10/11/2010 Post mortem on … a birthday party part I
When asked for examples of the application of the design principles I promote I often mention ‘the birthday parties of my kids’. Known as weekend research, these couple of hours of childrens fun are a nice lab for small scale experiments. My last endeavour was for my son. He t turned 11, and invited 5 friends to his party. This is how the design heuristic applies to… the common childrens party.
First, I ask them a theme; what should the party be about? I try to get them beyond the obvious Pokemon if possible for more interesting challenges. My son offered me “electronics”. My first thought was that I would be fun to make something electronic. The magic of creating electronic devices from mere parts and some solder is a vital experience for an 11 year old boy (and girl). My father made such a device in the fifties and I vividly remember his accounts when he first heard foreign radio while lurking secretly under a blanket late at night with an earpiece in his ear. Could I repeat that feeling of magic and bewilderment in 2010 given the state of technology?
I found a nice object for the party: this radio. So this would be the piece the resistance. But in order for them to make this as a collaborative effort, they had to know some stuff. Resistors have colour codes. And capacitors have polarity. For them to put the parts on the print in the right order you need to know this stuff. Stuff I did not want to ‘teach’ them in a classical way.
When thinking about the various learning steps I came to this shortlist:
- Why should we do this?
- How are resistors colour coded?
- What is a capacitor and how does it look
- How does it look inside a modern piece of technology? What is under the hood?
- How do you build a working circuit? (concept of closed circuit; flow of current: one mistake means “does not work”; high precision job; notion of polarity; diodes blocking current etc)
- How to put components on a circuit board?
- How to fix components onto board using solder?
- How to debug electronics (hopefully not necessary)
- PLAY! with the final radio
We have a timeframe from 14-19 hours for the party. Two of the boys are ADHD diagnosed or in close quarters of that, a long time in confined space. If not done properly this group of 11 year old boys can become too highly energetic which makes me the policeman of the day! This is something I frantically want to avoid. The day should give me energy, not cost me. Rule #1.
So I want a design where the instructional part is done by ‘something else’. Since this design is a quick and dirty production I decide to use Apple’s Keynote, a powerpoint done better software package. So I am going to run a birthday party using a slideshow presentation? Yes.
(the small movie shows just the first four slides; each for 10 fixed seconds so timing is way off…. be patient while watching)
An important aspect of the esign process is to transfer a large part of my ‘traditional role’ as the puppetmaster to get them into action to the design to free up my own energy and hands. So I created a persona, Jeremy, who adresses them through the presentation. A fictional character that hands out the instruction as games often do. To make this character bit lifelike I wanted to give him a voice. Not my own. This is called ‘suppression of disbelief’ and suggests to the ‘players’ he could be real. I use a remarkable piece of software called Ghostreader. Here I can type some text and the software turns this into quite remarkable computer voiceover. Small snippets of texts are turned into MP3 files automatically. I drop them on a slide a voila, a deep English voice.
Another design element is the power of suggestion. In many games, limited time to perform a task is a common means to pace up gameplay. So timers often ‘heat up’ gameplay if needed. I made a simple countdown timer in keynote which I could use to pace up or put some assignments under pressure. Here is the funny bit. Once the timer hit zero, I can only restart it. Nothing really happens. But this is not the point. These kids, full of game experience, know from conventions that a timer running on zero means ‘Bad News’ and is something to avoid. One did ask “what happens if it hits zero” which I did not answer to other than giving him a “you know that means bad luck don’t you” look, which sufficed.
So now I have:
- a format – a manageable technical solution
- a means to speed up or build up time pressure if needed
- a final aim: build a real working radio
- a ‘reason’ to do so, although a thin science fictional aim: more than enough do!
- intermedeate learning steps
- a fictional character to put the energy of instruction to the kids
- a timeline from 14:30 to 18 hours (before that we unwrap presents, after that we have dinner)
It is now time to ‘fill in the blanks’ and create the overall experience within the meta-design that is now ready.
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