Take a look at Color me rainbow! a psycadelic storm of colorful clouds by Mark Mawson. Finding inspirational images like these is a rewarding experience. We certianly live in a time where not only creativity but the way it circulates is flourishing. To see more great stuff, take a look around Chicquero, the blog where I found Mark’s work.
via Color me rainbow!.
An appeal from a flamboyant party animal.
Hey everyone! How are you? Oh really? I have been doing pretty good too. In fact, I wrote a clever short comic that I’ve begun to illustrate as well.
It has been a fun process but I realize that my illustration skills are limited (and so are my stubby arms!). So, I am reaching out to you in hopes that you are an illustrator or know an illustrator.
To describe the concept I usually tell people, “Imagine a world devoid of fun. Now imagine the pinata population explosion this would cause.” In short, it’s a story about two kids starting an adventure to save their parents from a pinata horde. The pinatas don’t understand that they are being mean. They just want to have fun.
This project has a lot of sentimental value to me, and it will also be part of my writing portfolio, so I would like to “do it right.” I am willing to pay for quality work, so if you are interested, name your price.
Let me know what you think and I can send you more details on the comic itself.
-Alex T. Rex
email: cloudthinking.me@gmail.com
Japanese designer Takeshi Sano used 25,000 wooden sticks to create clouds on the ceiling of Tsujita, an artisan noodle restaurant in Los Angeles, California. See more pictures and learn about his method of “increasing the reality of the clouds.” I may head over there this weekend to see it in person. And enjoy some artisan noodles (I hope that’s like ramen).
Tsujita
2057 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025
The possibilities are, well, endless… After watching this video about Twine I was reminded of the Productivity Future ad by Microsoft. Truly remarkable things await us… It will be interesting to see how exactly we use this new tech.
As a cloudthinker, I am always looking for new perspective. This ad is briliant in the way it gets its message across. Stick with what you know and dream big.
Welcome to cloudthinking!
This series is about learning from games in order to get more out of life . If you haven’t read the first two posts now is a good time.
I have been writing this series based on a presentation given by Aaron Dignan for the 99%. I have also been adding my perspective as a student of human behavior and cloudthinker. A few days ago I bought Aaron’s book Game Frame. It has been a fun and neurologically rewiring experience. If you like the content of these posts you will love the book. If you don’t like these posts, you may still love the book.
The Game Frame structure (see Lv.2 and illustration below) makes it pretty clear why games captivate us. Certain behaviors are encouraged during a game. We are rewarded based on our performance. When we fail, we get to try again, after receiving feedback.
In chapters 7 and 8 of Game Frame Mr. Dignan talks about behavioral games.
A behavioral game is a real world activity modified by a system of skills-based play. – Game Frame p.81
It is important to point out a few things here.
1. Behaviors are observable and quantifiable.
2. Monopoly money isn’t real money.
Number one is vital for understanding how to structure a behavioral game. The person designing the game must know which behaviors will be rewarded and which will not. Think of this process as shaping the desired behavior.
Number two speaks of rewards themselves. Behavioral games are about experiencing progress, mastering skills, and social recognition. When Monopoly is over you don’t go to the bank and make a deposit.
Here is an example of a behavioral game I invented and used successfully to teach teenagers with higher functioning autism how to cook.
Game Title: The King’s Chef
Objective: Learn to master functional skills and increase independence from adult assistance.
Outcome:
1. If you win, you gain the honor of becoming the King’s Chef. This was to be represented with a flashy looking certificate. You also gain recognition from your family and a tasty meal.
2. If you lose, you remain a lowly dishwasher… You do not get the same social recognition, and the meal might not be as tasty.
Activity: Make mashed potatoes.
Player Profile: A teenager with higher functioning autism.
Action: Peeling potatoes, mashing potatoes, measurements, etc.
Black Box: Me aka The King.
Feedback: Delivered immediately. Player earns tally marks on a small white board for executing actions correctly. Player levels up each 10 tally marks. When something was done wrong, they were told how to do it better. When something was done right, they were verbally praised and received tally marks.
Skills: Fine motor, basic math, following directions.
Resources: All the ingredients were provided from the beginning.
Resistance: A timer was used as a deadline. I would make an overly dramatic spectacle of myself (e.g. a PG rated Gordon Ramsey).
How much more fun does this sound compared to, “Ok Tommy, go make some mashed potatoes. All the stuff you need is in the kitchen and you can read the directions on the box” Imagine how complex this task would seem to someone who has no experience in a kitchen? It would boggle the mind, cause frustration, and ultimately they would not master new skills and become independent of adult assistance.
But they all did master skills and, most importantly, they learned to enjoy cooking. The certificate was cool for a week but the lasting reward was becoming a master of skills aka The King’s Chef.
I really can’t get enough of this topic so I will write one more post. I have yet to explore the reaches of behavioral games in our lives: adults with “real world” concerns. I truly believe that utilizing the Game Frame can make life feel more engaging and rewarding.
Here is a funwork assignment. Take 20 minutes to apply the Game Frame to an activity you would like to get better at but find it hard to sustain motivation. It can be anything: getting in better shape, networking, finishing a screenplay, building stronger relationships with your family. From my experience applying the Game Frame isolate areas I tend to overlook.
Thanks for stopping in and have a good weekend.
Thoughts Up.
There is something about being resolute that attracts respect and maybe even success.
Believe without a doubt in the value of your ideas. This is what people who are called visionaries do. It’s a quality the greatest of minds seem to share.
According to Yoda you have two choices. Try applying this to your next creative endeavor; or your entire life.
–
Resolution is a characteristic of the awakened hero. Heroes follow through.
It’s entirely up to you to determine what is valuable.
Finish things that are valuable to you and you will find other people believing you are valuable.
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Resolution is not free. It will fluctuate throughout the day, year, project, meeting, moment.
Learn how to rest your mind. Teach yourself to not think.
Make it a point to reward yourself when your determination pays off.
–
Resolution makes a fool out of me and you.
Sometimes your ideas will totally suck. Who cares. Finish them. Share them.
Show everyone else that you are an ocean of self belief.
Last week I talked about how play is exploratory yet purposeful. This week I will talk more about games and how we can use their structure to fine tune our life experiences.
So what is the difference between play and games? The function of play is to seek out and acknowledge rules in a particular setting. A game usually starts with a set of rules within which play occurs. I tend to think of games as structured play because they consist of notable elements:
1. Games are an activity that can be learned.
2. The player can be measured.
3. Feedback on the players performance can be delivered in a timely fashion.
Many activities can be a game. Even cooking can be a game. While watching Aaron Dignan’s presentation on his book Game Frame I had a laugh when he mentioned cooking can be a game. It certainly can. In fact, I have taught video-game-loving teenagers how to cook by using game structure. Building their skills from Lv.1 “Dishwasher” to Lv.10 “The King’s Chef.”
However, using the structure inherent in games is far more expansive than motivating teenagers to chop vegetables. Games tap into our instinctual desire to improve skills and experience progress. Here is an illustration of the “Game Frame” I adapted from Aaron Dignan’s presentation.
After taking a long look at this structure I started thinking about places in my life, and life in general, where some of these elements are not clear.
Games do not have this problem. There is a balance that keeps us enthralled. Lets take a quick look at all the elements:
Objective: What are you setting out to do?
Outcome: What happens if you win? What happens if you lose?
Activity: Cooking, Cards, etc.
Player Profile: Who is playing the game?
– The Skill Cycle. Represented by the dark blue tiles. Every game has a cycle which consists of the players action, evaluation (black box), and feedback.
Action: Chopping vegetables, drawing a card, etc.
Black Box: A determination of value. Did you over cook the brocoli? Does your hand beat your opponents?
Feedback: Explaining the value determination. e.g. “Yes, you overcooked the brocoli try doing this next time instead.” Or, “no your hand doesn’t beat your opponents. Next time in that situation the odds of getting a straight are better.”
-The Inner Tiles
Skills: What will you be using? Fine motor, dexterity, mental math, counting cards?
Resources: What ingredients will you have at your disposal? How many cards are you dealt?
Resistance: You can fail.
Of all the elements Feedback and Resistance are particularly important.
Feedback should be delivered immediately when possible. And really, that is how nature works. To try this out, open your hand and smack yourself in the face. Ouch, that stings. Now imagine the sting sensation didn’t come until hours later. You might not learn to stop slapping yourself for a while.
Without resistance there is no sustaining experiential value. As they say, “anything worth having is worth fighting for,” implying the chance of failure. This can be motivational or overwhelming. How we react to resistance has a lot to do with how clear we understand the other elements of the game. The same can be said about life.
It looks like I will have to write one more post to conclude this topic. There are some life experiences I want to share and also some neat products which are using game structure. See you all next week.
P.S. Here is an app I found that seems to use some of the principles I’ve described. Just a word of caution, the term “gamify” and “gamification” are being used pretty loosely as a marketing buzz word.
Take a look at the product and compare it to the Game Frame structure. Does it make the elements clear? Does it use incentives to bribe your behaviors? Does it lock you into the skill cycle?
It’s 1:00am on a Tuesday and you are wide awake. Getting some sleep can wait because…
You are the sole proprietor of a digital salon, or maybe you are killing zombies and flinging birds? Let’s admit it, each of us has been hooked on a video game or an app. You may not consider yourself a gamer, but you have been there.
Games are more prevalent in our culture right now than ever before. They are becoming more advanced and sophisticated with each passing day. But, like most tech explosions, our cultural understanding of games lags behind this progress. It’s time to pick up the slack, and look into the future; to a place where we use the structure of games to improve our lives.
This is Lv.1 of the Game Life series. Over the next few weeks I will share my research and insight on how the structure of a game can be applied to our lives in order to increase levels of engagement, happiness, and productivity.
But first let’s take a look at the power of games to engage. The video below was made by Robby Cooper, a video artist who captured the facial expressions of people as they play video games. The people on this video have no idea they are being recorded.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be that engaged with your work? Or at least closer to that?
Before we can go any further we need to have a good understanding of why games are so engaging. And that starts with understanding play.
Just like games, play is misunderstood and often thought of as frivolous. But play is more than jumping rope or throwing a ball around; it is our primary mode for understanding ourselves, others, and the rules of the earth.
As a species we owe our warm seat at the top of the food chain to our immense faculty for play. Play teaches us to find patterns, take other perspectives, and create.
For example, we learn to avoid dangers, like touching a hot stove or petting a wolf, not through direct experience, but through perspective taking. Play is survival. Play allows us to enter states of creation, where novel properties are attributed to regular objects. A box becomes a house; a pencil a wand. Play is creation.
In short, play is exploratory yet purposeful.
There is a lot more to play, and I encourage you to do more research.
But from what you already know consider this: If play is how we learn to understand this world, then what is the result of not playing? Or not increasing the variety of our play?
I know I’m guilty of limiting my play based activities. The result is that I have become highly specialized at a couple of activities and shy away from “new” stuff. The new stuff feels dangerous, it makes my heart race. Is that fear or excitement? Both maybe. But certainly it is also the body telling the mind to set it free.
New engaging activities challenge and destroy old beliefs. They help our minds develop more up to date portrayals of ourselves and the world.
That’s the end of this post. But, I highly suggest you watch the videos below. The first one is a short clip from author Aaron Dignan about his book Game Frame. The next video is a presentation he gave about the book and the topic of structuring life more like a game.
-Zane
Humor,
picture taken by: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:B%C3%B6hringer
and the profound.
ffffound.com
Not long ago a friend said to me, “Zane, you can go from laugh out loud funny to convincing me we (humans) are the smallest thing in the universe.” Immediately something stirred inside me, what he said made sense in a very personal (dare I say profound?) way. He put into words something I’ve always felt. One of my tendencies is to bounce between humor and the profound. From funny to deep, lighthearted to insightful, carefree to philosophical.
I took his comment as a notice. It encouraged me to do some thinking about how I think. And things only got better from there…
What is humor? What is profound?
Humor. A cognitive state often accompanied by laughter and amusement.
Profound. Something deep and vast which induces speechlessness and awe.
What does this mean for cloudthinking?
I think we want a healthy dose of both in our lives. And that’s where cloudthinking is headed. Here are the rest of my thoughts on this subject.
In ancient Greece humor translated literally as “bodily fluid.” No joke.
The word humor derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks. They believed that four bodily fluids, called the humors, would wax and wane within the human body. Effecting our health and temperament.
Bodily fluids aside, humor is very hard to explain, especially when we try.
Lover of dachshunds and Pulitzer Prize winning author E.B. White once said, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”
What he is referring to is the study of humor. A lot of research has been done, and here is my shortlist:
Humor is good for your health, many people have tried to explain it, many other people have tried to prove them wrong, the explanations are boring considering the subject, it has been trans-culturally defined as a spiritual element, and a mystical gift, but most notably, through this whole process of documented thought, it remains undeniably profound.
Humor is profound. It is as vast and deep as the ocean of the mind.
This post stops here for now. But I will be mixing elements of humor and the profound into the content on this blog. Come back again next Friday for another post, or enter your email in the sidebar to subscribe.
-Zane
Copyright © 2012 Zane Cassidy – All Rights Reserved
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cloudthinking by Zane Cassidy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at cloudthinking.me.
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