trainingindustry.com publishes a quarterly online journal. The Summer '08 issue is dedicated to Games and Simulations: Playing to Learn - with articles written by several experts in the industry - including yours truly.
I like the format of this journal, they have a guest editor for each issue and follow a clean, easy to read format for the magazine. Enjoy:
http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ/home.asp
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
The Great Button Debate
As I currently have several simulation projects underway, each with their own functionality set, I've been up against The Great Button Debate over the last several weeks. No, not the new kids summer action movie starring Abigail Breslin and four animated macrame gnomes who enjoy solving mysteries that baffle the local police force and sewing buttons onto strangers' socks while they sleep. I'm talking about the following learning conundrum: for an immersive learning simulation created to mimic a real world environment (tweaked for optimal training), how much clicking is too much?
In one camp you have the eLearning converts who like Next and Back buttons. If a pice of dialog or a subtle clue is missed, they argue, and the intent is learning, then the learner should be able to go back and review the scene he or she just passed. If there is text on screen and the learner reads quickly or is ready to move on, they argue further, sitting around without the ability to advance the simulation causes him or her to check out mentally. "You'll lose the learner without giving them control over their movement," they wail and gnash.
Of my currently active set of seven simulations in development, three have Next and Back buttons.
In the other camp you have the hardcore simulation designers who argue that no simulation should have Next and Back buttons. Ever. Really. Like never. If the learner can't go backwards in real life, they argue, why let them in the simulation? If a sim is meant to give the learner quality "reps" in a limited-risk environment, they huff, make the repetitions as real and immersive as possible. Advance the simulation through the audio/video elements rather than user clicks. Use the mouse only to make choices at decision points. In fast, this camp has a personal vendetta against the mouse. Too much clicking, they say, leads to the feeling that it's just a training exercise to be completed rather than an immersive story.
Of my currently active set of seven simulations in development, three have no Next or Back buttons.
Is there a middle ground between the two? One of my simulations sure hopes so--it contains a Continue button only. The user is still required to advance the storyline by clicking Continue after each scene, but no backward movement is possible. Thus, the user must be responsible for listening attentively, for accepting the consequences of his or her decisions, and for keeping the simulation moving forward. However, it's still a click after each scene.
Now, I've obviously oversimplified each side of the argument, but this is a blog entry and not a white paper. Plus, what I think isn't as important to me as what you think, so I'll wrap it up with a call to action. In the words of Dennis Miller, "I wanna know what you think, America." Type in your comments on where you stand on The Great Button Debate and get a free "Would you like sims with that?" t-shirt courtesy of PDG and Vandalay Industries.*
*Free t-shirt supply is limited to the first zero people that comment.
In one camp you have the eLearning converts who like Next and Back buttons. If a pice of dialog or a subtle clue is missed, they argue, and the intent is learning, then the learner should be able to go back and review the scene he or she just passed. If there is text on screen and the learner reads quickly or is ready to move on, they argue further, sitting around without the ability to advance the simulation causes him or her to check out mentally. "You'll lose the learner without giving them control over their movement," they wail and gnash.
Of my currently active set of seven simulations in development, three have Next and Back buttons.
In the other camp you have the hardcore simulation designers who argue that no simulation should have Next and Back buttons. Ever. Really. Like never. If the learner can't go backwards in real life, they argue, why let them in the simulation? If a sim is meant to give the learner quality "reps" in a limited-risk environment, they huff, make the repetitions as real and immersive as possible. Advance the simulation through the audio/video elements rather than user clicks. Use the mouse only to make choices at decision points. In fast, this camp has a personal vendetta against the mouse. Too much clicking, they say, leads to the feeling that it's just a training exercise to be completed rather than an immersive story.
Of my currently active set of seven simulations in development, three have no Next or Back buttons.
Is there a middle ground between the two? One of my simulations sure hopes so--it contains a Continue button only. The user is still required to advance the storyline by clicking Continue after each scene, but no backward movement is possible. Thus, the user must be responsible for listening attentively, for accepting the consequences of his or her decisions, and for keeping the simulation moving forward. However, it's still a click after each scene.
Now, I've obviously oversimplified each side of the argument, but this is a blog entry and not a white paper. Plus, what I think isn't as important to me as what you think, so I'll wrap it up with a call to action. In the words of Dennis Miller, "I wanna know what you think, America." Type in your comments on where you stand on The Great Button Debate and get a free "Would you like sims with that?" t-shirt courtesy of PDG and Vandalay Industries.*
*Free t-shirt supply is limited to the first zero people that comment.
Designers and Producers
Quite often I run into folks familiar with design, but not familiar with adult learning theory. They're often curious about what I do for a living, but have a difficult time grasping what it is.
I've had this conversation a hundred times. I start with an analogy to "Choose your own Adventure" books and end with a discussions about the design process, interface design, and the joys of working in the training industry.
A very close friend of mine is an architect and we often discuss "design" as a universal process that transcends the end product. There are a lot of skills and qualities that make up a good designer, but two of the qualities that I believe make a good designer are patience and self control.
When a client comes to you and asks you to design something for them: a better house, a better hammer, a better learning engagement, etc. many 'creative' folks immediately jump to the solution when they should be asking questions and listening. Keeping my mouth shut is a skill I have yet to master, but when I consciously avoid telling and focus on asking open-ended questions the probability of success increases exponentially.
This is the difference between people that Design and people that Produce. People that produce are good listeners, but they don't continue asking questions once a solution is proposed. Their focus is productivity, getting something done. When they're good at it, they're worth their weight in gold.
If a client says, "I want a 2.5 bath, four bedroom house. I like open floor plans and Victorian designs" an architect who is a producer may ask closed questions like, "Do you want a garage?" or "How many doors?" or, tragically, may begin sketching floor plans and elevations.
An architect who is a designer will ask more questions, "How will you use this house?" or "What do you like about where you live now?" They risk putting the client off by giving the impression that they're challenging their thinking.
But the designer approaches the client's need with the realization that the client has to live with this thing... not the designer. Once the designer has fully defined the parameters of the need, the solutions come more easily. Smart designers work with small armies of skilled producers who ground them in reality.
I've had this conversation a hundred times. I start with an analogy to "Choose your own Adventure" books and end with a discussions about the design process, interface design, and the joys of working in the training industry.
A very close friend of mine is an architect and we often discuss "design" as a universal process that transcends the end product. There are a lot of skills and qualities that make up a good designer, but two of the qualities that I believe make a good designer are patience and self control.
When a client comes to you and asks you to design something for them: a better house, a better hammer, a better learning engagement, etc. many 'creative' folks immediately jump to the solution when they should be asking questions and listening. Keeping my mouth shut is a skill I have yet to master, but when I consciously avoid telling and focus on asking open-ended questions the probability of success increases exponentially.
This is the difference between people that Design and people that Produce. People that produce are good listeners, but they don't continue asking questions once a solution is proposed. Their focus is productivity, getting something done. When they're good at it, they're worth their weight in gold.
If a client says, "I want a 2.5 bath, four bedroom house. I like open floor plans and Victorian designs" an architect who is a producer may ask closed questions like, "Do you want a garage?" or "How many doors?" or, tragically, may begin sketching floor plans and elevations.
An architect who is a designer will ask more questions, "How will you use this house?" or "What do you like about where you live now?" They risk putting the client off by giving the impression that they're challenging their thinking.
But the designer approaches the client's need with the realization that the client has to live with this thing... not the designer. Once the designer has fully defined the parameters of the need, the solutions come more easily. Smart designers work with small armies of skilled producers who ground them in reality.
Friday, May 16, 2008
More on Failure
A friend recently sent me a link to a series of games called Terminal House. These are part of a genre of games called "Escape Games" or "Escape Rooms" where you find yourself in a locale with no memory of the events that got you there. You have to find different things in the room, figure out how they interact with other things, find clues, solve puzzles and get out of the room.
The other night I found myself stuck in one of these games, and rather than google a "cheat" or "walkthrough" of the game, I started clicking on practically every pixel of the screen to see what I was missing. Eventually, I found something behind a piece of furniture and moved on. Now, if I was really stuck in this room, I'd probably do something just like that. But in the gaming world, it was clear to me I was acting in desperation.
Two days before I played this game, I handed in and article on failure, simulations and learning. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. But I've always felt like my presentations and articles on this topic are incomplete. I've been asked about the suspension of elements of reality and how and when to challenge the learner. Often, the answers to this are difficult to quantify. "I'll know when I see it" does not instill confidence in the client... but I think this desperation thing is a clue.
Learners can be motivated by challenging situations, but if you're driving them to acts of desperation, you know you've gone too far. You've probably gone too far if you're even approaching desperation.
I once worked for a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy. As we were slogging through our final six months, sales "opportunities" kept rolling in - but very few of them were qualified or based on our actual value proposition. There's even one legendary story about a sales guy who piled a group of consultants into a car and drove them down to a "sales call on a great opportunity with a very motivated client." The consultants didn't find out that the client had never accepted the meeting until they got down there. After a two-hour drive, they discovered that the client wasn't even in the office that day. This sales guy dragged three very busy consultants to a face-to-face cold call!
In the world of ILS, what would be the purpose of making your learners act desperately like that? None that I can see. At that point, there isn't anything a sim can do to fix your problems...
The other night I found myself stuck in one of these games, and rather than google a "cheat" or "walkthrough" of the game, I started clicking on practically every pixel of the screen to see what I was missing. Eventually, I found something behind a piece of furniture and moved on. Now, if I was really stuck in this room, I'd probably do something just like that. But in the gaming world, it was clear to me I was acting in desperation.
Two days before I played this game, I handed in and article on failure, simulations and learning. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. But I've always felt like my presentations and articles on this topic are incomplete. I've been asked about the suspension of elements of reality and how and when to challenge the learner. Often, the answers to this are difficult to quantify. "I'll know when I see it" does not instill confidence in the client... but I think this desperation thing is a clue.
Learners can be motivated by challenging situations, but if you're driving them to acts of desperation, you know you've gone too far. You've probably gone too far if you're even approaching desperation.
I once worked for a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy. As we were slogging through our final six months, sales "opportunities" kept rolling in - but very few of them were qualified or based on our actual value proposition. There's even one legendary story about a sales guy who piled a group of consultants into a car and drove them down to a "sales call on a great opportunity with a very motivated client." The consultants didn't find out that the client had never accepted the meeting until they got down there. After a two-hour drive, they discovered that the client wasn't even in the office that day. This sales guy dragged three very busy consultants to a face-to-face cold call!
In the world of ILS, what would be the purpose of making your learners act desperately like that? None that I can see. At that point, there isn't anything a sim can do to fix your problems...
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Industry Books
You may have noticed a new area in the right-hand navigation pane of this blog: Industry Books.
Karl Kapp's GGG4L is self explanatory.
As for the others, well, I'm a bit of a User Experience/Interaction Design nerd. Why? Well, two reasons:
1. If I could get into the wayback machine and find 17-year old Phil (17YOP), I'd probably tell him to go study Industrial Design or Mechanical Engineering and spend his youth trying to weasel into one of the superstar companies of Interaction Design like IDEO. Of course, the term "Interaction Design" wasn't used very often back then, but I have faith in 17YOP. He was industrious, he'd figure it out.
more importantly:
2. User Experience &/or Interaction Design, etc. is critical to what we do and there are so few who do it well. For us Instructional Design geeks, a guy named John Keller talked about four major components of motivation in what is known as the ARCS model. At some point during the design process, all good IDs come back to this model and other greats (like Gagne) as a reference to check their work.
But on the user experience side, we often forget that the learning experience goes beyond content. We can have the most relevant, attention-getting learning project known to man, but if the user has no idea how to navigate through it or if it doesn't actually meet her goals, she'll shut it down. If she's REQUIRED to go through it by her employer, she'll slog through it, but reluctantly... We're destroying her confidence in the learning engagement, we're killing her satisfaction of completing the program... we've gotten her attention, but it's only because her brain is screaming, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY WANT ME TO DO!" And the only thing that is making the learning relevant is that her boss won't let her leave at 5 if she doesn't finish the program.
Think about it, how many times have you stumbled upon a web site that will solve a problem for you, but it's completely unusable... How many of those sites are in your bookmarks now?
Too often IDs throw their work "over the wall" to the graphic design and web development folks and don't participate in the design of the usability of the product. I started my career as a graphic designer / multimedia developer, but when I stopped programming and designing interfaces, I retained a passion for the process. Your creative team likes discussing and debating usability. They DON'T like being TOLD what to do, they want to brainstorm solutions - just like YOU. Some of my favorite times on the job have been spent in a meeting room with whiteboards, dry erase markers and creative minds.
So, to keep my UX senses up to date, I read books and I think about usability every day. In the some of the books I recommend you can learn why doors shouldn't need instructions, you can feel better about not being able set your hotel alarm clock, and you can be fascinated by all the natural incarnations of the Golden Mean.
17YOP should have read these books, but he was too busy trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. If you see him, tell him to wait until Amazon opens and pick them up. While you're on the subject, tell him to take his life savings and invest in the Amazon IPO on May 15, 1997 at $18 a share. Man, I could kick 17YOP for not catching that one.
Karl Kapp's GGG4L is self explanatory.
As for the others, well, I'm a bit of a User Experience/Interaction Design nerd. Why? Well, two reasons:
1. If I could get into the wayback machine and find 17-year old Phil (17YOP), I'd probably tell him to go study Industrial Design or Mechanical Engineering and spend his youth trying to weasel into one of the superstar companies of Interaction Design like IDEO. Of course, the term "Interaction Design" wasn't used very often back then, but I have faith in 17YOP. He was industrious, he'd figure it out.
more importantly:
2. User Experience &/or Interaction Design, etc. is critical to what we do and there are so few who do it well. For us Instructional Design geeks, a guy named John Keller talked about four major components of motivation in what is known as the ARCS model. At some point during the design process, all good IDs come back to this model and other greats (like Gagne) as a reference to check their work.
But on the user experience side, we often forget that the learning experience goes beyond content. We can have the most relevant, attention-getting learning project known to man, but if the user has no idea how to navigate through it or if it doesn't actually meet her goals, she'll shut it down. If she's REQUIRED to go through it by her employer, she'll slog through it, but reluctantly... We're destroying her confidence in the learning engagement, we're killing her satisfaction of completing the program... we've gotten her attention, but it's only because her brain is screaming, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY WANT ME TO DO!" And the only thing that is making the learning relevant is that her boss won't let her leave at 5 if she doesn't finish the program.
Think about it, how many times have you stumbled upon a web site that will solve a problem for you, but it's completely unusable... How many of those sites are in your bookmarks now?
Too often IDs throw their work "over the wall" to the graphic design and web development folks and don't participate in the design of the usability of the product. I started my career as a graphic designer / multimedia developer, but when I stopped programming and designing interfaces, I retained a passion for the process. Your creative team likes discussing and debating usability. They DON'T like being TOLD what to do, they want to brainstorm solutions - just like YOU. Some of my favorite times on the job have been spent in a meeting room with whiteboards, dry erase markers and creative minds.
So, to keep my UX senses up to date, I read books and I think about usability every day. In the some of the books I recommend you can learn why doors shouldn't need instructions, you can feel better about not being able set your hotel alarm clock, and you can be fascinated by all the natural incarnations of the Golden Mean.
17YOP should have read these books, but he was too busy trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. If you see him, tell him to wait until Amazon opens and pick them up. While you're on the subject, tell him to take his life savings and invest in the Amazon IPO on May 15, 1997 at $18 a share. Man, I could kick 17YOP for not catching that one.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Costing Simulation
The past few months have been a whirlwind for me... as you can tell, I haven't been posting for a while. Today has been my first chance to come up for air from a project that is large, complex and more challenging than I have encountered in quite a while. We're only just completing the design phase, but like any good project, the design effort has been more than 1/3 of the effort on the project. Soon - scripting and development.
In-between milestones for this project, I've had the opportunity to help my colleagues in our sales force as they propose our next wave of simulation projects. The question always comes up - "How much does a simulation cost?"
Recent studies from training industry research groups make the typical non-commital estimates of "$10,000 to $100Million" but, sadly, they're right. Simple sims don't have to be budget busters... Whereas the government - likely one of the largest consumers of simulation - has good reason to spend the big bucks. If they can save a life or a $1Bil plane by sending pilots through a sophisticated hardware/software flight simulator, then it is often worth a $100Mil price tag.
But within the costing debate are several other smaller questions that are hard to answer. For instance, if I can build a branching storyline simulation with ten decision points for $10*, will it cost $20 for twenty decision points? The answer, "Maybe." It could cost less, it could cost more.
Much of the time we get an economy of scale when a single client project increases in scale. For instance, a typical kickoff meeting does not increase in length regardless of the size of the project. My programmers often spend equal amounts of time setting up the engine for a project regardless of the size. And if media is involved, a lot of costs compress over time.
But there are other costs that could increase. A larger audience may require additional hosting fees, more complex tracking, scoreboards and feedback systems that must communicate with each other. If I'm building a competitive microworld, doubling the number of inputs may more than double the complexity of the underlying model.
Very often, I encounter clients who look at a demo product and say, "Yeah, I want one of those." It's easy to tell them how much a custom version of the demo would cost, but their needs are likely not exactly what is reflected in the demo. So, the sales process ends up becoming a mini-consulting session... the good news - the client rarely has to pay for us to help them think through their solutions! the bad news - the answers are rarely immediate.
So, this posting offers no solutions for those of you shopping for your next sim. It does offer advice: When shopping for sim vendors, pay special attention to the questions they ask. The good ones are trying to grasp the complexity of your project as early as possible. They will likely propose multiple ideas and solutions at first to narrow down the needs of your audience. It is rare that your needs will fit into a cookie-cutter solution in the sim world... at least not now, maybe in another decade or so...
*editor's note: $10 for a 10-decision sim is a little low, you may want to consider another vendor if you're getting a quote like this
In-between milestones for this project, I've had the opportunity to help my colleagues in our sales force as they propose our next wave of simulation projects. The question always comes up - "How much does a simulation cost?"
Recent studies from training industry research groups make the typical non-commital estimates of "$10,000 to $100Million" but, sadly, they're right. Simple sims don't have to be budget busters... Whereas the government - likely one of the largest consumers of simulation - has good reason to spend the big bucks. If they can save a life or a $1Bil plane by sending pilots through a sophisticated hardware/software flight simulator, then it is often worth a $100Mil price tag.
But within the costing debate are several other smaller questions that are hard to answer. For instance, if I can build a branching storyline simulation with ten decision points for $10*, will it cost $20 for twenty decision points? The answer, "Maybe." It could cost less, it could cost more.
Much of the time we get an economy of scale when a single client project increases in scale. For instance, a typical kickoff meeting does not increase in length regardless of the size of the project. My programmers often spend equal amounts of time setting up the engine for a project regardless of the size. And if media is involved, a lot of costs compress over time.
But there are other costs that could increase. A larger audience may require additional hosting fees, more complex tracking, scoreboards and feedback systems that must communicate with each other. If I'm building a competitive microworld, doubling the number of inputs may more than double the complexity of the underlying model.
Very often, I encounter clients who look at a demo product and say, "Yeah, I want one of those." It's easy to tell them how much a custom version of the demo would cost, but their needs are likely not exactly what is reflected in the demo. So, the sales process ends up becoming a mini-consulting session... the good news - the client rarely has to pay for us to help them think through their solutions! the bad news - the answers are rarely immediate.
So, this posting offers no solutions for those of you shopping for your next sim. It does offer advice: When shopping for sim vendors, pay special attention to the questions they ask. The good ones are trying to grasp the complexity of your project as early as possible. They will likely propose multiple ideas and solutions at first to narrow down the needs of your audience. It is rare that your needs will fit into a cookie-cutter solution in the sim world... at least not now, maybe in another decade or so...
*editor's note: $10 for a 10-decision sim is a little low, you may want to consider another vendor if you're getting a quote like this
Monday, December 31, 2007
the Immersive part, the Learning part, and the Simulation part
I find myself restless these days. (And yes, I was looking for myself. I found me in the refrigerator again.) As a simulation designer, I find it inherently difficult to explain to holiday-only family members just what it is that I do. My first question for them is always, “Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventure books?” If they answer yes, I say I write choose your own adventure stories for people who want to be reading about dragons and damsels but instead are being asked (under threat of termination) to go through additional training (fall asleep at their computer) by their employer (looming evil force who most likely keeps a dragon around for terminations). If they answer no, a small part of me dies inside. People really need to have read Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Back to restlessness. I got into the subject of ILS with a cousin of mine who faked interest very well, even asking a question I hadn’t thought much about until then. “Which is most important—the immersive part, the learning part, or the simulation part?” My answer was that each element relies on the others and would be much less attractive on its own. I mean, who wants to date just the learning part? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about that question, and here’s what I came up with.
My clients’ objective is the learning. They want extremely high-performing employees who never eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. They want efficiency and the profits that come from it. In the words of Wyclef, “See I’mma tell you like WU told me, Cash rules everything around me, Singin’ dollar dollar bill yall (dollar, dollar bill yall).”
To give my clients the best learning possible, I have to focus on the immersive part. Not just butts in seats; interested butts in interested seats. If people forget that they’re supposed to be learning, they’ll end up learning a lot.
I’d hope that the simulation part is the most important to the people being trained. They want an experience that’s nearly identical to what they’re going to deal with day in and day out. They want to get promoted rather than terminated by a dragon. Unsurprisingly, they’ve been known to channel Wyclef from time to time as well.
Now, if I do my job correctly, the last three paragraphs all happen. There are interested butts all around and we all sing dolla dolla bill yall. If I don’t do my job correctly, the immersion isn’t as good, the learning isn’t as effective, and my clients’ employees don’t evolve into beings that don’t eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. In retrospect, I wish I could’ve bored my cousin with this much more elaborate explanation than the one I gave, but what can you do?
P.S. If you’d like very much to quibble with my assessment, please comment. I welcome quibbling, as long as you don’t do it on the carpet. I just vacuumed.
Back to restlessness. I got into the subject of ILS with a cousin of mine who faked interest very well, even asking a question I hadn’t thought much about until then. “Which is most important—the immersive part, the learning part, or the simulation part?” My answer was that each element relies on the others and would be much less attractive on its own. I mean, who wants to date just the learning part? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about that question, and here’s what I came up with.
My clients’ objective is the learning. They want extremely high-performing employees who never eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. They want efficiency and the profits that come from it. In the words of Wyclef, “See I’mma tell you like WU told me, Cash rules everything around me, Singin’ dollar dollar bill yall (dollar, dollar bill yall).”
To give my clients the best learning possible, I have to focus on the immersive part. Not just butts in seats; interested butts in interested seats. If people forget that they’re supposed to be learning, they’ll end up learning a lot.
I’d hope that the simulation part is the most important to the people being trained. They want an experience that’s nearly identical to what they’re going to deal with day in and day out. They want to get promoted rather than terminated by a dragon. Unsurprisingly, they’ve been known to channel Wyclef from time to time as well.
Now, if I do my job correctly, the last three paragraphs all happen. There are interested butts all around and we all sing dolla dolla bill yall. If I don’t do my job correctly, the immersion isn’t as good, the learning isn’t as effective, and my clients’ employees don’t evolve into beings that don’t eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. In retrospect, I wish I could’ve bored my cousin with this much more elaborate explanation than the one I gave, but what can you do?
P.S. If you’d like very much to quibble with my assessment, please comment. I welcome quibbling, as long as you don’t do it on the carpet. I just vacuumed.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Bloomsburg University IIT Program
I spoke about failure at Bloomsburg University's Instructional Techology Department's Corporate Advisory Council today. Dr. Karl Kapp blogcast all of the presentations from the day.
Bloomsburg is a great resource for any learning organization. The Corporate Advisory Council is a great opportunity to meet graduating students and alumni, check out what's going on in the industry and participate in an RFP exercise. The program has been a great resource for me over the years.
Bloomsburg is a great resource for any learning organization. The Corporate Advisory Council is a great opportunity to meet graduating students and alumni, check out what's going on in the industry and participate in an RFP exercise. The program has been a great resource for me over the years.
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