows carried in our hearts which could not yet be spoken aloud. May this candle lift them out of the darkness and into the light. 

The feminist role model gap

My parents were never particularly vocal about their political beliefs, but I knew that their moral principles were simple: treat others as you would want to be treated, even if they think differently than you or you don't understand their perspective, even if everyone else is treating them poorly. Stand up for what is right.

In high school I became enamored with economics and studied it for 3 years, even taking a year of independent study in economics my senior year. When I went off to college, I started as a political science major with minors in economics and Russian. I was only a year in when the closed-minded debates dominated by the boys in my political science classes drove me away (that, and the Russian economy falling apart, which made me think maybe my timing for studying Russian economics was bad). I was 18, and at the time would not have called myself a feminist. All I knew was that my mother raised me to believe I could be ANYTHING I wanted to be. I just didn't have any role models in politics that I could look to and say "I want to be like her."

I really want things to be different today. I do, and in some ways, they are. In the learning industry and conferences where I present, women are more visible than in many industries, although often there is still a lack of representation in keynotes (that could be another whole blog post). The games industry, and the technology industry as a whole, has had massive publicity about the existing gender issues in recent years, but women are emerging as leaders and role models for future generations. There are more women in politics and some (I'm looking at you Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren) who are emerging as amazing female role models. But in politics it's been hard to find that female role model to stand behind, because so much of today's politics are wrapped up in the personal lives of the politicians and we still live in a culture that tolerates, and even protects, those that disrespect and degrade the value of women.

I was having a conversation the other day about my feelings about Hillary Clinton. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, I was adamant that while I thought Bill totally screwed up, that his personal life was separate from his ability to perform his job effectively. I was much more conflicted about Hillary's response, and her decision to stay with Bill still weighs heavily on me. It is true that you can never know what goes on in two people's marriage, and making assumptions or judgments about anyone's decision on how to handle their most personal relationships is presumptive and a little too tabloid-esque for my liking. However, when someone is in the public eye, it is natural to put yourself in their shoes and think about how you would apply your values to their situation.

I don't think I could stay. There are some hurts too deep, some behaviors too disrespectful, some patterns too destructive for me to work through. I have expectations of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable for me based on what my parents instilled in me. My beliefs have strengthened based on my life experiences, my past relationships and the mistakes I've made. My beliefs have strengthened because I have children, and I look at my daughters in particular and want them to stand up for themselves in all of their relationships. I want them to know that they deserve to be treated with respect, nothing less. I am trying to teach them the power of forgiveness but the danger of acceptance and how forgiveness and acceptance are very, very different.

So I look at Hillary Clinton, and I see a strong, amazing woman and I wonder how her marriage works now, having come through what was certainly a personally and professionally humiliating time, and if she feels like she settled and how anyone can reconcile feminist ideals of equality and respect with the acceptance of disrespect and dishonor in a personal relationship. I look at the movements on college campuses to abolish rape culture and to encourage women who are abused to speak out, speak up and protect themselves and their children...and the prevalence of the messages that children of both genders hear from a young age that good girls don't stand up for themselves and that boys can't help themselves. I think about my own past abusive relationships, where over time I became more withdrawn and became less and less likely to stand up and speak the truth about my situation for fear of upsetting the men who were hurting me or inconveniencing anyone else. I think about the lies that I allowed to be told to spare other people's feelings, all the while chipping away at who I was. I am glad that I have come through those experiences with greater wisdom and strength, but it made me realize that there's another gap of female role models.

I never had professional role models for who I wanted to be, but I also didn't have personal role models...women who were strong professionally and personally in the face of being disrespected in the most hurtful and personal ways. I didn't hear the stories of successful women who stood up for themselves when it became clear that their personal relationships were destructive or abusive or when they needed to weigh the value of a relationship to their value as a woman, as a human being. I'm not saying those stories didn't exist, but women typically allow themselves to be painted into caricatures in such circumstances: the rejected, angry shrew or the pathetic, broken sap or the faithful, forgiving wife who stands by her man and accepts his bad behavior. Where were the women who simple said, "no. enough. this is not ok"? Maybe their stories are less interesting, but they are arguably the ones we need to hear most.

I'm struggling as I hear the news of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin. I don't know them; I'm not going to presume to make decisions for her. But if it was me? That is not ok. If it was my daughter? That is not ok. And if any little girl asked me, I would tell her she deserves more. I would tell her that any boy who would disrespect her and women in general is not worth her time, her respect or her loyalty.

Whether she likes it or not, Huma is a role model. She is politically successful in her own right and is one of those women who I may have looked up to at 18 when I was attempting to embark on a political career. What message is she sending young women with her decision to stay with her husband, not after just one incident, but after his pattern of behavior over years was revealed? That it's ok for your husband to disrespect you privately and publicly. What message is she sending young men? That it's ok to treat women like objects and that even strong, beautiful, intelligent women will accept even your worst behavior and stand by your side. Some are saying that Huma is noble, or brave. Holy cats, are you kidding me? Huma is simply a fantastic example of what rape culture produces - otherwise intelligent, confident and accomplished women who still accept the men in their lives treating women -themselves and others- like objects, not people.

It is not ok for my daughters to grow up thinking that's ok.
It is not ok for my sons to grow up thinking that's ok.

I want more role models who show what it looks like when women achieve equality with men, not just professionally, but in their personal relationships as well. We can have both. We just have to model what it looks like to accept nothing less. 

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.

Robots and Polka Dots: My big fat geek wedding

A few months ago, I had a bit of a breakdown over getting married. One evening, as John and I discussed wedding plans, my anxiety bubbled over and at some point I'm pretty sure I said something like "I want to be married to you, but I don't want to get married."

Needless to say, wedding planning is not my thing.

The next day, still overwhelmed and feeling sad and frustrated, John and I IM'd each other from work. We decided to both cut out early and meet at a park overlooking the ocean to have lunch and talk about the wedding. I was still holding on to my stubborn "I don't want to do this" attitude and John somehow knew that I needed to stop talking about caterers and online RSVPs and talk about the things that really mattered.

So we went here (which ultimately became the site of our "Last Day of Independence BBQ")

and we asked each other what was most important.

The kids.

Courtesy Ryan Calderon

Pictures.

Courtesy Amy Calcote

Making the ceremony meaningful.

Courtesy Ryan Calderon 

Really making this day "us."

Courtesy Ryan Calderon

Spending time with our family and friends.

Our rings.

Courtesy Ryan Calderon 

We ended up changing everything...we went from planning one day to four days of wedding festivities. We decided to get married in our beloved church instead of the beach where he proposed. We included some of our favorite places, and we tried some things we always wanted to since moving to Carpinteria. As soon as we stopped trying to plan the wedding we thought we should have, we ended up planning the wedding we really wanted. If you want to see the full wedding weekend agenda, you can check it out here: polkadotrobots.com

Which leads me to the story of our rings...
When John and I drove cross-country from Philadelphia to Carpinteria last summer to kick off our life on the west coast, we spent our last night on the road on the border of Arizona and California, right on the edge of the Mojave desert. We woke up that morning, saw a coyote outside of our hotel room and hit the road in search of coffee and a gas station. We were already on "E," but more focused on getting our coffee. We passed the first exit because there didn't appear to be any coffee options...we passed the second because we didn't want to get coffee at McDonalds. And that was it...there weren't any more exits. In fact, there wasn't anymore ANYTHING except desert and sun and mountains and heat. We hadn't traveled too far when we passed a sign: No service for 60 miles. At first we didn't panic. Sure, the gas light was on, but we were still a little perturbed that we didn't get any coffee. As we kept driving, we realized our situation: no cell service, no passing traffic, no idea how far the remnants in our tank would carry us or if we'd be carrying my mini poodle for 30 miles in midday desert heat to try to make it to a gas station.

I think it was probably at that point when reality set in. We rode quietly for awhile. One of us at some point made some suggestions about what we would do if we didn't make it to the next service station. We joked about who might get eaten first by the vultures (well, we were mostly joking...). We rode in silence again, holding hands. One of us noted that thankfully, we were coming down the mountain, instead of going up, which allowed us to coast. We were nervous.

And then, after almost an hour riding on fumes, we saw the service station. We pulled off the highway and up to the gas station pump, jumped out of the car and danced around. We had made it! It was pure elation, but also such a feeling of partnership, of love...we were in this together. When John went in to pay for the gas, he also bought me a present: a robot girl mood ring. She was perfect. I wore her every day since, even when her mood had turned to perpetual calm (blue) and the metal on her adjustable band left rust marks on my finger. She wasn't just a gas stop ring, she was the symbol of what we could accomplish together.

When John and I started talking about wedding rings, we knew that we wanted something that represented us. Unbeknownst to me, he contacted some jewelry designers, sent them a picture of my robot girl, and asked them to design some concepts. When he received the sketches, he broke down and showed me. While all of the designs were amazing, we knew we needed to recreate my robot girl ring, and get John a robot boy.

That's how we came to all of our decisions regarding our wedding, and really, our life: just be us and remember what's important and everything will just work out.  The ceremony was perfect. Our rings are perfect. Our kids were perfect. Our families acted like they had known each other forever. My sister and John's brother signed our wedding license as witnesses - I was overwhelmed to have them both there. We danced our first dance to our song on "our" beach where John proposed to me.

John even surprised me with a "Love Actually" inspired entrance by the choir at the end of our ceremony to sing "All You Need is Love" as we walked back down the aisle together as husband and wife.

Courtesy Ryan Calderon

Our wedding was perfect because it was us: loving, fun, silly, sentimental, surrounded by kids, family, friends and robots and polka dots. And now, every day I look down at my new, blingy robot girl wedding ring and remember that no matter the obstacle (deserts, wedding planning or otherwise), the important thing is we're in this together.