I came across an article today which grabbed my attention. It was about the design of restaurant menus and the ‘tricks’ used to get you to buy… an interesting intersection between design and psychology. The article relates to the work of William Poundstone, US author of Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It). According to Poundstone, the way particular food items are presented within a menu is a key factor which drives us to buy them. For example, when people open a menu, the first thing they do is look at its upper right-hand corner according to Poundstone. As you’d think, this is the place where restaurants place their highest profit item and one that sets the ‘tone’ of the eatery. According to Poundstone this item, known as an “anchor” is often an expensive item such as a plate of seafood. (And for those familiar with them, eye tracking and usability testing can find similar areas for websites). The article also includes other tasty morsels of information about how are minds are ‘manipulated’ via menu design… sounds like there’s plenty of ‘thought for food’ in that!

Article in The Age: http://bit.ly/b4Mgce
Priceless at Amazon : http://amzn.to/9G0w0H

Recently I had the opportunity to take my kids to “Toy Story 3″ (http://disney.go.com/toystory/)at IMAX, Fox Studios. It was quite fortuitous for me as I had also just finished reading “Innovate the Pixar Way” (http://amzn.to/aU4hnt) and seen a story about Pixar on 60 minutes (http://bit.ly/9SAK5V) which I’ve also embedded below. So what’s this got to do with games and play, apart from the obvious connection to toys in the film’s title? We’ll for me, the real heart lies in how a playful attitude is harnessed as a means to foster and enhance innovation and creativity.

The fruits of Pixar’s work are clear to all, as they have forged ahead in effect creating an industry on the boundary between computer science and animated filmmaking. Works like Luxo Jr., Reds Dream, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Toy Story still resonate with audiences. But at the core, is creating an environment which, by embracing play, aims to innovate and have people think differently. For me, this is the reason why Pixar create such innovative and exciting products. By providing a series of constraints to a whole lot of filmmakers and come up with interesting solutions… is the essence of design thinking. And “Innovate the Pixar Way” is filled with plenty of examples of this, along with some of strategies they use to develop creativity. If you’ve ever read any books on Disney and the way they create experiences for people, you’ll find a lot of similarities here.

The upshot of this for me is that, increasingly businesses are looking at new ways of thinking, of creating products and experiences never seen before… of doing things differently both within and external to their organization. And at the core of achieving this is embracing innovation through creative thinking and a playful attitude. Consequently, while a “work/play” dichotomy still tends to dominate corporate culture, this is changing, and play will become more important within corporate culture.

Recently I came across a couple of DVD’s which shared my passion for play. Always excited about new views on play, I purchased them from US-based Giant Impact (they were unavailable from within Australia).

Kevin Carroll

Before I ordered them, I had never heard of Kevin Carroll, so I was interested in finding more about him, and his views on play. Carroll is a motivational speaker based in the United States, and has had enourmous success with this book Red Rubber Ball, in which the ball serves as a metaphor for your dreams and goals in life. While primarily catering to a business audience, I found synergy with his views on play and my own. He finds play something powerful and important in life, enabling people to innovate, create, problem solve and analyze. While he does not explicitly speak of mental models, visualization and conceptual thinking, I would appear to exist as an undercurrent to his work. In his DVDs he espouses to his business oriented audience, the potential and true power of play, and engages them to become more playful in life and work.

Both DVDs are mostly excerpts from a live presentation by Carroll to a largely business oriented audience. Carroll’s details the role that play and games has had on his life in quite a powerful way using the red rubber ball in both a real object and metaphor for the pursuit of dreams.

I found these DVDs both valuable and affordable (around US$20 a piece), and useful addition to my library. If you’re interested in purchasing, then contact Giant Impact directly, especially if you live outside of the continental USA so that you can arrange appropriate shipping.

Links
Kevin Carroll: http://www.kevincarrollkatalyst.com
Giant Impact: http://www.giantimpact.com

I found it interesting recently to come across an article about “Mousetrap 2009″ - an annual global business strategy competition run in India that pits students against each other running their own corporation. Especially when this articles was juxtaposed against an October article in The Australian on the learning potential of business games.

Mousetrap 2009 is an online business simulation tournament, presented by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) and Microsoft. Worldwide, about 1800 business school students participate in the challenge. Players take the role of running a simulated corporation and encounter fundamental business issues such as lower profit margins due to increased global competition, rising commodity prices and the increasing relevance of sustainable strategies. This year, as it was for the previous three, the business game with its “IndustryMasters” simulation platform was provided by Tycoon Systems, a US-based provider of business simulations.

What appears to differentiate the IndustryMasters platform from its competition is its “real-time” nature, which was a point not lost on Professor Atanu Ghosh, Faculty Coordinator at IIMA who explains “This real time-aspect is what makes IndustryMasters a simulation of choice for use in the fast paced yet acumen based setting of Mousetrap'’.

Screenshot of IndustryMasters from Mousetrap 2009.

It seems that there is no real surprise that many business academics are in favor of the use of simulations as a learning environment. In Australia, Curtin University of Technology is the largest academic client worldwide of Capsim, a Chicago-based developer of business simulations. About 4000 Curtin business undergraduates will play a Capsim simulation as part of their learning. And Curtin is not alone. From next January, the prestigious Harvard Business School in the United States will have all commencing students compete against each other using Capsim products. In fact the company has rolled out their products to more than 500 business faculties with claims of an 80% retention rate. And, that appears to be part of a more broader phenomenon amongst business academics.

According to an article in The Australian, its hard to find an academic that has abandoned them, and it seems that academics use them for extended periods of time (10-15 years is not uncommon). Core attraction of these products seems to center around their interactive nature, and their ability to mimic real life. However, others take a more critical view and cite “reality”, or lack thereof, as providing reasons for their ineffectiveness.

Dr. Elyssebeth Leigh from the University of Technology of Sydney (UTS) makes the point that the model on which business simulations like Capsim are constructed doesn’t not reflect the reality of the real world business environment. She explains “It imposes US-centric economic and business terms and concepts on users… [so] there is is a built-in set of assumptions about how finance works, which doesn’t allow for other cultural norms”. In particular Leigh is critical of the assumption that “business cycles are rigid and well defined” which ultimately restricts players (learners) from exploring anything which lies outside the framework of the game.

Having a model that is too restrictive limits both player action and system outcome within a game. And having a closed system, necessarily imposes boundaries over which players can’t cross. Overall, if the model is too restrictive, and or unrepresentative of the real world environment it aims to model, players with learn how to interactive with the model, but encounter a disjuncture when out in the real world. I agree with Leigh’s comments, I regard this as an issue for all simulation designers.

For me it also raises issues regarding the nature of economic theory itself, and in particular its “rationality”. Books such as Dan Ariely’s Predictable Irrational point to the fact that many of our decisions are not decided “consciously”, but involve something more deeper. While we don’t always make rational decisions, there are patterns that emerge. And often, the rationale from our decisions comes from a left-hemisphere attempting to come up with a logical reason for our “irrational” behavior, rather than a well though out strategy. Here the work of Gladwell’s Blink and Lindstrom’s Buyology also come to mind.

Business consultant Denis Hitchens adds that playing a poorly designed game means that players “learn to apply the model, not run a business” and cites that “most [business] games don’t cover random events”. Consequently, on design consideration for a well designed business simulation would be to ensure adequate randomness of events within the game.

Leigh adds that the designer’s (or better put the developer’s) influences remains as part of the game system and manifests itself within the game with language providing an example. Clearly, this is something not specific to business simulations, but is something worthy of consideration across both games and other software alike.

Smart developers, no doubt, will ensure adequate randomness exists within their simulations, and adopt a more fluid, as opposed to rigid, approach to their game systems. And while this type of business simulation might not be as sexy as designing a top-seller for the PS3, it is big business. According to The Australian, Capsim charges each player $60, so that’s nearly a cool quarter of a million dollars, just for the Curtin University students to take part. (The article also states that according to Capsim, already half a million people have played their games).

Tycoon Systems, with its real-time “IndustryMasters” platform also seems to have hit a similar note. According to the developers IndustryMasters “replicates the real world scenario and includes various aspects of management”. Clearly, their continued success at Mousetrap over the past four years, alongside their continued support from the academic community suggests they have a bright future.

Links

Tycoon Systems: http://tycoonsystems.com/
Industry Masters: http://www.industrymasters.com/
Capsim: http://www.capsim.com/
Capsim Experts:http://www.capsimexperts.com/
The Australian: Are we learning or is it fun and games?