This week in Design Thinking we split off into groups to start working on our collaborative assignment. My group seems enthusiastic, which is always a good way to start, and we have a good mix of backgrounds and ages. We have already had two meetings outside of class time, and I think we’re going to be really proactive in completing the assignment.
Outside of class, I spent some time listening to the Design Better Podcast, specifically an episode from July 2017 with David Kelley, founder of IDEO and Stanford d.school:
He particularly talks about the need to design to be integrated into every part of business, that design is not just about how things look, that experiences, and operating procedures and workplace training, and education and interactions, all need to be designed thoughtfully. This leads to a need for cross-specialist teams, made up of people from diverse backgrounds, like anthropologists and philosophers, engineers, and designers.
This Forbes article talks about cross-cultural teams being more creative than homogeneous teams. A study by William Maddux, of INSEAD showed that people who had spent time living abroad (vs holidaying) were more creative in negotiations, and research by Carmit Tadmor of Tel Aviv University, found that “bi-culturals had greater levels of integrative creativity, which is the ability to consider and combine multiple perspectives and points of view”. (taken from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tendayiviki/2016/12/06/why-diverse-teams-are-more-creative/#39ea5b1f7262 02/08/2020)
So the key takeaway: try to work with people who are not like you!
Chicken of the Week
Name: Elsa Breed: ISA brown Age: 9 months Eggs/week: 3
Fun Fact: This photo was nearly impossible to take, as Elsa thinks she is a lapdog and wants to be on you at all times.
These are the words that a wrote in big dark lines across my notebook during Design Thinking this week.
As designers, it will be our job to deliver for the client – but part of the job description is thinking outside of the boundaries, and really narrowing down what the problem actually is. This means having a mind that is open to challenging the status quo, and the bravery to suggest a reset.
This bravery and willingness to pivot from failure mean that Design Thinking is increasingly being recognised as critical to solving the world’s ‘wicked problems’, that is:
‘problems so persistent, pervasive, and slippery that they seem insoluble. Unlike the relatively tame problems found in mathematics, chess, and cost accounting, wicked problems tend to shift disconcertingly with every attempt to solve them. Moreover, the solutions are never right or wrong, just better or worse.’
While our end goal should definitely be changing the world and attempting to solve these wicked problems, it’s important for us to understand how to actively think like designers on a much-less-wicked level. With that in mind, we undertook an exercise in class, breaking in to groups and discussing our wallets.
While it may initially seem obvious that a wallet is simply a device for holding cards and money and not much beyond that, our group actually found that most of the words used to describe our wallets were emotive – our wallets are deeply sentimental and meaningful items to us, holding memories and moments in time. So redesigning the wallet would not so much be about the cards and money, and more about the photographs, and places to keep notes, and longevity.
Chicken of the week
Name: Summer Breed: Welsummer x Age: 6 years Eggs/week: 0, another freeloader!
Fun Fact: Don’t let that fluffy neck and smiling eye fool you; Summer is a stone cold killer and would stab you if she could hold a knife.
Uni started back up this week, and with my recent transfer into Design I’m having to learn a whole lot of new software, a new referencing system, new tutors and just a new way of uni-ing (It’s a word).
From my previous studies in Philosophy and Digital Media, I’m very used to checking in online, downloading a load of reading and then taking it off to a bath or a cosy corner of my lounge room to plough through in the evenings. I’m finding my design subjects are much more task-oriented, “learn how to do this on Illustrator, practise gestural pencil strokes, download these 5 software programs and learn how to use them… please.”
Gone are the days of uni being me, a book or five, and a word processor!
I’m loving it though, and the one reprieve to all this new-ness is ADD101 – Design Thinking, which I was pleased to find out would involve my old friends: reading, and research.
In our week one seminar we were introduced to Design Thinking and some different design models employed by various organisations. I learned that the goal is for us to employ Human Centred Design (HCD). HCD integrates the needs of people, the possiblities of technology, and the requirements for success. It needs to be desirable, feasible, and viable.
We looked at two design models in particular, IDEO and d.school:
graphic made by me based on week 1 seminar
graphic made by me based on week 1 seminar
While these models are slightly different, the essential approach is to understand and empathise with the person/people who needs your design expertise. By really understanding the problem, you can make a solution that will fully address it.
My key takeaway from the seminar was something Nicole said:
We need to delve deeper into the reasons things are the way they are, rather than reactively solving the apparent surface problems as they arise.
Interesting stuff, right?! I’m looking forward to seeing where this subject takes me.
Chicken of the Week
I’ve got 11 chickens, and there are 11 teaching week, so it only seems right to provide a weekly chicken profile!
Name: Pepper Breed: unknown Wyandotte-mix Age: at least 6 years, maybe older Eggs/week: none – she’s a freeloader!
Fun fact: Pepper was inherited when the last tenants of our property moved out. She shares a name with our youngest daughter. We’ve tried for 3 years to change the chicken’s name, but the kids won’t let us.
At the beginning of March, it was suggested to our Digital Media cohort that we take a look at Habitica and how it uses gamification to get you to complete a fairly basic self-made checklist.
It’s pretty simple, you create an avatar, make yourself a list of habits and daily tasks (mine are mostly things like ‘make my bed’, ‘walk the dog’, and ‘brush my teeth’ – I don’t want to do anything I’m not going to be able to get top marks at!) and then tick those tasks off when you’ve completed them. Habits can be marked as completed multiple times a day, daily tasks just once.
As a group, we leapt at the opportunity to socialise our motivation, and quickly made a ‘party’ so that we could go on ‘quests’:
While Habitica isn’t something I think I will use long term, I have found that it is the social aspect of not wanting to disappoint my ‘party’ that has me going back. I have taken to logging in just before bed each night and checking off my list, purely so that I can see the party quests closer to completion. When one of my tasks turns red (a sign that I haven’t done it for a few days – ‘journaling’ tends to stay red for me!), I feel an obligation to do the task and tick it off so that our party’s health stays strong. From that point of view, I suppose Habitica has successfully made me more likely to do the tasks that aren’t just automatic for me.
I also really like that there is a to-do option of things that you don’t get penalised for not completing daily but that can contribute to your overall points, I have found that useful for putting study goals and reminders in.
The social aspect of gamification has been shown to have a HUGE impact on how motivated users are to get involved. Less than 20% of adults identify as a ‘player’, that is, those who value the game elements of any activity over the core activity itself and 60% are either ‘free spirits’, ‘philanthropists’, or ‘socialisers’, all profiles that value the social side of gamification over rewards and points (Bovermann & Bastiaens, 2020 p.8).
As someone who isn’t really motivated to collect armour or store up coins and gems, it’s the worry of disappointing my team that has me completing the tasks I’ve set myself. I also really enjoy the chat thread that we have, all wondering why a certain member has WAY MORE prizes than the rest of us.. but every team needs a captain, right?
I do think one of the major wins for Habitica is that it allows people with diverse wants and needs to work together towards parallel but unshared goals. Each participant’s habit and daily task list is completely private, yet our completion of these adds up towards the team’s overall success. It’s a team of individuals.
Have you used Habitica? Let me know about your experience in the comments.
Reference: Bovermann, K & Bastiaens, TJ 2020,‘Towards a motivational design? Connecting gamification user types and online learning activities.’ Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, Volume 15, Article 1 pp. 1-18
When I was 20, many moons ago, I attempted to study online while working. The world was a very different place, and while my university at that time assured me they had a ‘state of the art’ online learning system, what that really meant was that I got sent paper packs of information, and had to log on weekly to do a quiz, this quiz then got emailed to my tutor who would mark it manually and send it back. There was no online in-person seminar situation, no instant feedback, just discussion boards… you’ll be pleased to know that University subject discussion boards have always been a ghost town, that’s nothing new.
While adult education has taken a long and luxurious stroll into being digitised, with the assurance that adult learners can simply ‘figure it/something/themselves out’ if something isn’t quite right for them, early childhood education is seen (rightly) as somewhat precious, and delicate. The difference of course, is that adult learners and children are different beasts – studies have shown that only 14% of adult learners identify themselves as ‘players’, willing to participate in educational tasks purely for the gamified aspects, most adults (over 50%) are far more intrinsically motivated by the social and academic aspects of their online learning (Boverman & Bastiaens, 2020 p.8).
Conversely to this, children are significantly ‘players’ at the beginning of their formal education by virtue of nature, but there is resistance from a large and vocal cohort to introducing digital game-based media (DGBM) for children, with many educators regarding digital games to be ‘less developmentally, socially and culturally beneficial to students than outdoor play’ (Nolan & McBride, 2014, p.595). However there are those who seek to enhance education with DGBM:
Perhaps the resistance from traditionalists is because of the way these game-based learning opportunities are designed…
Study Ladder is an Australian designed educational website that gamifies the national curriculum by through a reward room. With children currently learning at home with online and over-the-phone guidance from their teachers, there has never been more need for engaging DGBM to allow children to continue their educations in an engaged and enthusiastic manner.
On Study Ladder, curriculum-based questions are simply presented with either multiple choice answers or a space for children to type an answer, correct answers are rewarded with points that can be ‘spent’ on things within the site. A brief very non-scientific survey of three children (my own) who have been given work to do on Study Ladder revealed that while it isn’t their favourite learning app/site, they do enjoy the reward structure within it.
I spoke to Primary School teacher Pam Kerridge about her use of Study Ladder:
Gamification in Education – by B Hale
Study Ladder is a very basically gamified educational tool, this may be part of its success; it is not intimidating to the educators that instigate its use in the classroom, and it is simple for students to use. Success as a product does not necessarily equate to success as an educational tool though, as Pam mentioned in the video; she uses it mostly as a revision tool. Nolan and McBride note that many gamified educational tools have an emphasis on providing information and feedback to a dated educational system, rather than on immersive entertaining educational experiences for the participants (2014, p596) ; that gamified ‘standardised curriculum is one of competition, achievement and reward structures that reflects a hidden curriculum of values and norms in keeping with existing power relations and institutional structures.’ (2014, p597)
So a distinction is needed – Study Ladder is a good example of gamified education within the current curriculum and educational model, however it does lean towards only incorporating minor gamified elements to an otherwise digitised-book-work program. It is gamified, but not gameful, it is not immersive and does not allow for autonomy during play.
With the recognition that children’s learning motivations are essentially different to those of adults, is there a way that gamified education could be less a gamified version of the chalkboard and bookwork we’ve been doing for 150 years, and more an immersive version of the play that children participate in naturally? Leaps and bounds are being made, with open world maths games like Prodigy and Be Internet Awesome allowing students autonomy and the social aspects of other players to interact with while they learn, but there’s still a long way to go.
Let me know your thoughts on this topic in the comments section, feel free to like and share!
To hear my full interview with Pam Kerridge please listen to my podcast.
Motivation can be hard to come by, some of us like the pressure of a deadline to get us moving, or community feed back or pressure. No matter what our chosen incentive is, there’s someone somewhere using it to gamify a non-game experience.
Sometimes, for whatever reason, the gamification doesn’t last long – in 2017 Facebook trialled a messenger ‘streak’ counter, that kept tally of your daily conversations with any particular contact and gave you a badge if you reached certain milestones. It had a huge impact on me and the way I conduct my business, you can listen to my experience here:
This is an example of badges – the little shield with your tally and the lightning emoji next to it were an award for a certain behaviour. Badges are an effective way to introduce a goal to an otherwise aim-less activity; that is to say, not a useless activity, but simply one with no end achievement. Talking to your friends over messenger is not an activity with a purpose within itself, even if you strive to get particular information throughout the interaction, messenger is not crucial in the arrangement.
..research has demonstrated that clear goals increase behaviour, based on the expectations they set and that the completion of goals increases positive emotions such as the experience of self-efficacy and satisfaction… In addition to the goals linked to specific service activities, another goal emerges from the collection behaviour associated with badges – unlocking all the badges can also be considered as another goal that badges provide.
(Hamari, 2017, p476)
Badges and running tallies can create a goal independent of the actual conversation. The introduction of badges not only gives users a goal to work towards, it can increase curiosity about other facets of the experience (.. will xyz get me another badge??..)
Though the messenger streak trial was short-lived, facebook introduced new badges to gamify the app in 2018 – you can now be a ‘top fan’ and claim badges that display on your own page. The more you interact with a page or person, the more likely you are to get a ‘top fan’ (a shield), a ‘valued commenter’ (a speech bubble with a star in it), or ‘conversation starter’ (a speech bubble) badge. Start your own group and you’ll get a ‘founding member’ badge in the shape of a leaf.
While I’m yet to hear anyone specifically say they are chasing facebook badges, they do need to be ‘claimed’ in order to display on your profile, so users are definitely individually motivated to click that button and claim those badges. Facebook’s onto a temporary winner; studies show that the novelty and curiosity towards new badges leads to increased user interaction, it’s short-lived though, as when the novelty wears off the behaviour also decreases. (Hamari, 2017, 476)
So, to badge or not to badge? I think if the aim is to increase engagement then the introduction of badges needs to be incremental and dynamic, in order to avoid using users who get bored of them. Like any reward, there needs to be work involved in receiving it in order for it to have value.
Do you collect digital badges? What is your favourite gamified app using to incentivise you? Leave me a comment and let me know.
References- Hamari, J. ‘Do badges increase user activity? A field experiment on the effects of gamification.’ Computers in Human Behaviour, 2017, p 469-478. retrieved 9th April 2020
When I was small, I thought it was perfectly normal to move house, and move house frequently. I thought everyone had pen pals all over the world. From a very young age I got used to the idea that you didn’t get to stay in one place with one group of friends – such is the Navy Brat upbringing.
Now, as an adult, I have continued until recently to live a largely nomadic life, chasing opportunity and improvement. My three children were born in three different Australian states in a 4 year period, I’ve lived at 11 different addresses in 15 years. My husband is a Kiwi, all his family are in Christchurch NZ, and my family live 600km away in New South Wales.
All this is to say: I’ve been socially distanced, by choice or otherwise, from the people I care about for most of my life. Not seeing my family and oldest friends is normal for me.
So here they are, my top 3 ways to keep in touch when you can’t get together:
Email
I know we all have many many instant ways of communicating in our 2020 lives, but there is potency to writing more than a text message. There is something that happens to the things we say when we choose long-form communication. Pick someone you trust, send them an email about how staying at home feels to you. If you don’t have someone to write to, write it down and send it to me.
My oldest daughter got her own email address a few years ago at 7 years old. She has a lovely relationship with her grandparents and aunts and uncles and I like to think it’s because independent emailing allows her to have those casual private conversations with our extended family that would otherwise happen on the couch, or at bedtime if we could spend more physical time together.
‘Writing the Letter’ by Fritz Zuber Buhler (CC by 1.0)
Instant Messaging
We use instant messaging apps like Hangouts, Messenger, and Whatsapp daily with our friends and family. We keep each other updated with the absolutely mundane. The things you would comment on if you visited someone’s house – stick it in a message!
Changed your furniture around? Stick it in a message! Done some gardening? Stick it in a message! Proud that you finally folded all the laundry? Stick it in a message!
Encourage the people around you to do the same. Knowing the mundane about people is TRULY KNOWING people.
‘Apps de mensajería para iOS: Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Messages’ by Microsiervos(CC by 2.0)
Many of the instant messaging apps have video call options, plus there are services like Skype and Zoom that allow us to spend time together without being together. We have recently introduced karaoke night, where we pick a song, dress up and have a sing along with my parents online. Even if you’re not up for costumes and ‘activities’, watch a movie together or read the same blog then have a chat about it.
Beatles night – photo by B Hale 27.03.2020
As someone who’s been doing the socially distant thing for a long time, I know it’s not easy. I know that recording things so they can be passed on rather than sharing in real time isn’t normal for most people, but it’s do-able. You can do it.
If you’re feeling isolated or need to talk to someone, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
While you’re at it, go through your ‘blocked’ friends list on facebook. Seeing people you have deliberately excluded from your online life will light a fire in your belly and energise you.
… I don’t know… go for a walk or something?
Write a blog about 10 ways to procrastinate under the guise of productivity.
There you have it. 10 guaranteed ways to improve your procrastination.
This podcast briefly discusses the positive and negative influences that social media has on politics and in particular, our political leaders. From Trump’s vitriol, to Jacinda Adern’s warm-hug of a facebook feed, the different ways our leaders embrace or shun social media is fascinating.
In creating my first podcast, my biggest hurdle was getting off the ground. It is such a different medium to a blog post, or essay. I started at the beginning – I decided to read about the impact of social media on politics, and I quickly found that it is an incredibly divisive subject, for every person that thinks social media is democratising and equalising, there is someone who thinks it is damaging or unhelpful in the political sphere.
As such, I decided to use the key points that were argued in my sources to launch a discussion about both sides of this argument, that social media is both very useful to the individual in their bid to have unhindered access to their political leaders, and also that social media is clearly not un-biased, open-journalism, where we get to learn freely all sides to every argument. The jury is somewhat out on Social Media and whether it is good or bad for politics, and that’s ok. I would argue that just like any other form of media, we should be wary of getting all our points-of-view from the one mouth.
I started by writing a basic essay as I would on any topic, I then read this essay out loud and recorded it as a voice memo to my phone. I listened back and noted anything that seemed too formal or contrived for spoken word, and edited accordingly, I was surprised that 5 minutes of speech is only 0about 800 words and had to really cut down what I had written to bare-bones. I then recorded my podcast on a Rodecaster Pro and edited in Adobe Audition. The process of importing multiple channels of sounds was definitely new to me, and I spent quite a lot of time on Google tutorials to learn how to use Audition the way I wanted to.
I found the music I used in the background online through dig.ccmixter.org, a website for creative commons sounds. I chose it specifically as it suited the indecisive, in-turmoil tone of my podcast, this is why it plays at a low level throughout my podcast instead of just fading out.
While editing, I found that I am an especially fast talker, and even after re-recording and deliberately being slower, I had to retro-fit 1 second pauses between points. This was easy enough to do in Audition, but is definitely something for me to work on in the future.
I was surprised by how intuitive the editing software was, there were a few minor flubs (ALWAYS BACKUP EVERYTHING!) but it otherwise went very smoothly. From recording sound to uploading the finished podcast took me about 2 hours, a process I’m sure will speed up with practise.
Haidt, J & Rose-Stockwell, T, ‘Why it feels like everything is going haywire: Social media rapidly changed how we communicate, in ways that destabilize democracy. What can we do about that?’, The Atlantic, December 1 2019, pp. 57-70
Piechota, G, ‘Media in Election Processes’, Communication Today, Vol 2, 2011, pp. 44-51
Shafer, J G, ‘Donald Trump’s “Political Incorrectness”: Neoliberalism as Frontstage Racism on Social Media’, Social Media and Society Journal, July-September 2017, pp. 1-10
To be honest, it hadn’t crossed my mind to make that part of my bio at all. Not that I don’t love my children, and not that I’m not proud of being their Mum… but at the time I just didn’t feel it was relevant to my bio. I didn’t see how ‘Mother’, fit in to the list of my interests. It’s just who I am, it’s not what I’m interested in professionally, nor even what I spend most of my time doing. I blew Miss 9 off with a ‘oh, I don’t want to plaster you guys all over the internet for strangers’ line, which appeased her, and we got on with our evening.
Later in the week I was musing again about why I hadn’t included ‘mother’ or ‘wife’, when I HAD included ‘micro-homesteader’ and ‘ceramicist’ (though I’m not particularly good at either of those things). Turns out, I’ve got some deep-seeded anti-Mother sentiment. I’m a regular Mother-hater.
Before you gather the pitchforks, it’s not the people I have the problem with; it’s the word. Mummy-blogger, mum-preneur, mum-boss, ugh. A prefix used to diminish, used to make any activity second in line to its non-Mummy counterpart. I can feel the sub-par standard it implies and that’s a weakness that simply doesn’t exist.
In the same way that Women’s sport is always called the ‘Womens xxxx league’, and people who play video games who identify as female are #gamergirls, ‘Mummy’ is a prefix that says, ‘This person’s main identity is defined by the people she keeps alive, she’s not a REAL xxx, she’s not the default. She’s not as good as the REAL blogger/sportsman/scientist/gamer so let’s let her speak a bit and we’ll humour her’.
I don’t say this to belittle Mothers who blog at all. Women blogging about their day to day was an absolute lifeline when my children were small.. they were the community I didn’t have locally, and some of the parents I met through those blogs are my best friends. Women writing down their stories kept me going through some really hard times, those writers were life savers. That said you can put money on the fact that 7/10 male bloggers are probably Dads and they sure as heck aren’t called Daddy-bloggers. I’d take that bet.
After a debilitating bout of post-natal depression in 2012, a psychologist set me the exercise of defining myself without my relation to anyone else; to find the qualities that would endure even if everyone else disappeared in some freak accident. A bleak exercise, maybe, but an extremely useful one to someone with a tenuous grasp on their place in the world and the value they contribute.
I am Bec. I am kind, generous, creative. I am silly, and serious. I like to learn. I struggle to get through a day without music. I’m anxious, often depressed, I stick my tongue out when I’m concentrating and bite my nails absentmindedly. I enjoy red wine, I enjoy it more with company. I wear bright red lipstick when I’m sad, I like to spend time by myself, but struggle to turn down an invitation. I was and am a whole person with or without the three people I grew and their Dad who I married.
There are a thousand bloggers on almost as many platforms who proudly self-identify as Mummy-bloggers, and to them I say kudos – but until the day I can present myself to the world without the expectation that my leading identifiers will be ‘mother’ or ‘wife’, I’m not interested in the title, thanks.
Bec Hale 