Bruce MacVarish Notes

Persuasive Games

As a follow-up to Jesse Schell's presentation at DICE 2010 where he outlines the potential of persuasive games to alter our behaviors because we know we're being measured (and want the points to level up),  Mathias Crawford offers a different benefit of persuasive games:

"...reliance on External Rewards obviates the true potential of persuasive games: namely, that they can be used to help people think about themselves, the world, and life in new and empowering ways. Rather than relying on persuasive games to provoke or impede certain behaviors, what if they were used to open up a world of previously inaccessible experiences? What if games were used to get people thinking about why they acted in particular ways? If they helped them identify if these behaviors were in line with who they believe they are and how they ought to be? If they helped people think through the steps they needed to take to improve themselves from within, rather than from without? "

"Ends vs. Means and Persuasion", Mathias Crawford, Institute for the Future

Whether focused on changing our behaviors from within or without, I believe we'll see an increase in game mechanics being embedded in enterprise communication and collaboration solutions. 

Avatars & Game Psychology Reshape Real Life & Behavior

Avatars ( and by extension our virtual identities) and Game mechanics (specifically game psychology) continue to intersect our lives and influence our real-world social, communication and collaboration behaviors at home and at work.   

 

Here are two perspectives that illustrate the point.

 

First, Jesse Fox at Stanford finds that experiences with avatars, including personalized images of ourselves, can change our view of reality and the way we act in the real world.  From PhysOrg.com

"If you saw a digital image of yourself running on a virtual treadmill, would you feel like going to the gym? Probably so, according to a Stanford study showing that personalized avatars can motivate people to exercise and eat right.

Moreover, you are more likely to imitate the behavior of an avatar in real life if it looks like you, said Jesse Fox, a doctoral candidate in the Communication Department and a researcher at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. In her study, she used digital photographs of participants to create personalized avatar bodies, a service some game companies offer today.

 

Second, Jesse Schell of Carnegie Mellon and Schell Games, provided an out-of-the-box presentation at DICE on how psychological design and numerous activity and attention sensors will extend the reach of games in our lives and ultimately may improve personal behavior.  

In the video below , he looks at the unexpected success of Farmville, MafiaWars, ClubPenguin, GuitarHero and Wii in the hopes of identifying a set of guiding principles that could be applied to the design of collaboration, communication and attention game mechanics in the future:

 

 

1. Psychological Design drives user behavior

Use of free-to-play, virtual currency, lead generation and "velvet-rope" models shape and channel user behavior to ultimately spend real money in-game to create new revenue streams.

 

2. Break through to Reality

The most successful games break through from a virtual experience to include real-life interaction. 

 

3. Technology Diverges. Gaming will too

As technology advances it wants to diverge not converge. It grows and spreads. You might call this the Law of Technical Divergence.  Mobile devices are an exception.

 

4. Sensors will enable new gaming mechanics in everyday life

As activity, location, biometric and attention sensors emerge and are embedded in everything from our toothbrush, to clothing, to food and of course devices, we will see an explosion of game mechanics used to drive and change our behavior.

 

5. Persistent history of our actions could drive improved behavior

In the near future, when we are all being tracked, watched and measured by all kinds of sensors; and our children's children will know what we read, ate, did and thought, will it inspire us to improve our personal behaviors.

 

Check out his DICE 2010 "Design Outside the Box" presentation here:

The opportunity is to integrate our virtual identities and Avatars along with Game Psychology to shape behaviors that improve our life through stronger social ties, communication and collaboration.

Relevance-Aware Flows

Originally posted in May 2008...

Just caught up to this post by Steve Gillmor and his take on the role, scale and reliability of Twitter as a communication/information switching platform.

Two things caught my attention.  First, positioning Twitter as a relevance-aware conversation soft switch... and second, defining a signal-to-noise for relevance of Twitter Flow as a function of who you follow, what topics you track and how you filter.

" At its simplest (its true power) Twitter is a phone switch for routing information flow. Those who control the flow control the price for the information. In a virtualized platform, the hardware is the razor and the software switch is the blades. The software switch is an affinity-based construct that manages the signal-to-noise ratio of the information flow based on the contouring signals (gestures) of the members of the group. In the language of Twitter, it’s who you follow times what you track divided by how you filter.

So, managing the signal-to-noise ratio for (twitter) Flows based on user or group gestures starts to define a relevance-aware flow of conversations or...

Relevance-Aware Flow = f( Following * Topics ) / Filter

One could imagine a number of different user-defined filters (think social, project, functional, process or other variables) used to identify and channel important conversation streams from within the Flow.

While the question of decentralizing Twitter as a method to improve scalability and performance is important, we shouldn't gloss over the need and value of filtering Flow into specific streams of relevant conversations and making them discoverable and social.

Measuring and Managing the Real-Time Web

I recently read two posts --- one by @StoweBoyd (The False Question of Attention Economics) --- and the other by @JohnBorthwick (Charting the Real-time Web) --- that had me thinking (again) about the challenges of information overload and real-time streams in the enterprise.

Here are a couple of quotes from each post that I found interesting.... first from Stowe:

"I suggest we just haven't experimented enough with ways to render information in more usable ways... the only ones that will benefit in the next ten years will be those that expend the time needed to stretch the cognition we have, now, into the configuration needed to extract more from the increasingly real-time web."

Stowe Boyd, The False Question of Attention Economics

and also this one from John:

"As interactions online shift to streams we are going to have to figure out how measurement works. I feel like today we are back to the early days of the web when people talked about “hits” — it’s hard to parse the relevant data from the noise."

John Borthwick, Charting the Real-Time Web

Both posts highlight the need for better tools to measure, manage, filter and render the streams of information being generated as user interactions shift to the Real-time Web or Live Web.   I agree.  

In some ways, we need to apply to the real-time web a management maxim from the industrial economy attributed to a number of people including Deming, Grove, Drucker and Kaplan:

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it"

There are a number of social monitoring and analytics solutions from companies like Crimson Hexagon, Radian6, Chartbeat and others.  For example, Chartbeat is focused on monitoring, measuring and analyzing real-time interactions across the web.  This video provides an interesting demo of real-time activity on Fred Wilson's AVC blog:

Yet, Chartbeat is a solution focused on monitoring, measuring and analyzing streams of attention from other people to my content / website / service.    It helps me understand certain (not all) flows of attention to me... and to my content.  

If we're to improve management of our attention allocated to the flood of information overload,  we need a "personal" chartbeat-like service focused on monitoring, measuring and analyzing streams of attention coming in to ... and going out from ... me 

To try and manage the real-time stream of information... of conversations... of how I allocate my attention, I will need better tools:

- First, to measure my individual incoming and outgoing real-time interactions, and 

- Second, to manage the most important and relevant real-time streams created from my two-way interactions with my most important personal/work/commercial relationships.

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Top 5 for 2009

I went back to see what topics were the most active on this blog and seemed to resonate with you and other readers during 2009.      

So... here are my "Top 5 Posts for 2009" along with a key theme cloud.

 

#1 - Guiding Principles of Innovation at Apple

If you had to summarize the guiding principles of Apple's Design and Innovation Strategy what would they be and how might you embrace them to drive new product designs and create new revenue streams from new markets?  

With the help of Chris Morrison, Bruce Nussbaum, Owen Linzmayer, Umair Haque and Daniel Turner, I've summarized a draft list of 11 guiding principles that appear to be important to Apple's innovation strategy.  

#2 - User Experience for the Business User in 2009

Four fundamental forces of change are driving the evolution of the user experience for the Business User in 2009:

(a) economic recession and its impact on the enterprise IT budget 

(b) enterprise governance, security and business policy requirements force "hardening" of consumer apps

(c) new sources of value and revenue continue to be found at the Enterprise Edge

(d) consumer innovations influence and shape business user expectations 

#3 - Social Enabling Voice Conversations

The people we call and engage in voice-based conversations, in our personal and work lives, represent our active - and in many cases our most relevant - social graph.

To build a resurgent voice industry, consumers and business users need a new user experience that helps them unlock the value of their active, relevant social graph by social-enabling their voice conversations.

#4 - The Future of Games @ Work

To engage business users in a compelling and continuously productive collaboration experience, enterprise apps need to tap the user's individual motivation, unleash the user's curiosity and align the user's incentives, unique skills and social networks.  

Are there proxies for this type of engagement?  Yes; in multiplayer gaming applications.  

A powerful example of users who are engaged in self-motivated, aligned, collaborative efforts can be found in massive, multi-player on-line games.

#5 - The Live Web of Interaction Signals for Business Users

The enterprise is shifting from a space/file software model to a time/stream based software model where the real-time interactions of business users have a past, a present and a future.   

New value for business users - and revenue for enterprises - will come from aggregating, analyzing and filtering these interaction signals enabled by the Real-time Web.

Sixth Sense - Blending Digital + Real World Interactions

At a Nov 2009 Ted presentation, Pranav Mistry of the MIT Media Lab provided an update on the status of his Sixth Sense Project and his vision for integrating our interactions between the digital and real world.

As you watch this, consider the possibilities of an open platform that changes how we experience and interact with digital information to augment our work and personal transactions, conversations and relationships.

Informed Opinion and Real Expertise

"...publishers have to stop seeking simply the most controversial opinions. They're abundant: every talking head can churn one out, and faux "news" of every kind is already chock full of 'em shrieking at one another. Instead, successful opinion arbitrageurs must seek the most informed opinions, gooey with expertise, thick with real value for readers.

Those opinions are worth the most — and they're what readers will pay for"

Umair Haque, "Why Controversy Won't Power Next-Gen News"

Collaboration Curves, Network Effects and Games@Work

"The more players participate and interact with WoW's knowledge economy, the more valuable its resources become, and the faster players increase their rate of performance improvement. 

Said more generally, the more participants--and interactions between those participants--you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up."  --- @jhagel John Hagel, Introducing the Collaboration Curve

(an interesting follow-up to "The Future of Games @ Work" )

Datarati are skilled in Data Analytics + Design

[ I believe ] that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati—and it's all about harnessing supply and demand. 

"What's ubiquitous and cheap?" Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data.

Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google , Wired - May 2009

"Designers versed in data may uncover trends or insights that not only yield better products but new product or business ideas as well."

Luke Wroblewski, Sr. Director, Product Ideation & Design, Yahoo

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Evolving toward a People-Centric, Real-Time Web

There are plenty of reasons to consider the collaborative opinions of Chris Messina and Jyri Engstrom. Chris is a champion of the open web and leads/contributes to the DiSo Project, OpenID, OAuth, microformats, activitystrea.ms and Portable Contacts initiatives.   Jyri is the founder of Jaiku, one of the first real-time microblogging social / mobile apps acquired by Google.   Both Chris and Jyri have co-authored a post outlining their vision for the next phase of the web and describe it as a "people-centric, real-time web":

"It’s 2009, going on 2010. For the past three years, the web has been morphing into a real-time and people-centric place. We’ve seen this trend among individual users — through their actions and demands for better social experiences — but also increasingly among companies and developers. We want a web that’s more “like us” than the old model was. We want a web where people are as important to the architecture of the system as documents."

Both Chris and Jyri recently presented at Mindtrek where they outlined their perspectives on the value of taking control over our personal identity, our activity streams and social objects as the people-centric, real-time web emerges. 

Chris presented Identity is the Platform with a focus on data capital and social objects centered on our personal identity across the open web:

1. Data Capital - All the data we're creating as personal activity streams has value ... and we should control access / use

2. Social Objects - Activity streams related to our "social objects" are meaningful and valuable too

Jyri presented Snack Size Sociality outlining how the battle for the people-centric, real-time web will focus on 4 important areas:  

1. People's identity
2. Activity Stream Routing
3. The Social Inbox
4. Real-time Search

I think it is valuable to consider both of Chris's and Jyri's Mindtrek presentations together as an indication of how they see the People Centric, Real-Time Web emerging.   They've pointed to key enablers that include:

- Portable profiles means that instead of creating an account on each service you join, you can now host your identity in one place and bring your profile and friends with you to other sites as you surf the social web. Webfinger, OpenID, Portable Contacts, and OAuth all make this possible (and for bootstrapping profiles from the legacy document-web, we have Google’s Social Graph API).

- Distributed Push Publishing means there is no longer a need to rely on proprietary platforms. The emerging standards here are PubSubHubbub (PuSH) and rssCloud (see comparisons on TheNextWeb and TechCrunch).

- Synchronized Conversation Threads means that users can participate on the same conversation thread across multiple interfaces and services (we are still waiting for a standard, for which various geeks are actively devising a plan). Check out the Salmon effort as an example. 

So you might say that the people centric, real-time web will be based on a stack of building block technologies a la the DiSo Project:

- OpenID
- OAuth
- Portable Contacts / Profiles
- PubSubHub / rssCloud
- activitystrea.ms
- Conversation Threading (example Salmon Protocol)

While it is early days in this next phase of web innovation, we'll see progress and proof points continue to emerge in the consumer space.   So let's say we see the emergence of a people centric real-time web as envisioned by Chris and Jyri.   

What might that mean for the enterprise?  

How and when will this set of building block technologies impact the enterprise space and create new value for business users?

Is it reasonable to think that the enterprise will embrace a people-centric, real-time web, when they've had a hard time embracing the social web?

PS: I'm a big fan of the opportunity and user value to be generated by "conversation threading" and have been pushing an enterprise Sensing, Threading, Sharing strategy for a while now...