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.
22. »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
31. 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)
34. 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)
35. 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