Bottom-Line Performance

Each week Brandon Penticuff, Bottom-Line Performance’s Director of Technology and admitted app-obsessed iOS user will share an app that he is using that week. Whether it is an app to make you more productive, teach you something, or simply entertain you, we hope that you’ll enjoy learning about them!

This week’s app is “Make My Own Puzzles“, a handy puzzle creation tool from Jeff Lowry. This very easy to use app will let you quickly build simple or complex word search or crossword style puzzles that feature content that you provide!

However, the puzzles that you create aren’t for playing in the app or even on your device. Instead the app provides you with the ability to export your puzzles as PDF, PNG, or JPG images that you can then print out or include as part of other material. You aren’t just restricted to exporting the puzzles either, the app also allows you to generate a version with hints or a full answer key as well. You can specify the grid-size of your puzzles and dictate the order of the content and the directions that your entries are displayed within the puzzle.

Our fantastic learning experts at Bottom-Line Performance have talked in depth about the fundamentals of gamification in learning, and one could argue that traditional puzzles like word search or crossword apply the some of these techniques in a fundamental way that has helped them stay relevant for over 100 years. Do you think your next training event would benefit from using an app like this one to create a customized puzzle with your content?

Care to try your hand at my technology-influenced crossword (hints provided!)? I will gift a copy of the app to the first person that provides the correct answers in the comments, think you can solve it??

Make My Own Puzzles – [.99 (Limited time)] (Universal App)

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

Most of us think of QR codes as that goofy looking bar code in the bottom corner of advertisements. Or maybe you have noticed them slapped on billboards that you could not possibly have time to stop and scan. Either way, chances are you have seen a QR Code recently!

For those who haven’t been exposed, a QR code is a two dimensional code  that can hold thousands of characters of information. They can be easily generated using numerous free online services and easily scanned with one of many free QR readers out there. QR Codes will easily link to text, an image, or a website.

It may seem like QR codes are just another marketing gimick, but not so fast: in his recent New York Times blog, Gene Marks offers an interesting insight:

“The QR code was actually invented by Denso — a Toyota company — to track automotive parts during the manufacturing process, but has since gained popularity as a marketing tool. QR codes can be used for just about anything you can think of.”

So while marketers are using QR codes almost everywhere you look, there are many ways QR codes can be put to work in your business…like in your training program.

On February 28th, BLP is hosting a Lunch and Learn at the Downtown Central Library sponsored by CIASTD. It’s an interactive scavenger hunt through the library where you will have the opportunity to scan QR Codes and reveal the next clue. By the end of our hour, you might know your way around better than the reference librarian!

QR Codes (particularly scavenger hunts) can be a fun tool to integrate into a corporate learning environment. Imagine using QR codes to:

• Create an interactive employee orientation scavenger hunt.
• Provide easily accessible reference materials for sales reps.
• Keep company policies within easy access.

Well, that was fun.

The last of the celebrities and East Coast football fans have left Indianapolis, and what a party it was! It was hard not to get caught up in the “Big Game” buzz last week. Football was on everyone’s brain, and we are so happy to have been able to share Gridiron Guru with you. This was part 1 of our m+s+g=l? learning lab experiment.

Our sign-ups were modest, but we had players from all over the world take part. The top score achieved topic mastery of all four paths AND amassed a Grab Bag score of 126,000,000. Talk about self-directed learning!

Part of social learning is that the “teacher” learns too. Unlike the bearded character in our game, we are NOT Gurus who have achieved mastery. We know what we are good at and love using our expertise, but there is always more to learn. And boy, did we learn a ton from putting this game together! Here are 5 take-aways for you to consider as you begin looking at ways to “gamify” your training and create opportunities for informal, non-traditional learning on mobile platforms.

1. Respond to results in real time. Social learning platforms enable facilitators to respond to the needs of learners in a more immediate, direct fashion. The admin side of the game engine we created for this (KnowledgeGuru)  has a robust set of reports that allow us to see what learning objectives and questions were the hardest. Here is a quick view at part of a learning objectives report:

Yes, we’re all hearing the buzz. The holy grail of learning is shifting to games/gamification, mobile, and social. Within my team at BLP, we actually are already believers of the value that blending these three things together can have on a learning experience….but we want proof, not just gut feelings about this. So – we invite you to join our newly-created “learning laboratory” at Bottom-Line Performance and be part of a little three-part experiment we’re going to do.

Part 1 coincides with the Professional Football Championship Not to Be Named for Copyright Purposes. Since it’s in Indianapolis this year and so are we, we felt it was a perfect fit. We’re creating a game called Gridiron Guru that targets the casual football fan. If you can already explain how teams score, but you’re clueless or unsure when you hear things like intentional grounding, pass interference, 4-3 defensive formation, nickel defense, etc., then this game should help you learn…while you also have fun and engage with other people who are doing the same thing as you.

We chose a fun theme and approach, but our goal is serious. How well does a social/mobile/gaming approach work in helping people learn…particularly when no one is pushing them to learn? You get to opt into our little experiment – and you only play as far as you want to play. Yeah, we are providing a small incentive (Top 3 scores entered into drawing for $25 App Store card), but there is only ONE winner and, hopefully, lots of learners/players. Let’s see how much learning happens with this format.

Our game begins Monday, January 30th. If you want to play (and we hope you do), start following @thekguru on Twitter. He’ll announce the game’s start and send out the game link on the 30th.  You will need to create an account to play – but you only provide a name and email…and we aren’t adding you to any contact list. This is just for the game. Ideally, you’ll play on your iPad. If you aren’t lucky enough to have an iPad yet, you can play on your desktop. Android is not an option for this little experiment of ours….yet.

Our game ends at kickoff time Sunday, February 5th. We’ll tweet out the winner (as well as posting on the Knowledge Guru game site). We’ll analyze our first round of data and send out the results.

For Part 2 of our experiment, you can expect a college basketball-themed game (in March, of course) that focuses on the game of basketball for the casual college b-ball lover. We’ll deliver Part 3 at the end of April or beginning of May, and focus on the far more serious topic of  effective learning design. We’ll use the Knowledge Guru game engine again for our March game – and then go 100% social at the end of April when we play our learning design game on Twitter.

So – come play with us and learn with us. We’ll share our results after each game – and then results overall. We’ll share what people seem to retain, like, dislike, etc. and how much people learn (our game engine has some wonderful reports we can share!!).

 

 

 

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of one-to-two page “briefs” regarding learning game design. This is part 8: When You Play Test…And You Find Out the Game Is Not Fun. If you would like to see the white paper in its entirety, check out the Learning Briefs section on our website.)

When you play test early versions of your game, you WILL find out some things don’t work as you envisioned. Perhaps the game is too hard – or too easy. Perhaps it takes too long to play. Perhaps some key learning isn’t happening. Or, perhaps the rules are confusing. There are several things you can change to improve the game play experience. Some of these are pulled from the Brathwaite and Schreiber book. Others are gleaned from our own experience.

• • Consider whether the user interface needs to be adjusted. Perhaps it’s creating confusion or it’s “snoresville” in design.
• • Change how the scoring works – either by giving people more points or fewer points, or by establishing a major penalty that causes people to really think before moving forward.
• • Allow players to affect game play of others.
• • Mess with the play order or the game loop. (This only applies when you are playing a multi-player game, obviously. In Uno, you can lay a card down that forces the turn order to change. In Farmville, there is a sequence – or game loop – of things a player can do. Changing the order can affect the fun factor.)
• • Get rid of a rule. In general, the fewer rules you have, the better you are. Note that there are exceptions to this. Example: Civilization is an extremely successful game that is very complex to learn.
• • Make a resource limited (or unlimited).
• • Get rid of – or add – a level or an entire round of play.
• • Use the “rule of two” – take a game value and double it or divide it by two.

 

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of one-to-two page “briefs” regarding learning game design. This is part 7: Play Testing Games — An Essential Step. If you would like to see the white paper in its entirety, check out the Learning Briefs section on our website.)

You can definitely brainstorm a game idea in an afternoon and build a simple prototype. However, going from the rough idea to a polished game takes iterations and time. A great game requires lots of tweaking, modifying, and refining. Creating prototypes and play testing them is critical to designing good games. Play testing is the only way you can figure out whether your core dynamics and game mechanics work.

Game play dynamics – how players react to the game and the impact of various rules and feature sets don’t emerge from your written design. They emerge as you play test, which is why you need to build prototypes. The cheapest and fastest way to play test is to start with paper prototypes. Even if you are ultimately creating an online game, first build it on paper (or perhaps in PowerPoint) to see if it works as you imagine it would. You can make changes much faster and cheaper when you haven’t invested hundreds of hours building the first rendition of your game.

* After initial play testing, you will creat a design document. You will update the design after each iteration of play testing. This is a living document, not a one-time creation.

 

A creative design team can come up with a simple learning game design in a few hours – and build a rudimentary prototype in a bit more than that. Once a prototype is in place, you need people to play it and other people to watch them play. You debrief the experience, and you build another, more robust prototype. However, the second rendition is STILL a prototype with many things mocked up rather than refined (e.g. we may create the cards associated with a board game in a Word table and then print and cut them up for initial rounds of play). A game board might be printed as a series of PDF pages and taped together for initial rounds of play. We avoid going to a production version until we’re confident we have the right user interface and play experience. Only after we are sure the cards are keepers do we invest the dollars in creating the polished version.

If the game is an online game, we may rough out animations and game mechanics in PowerPoint first or build one level and play it to see how we refine things before moving forward. True story: One of our biggest mistakes was with our Knowledge Guru™ game. We were so confident of our game design that we built an entire rendition of the game after documenting our initial design. Once we play tested, we found out our initial game mechanics didn’t work (translation: game wasn’t fun). We had to completely rebuild it. Ouch!

Rule to remember:

You cannot tell how fun or effective a game will be from reading a written design document. You have to play test. Game design and development is an iterative process. Be prepared to play and revise, play and revise again.

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of one-to-two page “briefs” regarding learning game design. This is part 6: Constraints that Affect Design. If you would like to see the white paper in its entirety, check out the Learning Briefs section on our website.)

Here are some of the big constraints that will influence design decisions:

How much money can you spend?

If you want a virtual world with multiple levels of play and a degree of realism that rivals your actual work environment, you can spend quite a bit of money. The commercial video games such as World of Warcraft cost seven figures to create – and took years to build. However, realistic simulations of a task can be done for much less than that. We created a troubleshooting simulation for a hemodialysis machine for less than $50K in the span of three months.

A casual game – similar to the Hangman game shown here – can be done for $10-25K.

 

Do not reject the idea of a game because you assume you cannot afford one. Consider, too, the ROI of a game. If the learner stays engaged – and retains the info and/or builds skill through the game – how much is that worth?

How much time do you have?

If you need something more than a casual game (e.g. the Hangman game), you need at least a few months to develop it, depending on the complexity. You cannot build a successful game from a traditional testing approach, such as alpha, beta, final. You need multiple rounds of play testing and revision to ensure you get a great game. Very simple games (e.g. the Hangman game) can be done in a month or less. This Knowledge Guru™ game took us several hundred hours to evolve – even though it seems simple on its surface.

If you want an online game, what platform(s) do you want the game to run on?

This decision can make you – and/or the game developers – crazy. Trying to figure out which – and how many platforms – to support is a major decision. Creating a game for a desktop or laptop means something very different than creating a mobile game for a tablet (which, in turn, is different than a game optimized for a phone). Your platform decisions can have an impact on your budget and your timeline. If you need to develop for multiple platforms, expect your timeline and budget to increase.

Who’s the target audience?

Is the target player someone experienced or new to games? Are they 20-somethings or 50-somethings? From experience, we’ve learned that 20-somethings don’t need – or want – much direction. They want to immediately start playing, and they will figure things out as they go along. A 50-something might want a complete SECTION of directions and then want navigational cues throughout the game. Know your audience!

What genre or category of game play are you looking for or are limited to?

Some clients want to avoid everything but the most vanilla game play experiences. They do not want to blow things up, kill people, or do anything that might be perceived as negative by anyone. You have to consider the corporate culture and figure out what is acceptable within it. Avoid, however, making judgments too quickly about what is acceptable and what is not.

What features do you want?

Do you want people to be able to create their own avatar? Do you want a sound track? Do you want videos? Do you want a world with multiple levels and layers? These features all influence budget and timeline.

 Rule to remember:

Theme matters tremendously in the player’s perception of the “fun factor” of a game. A simple hangman game can become exponentially more fun, for example, when we apply a “pirate” theme to it. Check out Walk the Plank here.

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of one-to-two page “briefs” regarding learning game design. This is part 5: Getting Ideas for Games. If you would like to see the white paper in its entirety, check out the Learning Briefs section on our website.)

There are numerous ways to approach the design of a game and some can get pretty sophisticated. These are a few simple methods outlined by Brathwaite and Schreiber in their book:

• • Blue-sky – Explore lots of possibilities, apply no constraints. This is a form of brainstorming.
• • Slow boil – Given a theme and a setting (and possibly some constraints), designers go through research phase with limited direction. The design gradually emerges over time.
• • Mechanic – Pick the mechanic and then design a game to it.
• • IP – Games based on intellectual property such as Glee quiz game, Spider-Man, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, etc. (Who hasn’t created a Jeopardy game at some point?)
• • Story – Developing a game based on a story. One of our designers, for example, built an entire game around the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
• • MDA (Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics model) – What feeling do you want to evoke? In this approach, you ask that question FIRST – and then select the dynamic and define the mechanics or rules you think will get you there. Here’s a great example where the aesthetic – or feeling – aspect probably came first.

 

How BLP Approaches Game Design

We’ve used Brathwaite and Schreiber’s “challenges” within their book to spark our ideas. We’ve learned that a two- to three-hour design meeting is an optimal way to spark design ideas for a game. We create small design teams of two to four people and give them the learning goal and objectives we need to meet, along with a representation of the kind of content we believe the game has to include.

From there we let them choose a core dynamic and a theme, then see what they can come up with in the span of a couple of hours. The end result is a paper prototype that we can play test as part of the meeting. We’ve gotten excellent results using this technique. We’ve even gotten brave enough to include clients in these sessions – and they love it.

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of one-to-two page “briefs” regarding learning game design. This is part 4: Getting Started at Creating Games.If you would like to see the white paper in its entirety, check out the Learning Briefs section on our website.)

You can create a fully-functioning simple game in an afternoon – though, admittedly, this would be a FIRST rendition of a game – not the final version. Here are two examples of games we created in the span of two hours.

Using Challenges for Game Designers as our idea generator, we’ve created games – just for fun – on a broad array of topics such as hand-washing, chickens crossing a road, auto collecting, etc. You can too – following a modification of the four-steps outlined in Brathwaite’s book:

1. 1. Start with a topic, an instructional goal and learning objectives.
2. 2. Think of a theme. At this point, don’t be super-critical. Brainstorm lots of different options before picking one to move forward with.
3. 3. Select a core dynamic, and then
4. 4. Start defining some simple rules of play.

A Word about Themes

Themes can be ANYTHING – we had a recent team come up with a game whose theme revolved around Oscar night in Hollywood. In learning games, your themes are frequently contextual to the employee’s job or the skills being learned in the game. A few years ago, we did a game called “The Global Coaching Challenge” for a pharmaceutical company and the theme was the launch of a new drug. The goal was to be the team that launched the product in the least number of years. Since the learning goal was to improve managers’ skill in coaching employees from diverse cultures, players’ success in handling a wide array of coaching situations dictated the length of time it took them to launch their drug. Every time they successfully handled a coaching situation, they gained months. When they handled a situation badly, they lost months on the timeline.

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of one-to-two page “briefs” regarding learning game design. This is part 3: What Makes for a Meaningful Game. If you would like to see the white paper in its entirety, check out the Learning Briefs section on our website.)

Knowing the terminology doesn’t mean you can create a fun and meaningful learning game. Creating games is not rocket science, but it is something that improves with practice. One key skill is being able to create meaningful game decisions that challenge your players (at the right level to avoid frustration) and help them learn.

Good game design creates opportunities for players to make meaningful decisions that affect the outcome of the game. A few examples:

• • Games like Tetris and Chess keep players’ minds busy by forcing them to consider which one of several possible moves they want to take next. In taking these paths, players know they may be prolonging or completely screwing up the entire game.
• • When we recently created a learning game on product formulation types, one key aspect was choosing which questions to ask the customer. Learners’ decisions about which questions to ask directly affected their sales. Asking the wrong questions meant lost sales.
• • A simple quiz-style game might reward people handsomely for answering correctly – but penalize them heavily for guessing. An obvious decision, then, is whether to guess or not.

Whenever you set up a rule that allows the player to make a choice in a game and that choice affects the game’s outcome, you are creating meaning. As Carnegie Mellon’s Trybus says in her white paper on learning games, “To progress in a game is to learn; when we are actively engaged with a game, our minds are experiencing the pleasure of grappling with (and coming to understand) a new system.

In order to create choice, there has to be another option the player could choose that has meaning as well. This concept of good game design correlates with the instructional design of good questions or learning activities: if you only have one viable option, then you have written a bad multiple-choice question or created a poor learning activity.