Friday, June 12, 2015

Would the real Mary Poppins please stand up?

Would the real Mary Poppins please stand up?

Be it playful design or gamification: It usually takes about five minutes until the Mary Poppins tune “Spoonful of Sugar” is evoked. This talk will explain why this reference is both true and false, how the movie entails two radically divergent theories of fun that match what we know in psychology and educational research, and how to translate this into designing for fun. My talk given at Gaminomics 2015, June 11, 2015 in London.
Published in: Design

Transcript

  • 1. would the real mary poppins please stand up? Sebastian Deterding Northeastern University June 11, 2015 c b
  • 2. gaMification Lets learn from games how to make things fun!
  • 3. the unwitting figurehead
  • 4. two conflicting theories of fun
  • 5. <1>
  • 6. “just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”
  • 7. “spoonful of sugar” aka fun as additive substance
  • 8. some things are inherently fun …
  • 9. … and some things aren’t.
  • 10. »School is like medicine: It must taste bitter, else it’s of no use.« in the punchbowl (1944) Professor Crey
  • 11. so: add funstuff to nonfunstuff for more fun
  • 12. aka 1990’s edutainment
  • 13. a resounding failure …
  • 14. gaMification Lets learn from games how to make things fun! … which doesn’t bode well for this
  • 15. <2>
  • 16. “in everything that can be done, there is an element of fun. Find the fun, and snap, the job’s a game.”
  • 17. “find the fun” aka fun as systemic-emergent quality
  • 18. everything can be(come) fun, interesting
  • 19. »Mowing the lawn or waiting in a dentist’s office can become enjoyable provided one restructures the activity by providing goals, rules, and the other elements of enjoyment to be reviewed below.« flow (1990: 51) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • 20. “intrinsic integration”
  • 21. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002006062/PP/
  • 22. Donald F. Roy »De Man cites the case of one worker who wrapped 13,000 incandescent bulbs a day; she found her outlet for creative impulse, her self-determination, her meaning in work by varying her wrapping movements a little from time to time. ... (L)ike the light bulb wrapper, I did find a ›certain scope for initiative,‹ and out of this slight freedom to vary activity, I developed a game of work.« »banana time« (1960)
  • 23. fun as systemic-emergent quality https://www.flickr.com/photos/benimoto/2084853203
  • 24. http://www.flickr.com/photos/8147452@N05/2913356030/sizes/o/
  • 25. Rainer Knizia »The life blood of game design is testing. ... Why are we playing games? Because it‘s fun. You cannot calculate this. You cannot test this out in an abstract manner. You have to play it.« shift run stop, episode 40 (2010)
  • 26. one recipe for one kind of fun 1. Identify the inherent learnable challenge 2. Restructure it optimally with clear goals, rules, feedback 3. Playtest and iterate
  • 27. j.mp/skillatoms
  • 28. summary
  • 29. to be A real mary poppins …
  • 30. don’t sugarcoat nonfunstuff ™
  • 31. find an interesting challenge …
  • 32. … structure it well …
  • 33. test it ‘til you get it right https://www.flickr.com/photos/benimoto/2084853203
  • 34. invite us to find the fun in it …
  • 35. “… and snap, the job’s a game.”
  • 36. sebastian@codingconduct.cc @dingstweets http://j.mp/skillatoms Thank you.
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