things

Surprise and Delight with Google Photos

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IMGP0056 PANO Surprise and Delight with Google Photos

Anyone who follows me on Twitter has, by now, noticed I have been sharing a load of stuff from Google Photos.  For those who don’t know, this is a free service from Google that allows you to basically upload an unlimited number of photos (if you are happy with their “high quality” setting) and store them in the Cloud.

On top of that, Google Photo has some really clever little tricks up its digital sleeve, by way of Auto Awesomeness. It will analyse your images and do all sorts of clever things. It will create panoramas if it finds images in a panoramic sequence. It will create animations of images that have been taken in quick succession. If you have stuff geotagged, it can also create stories based on image sequences and locations. On top of that it will also create montages and filtered images where it sees fit and probably more. As well as that, it categorises things for you and makes your images searchable. You can look for images of faces, of locations, objects and all sorts – which is actually rather handy.

I uploaded about 10,000 images over the course of a few days. From old phone backups, sd cards backups and images I had on picassa many years ago. As you can imagine, most of these had been totally forgotten about.

This is where the surprise and delight comes in and why I am in love with Google Photos.

As Google does its thing and starts making its creations out of your images, it lets you know via the app or the assistant page on its website. Very quickly I became hooked on checking these as Google brought surprsing and delightful new life to imaes long forgotten. Don’t beleive me? Check out this animation it created of my daughter on the day she was born!

Olivia at Birth

Google gave me a video I never created of my daughters first day on the planet. That surprised and delighted me!

I know other software is more than capable of creating this sort of thing, but normally you have to do it yourself – there is no surprise when you know you are doing it. The point here is, I was not expecting anything and got things like this.

And wonderful automatically created stories of visits and holidays – like this one from the Natural History Museum.

When an application can give life to old forgotten parts of your history, it adds a whole new level of meaning to the app and creates wonderful moments that can’t be replaced. I know Google are pillaging my images for biometric data, locations, hell – they probably know more about my history and that of my kids than I do, but I don’t care. They have given me happiness and that is priceless.

Gamification is not just about sticking game elements on things. It is about the user experience, done in a way that learns from games. Games surprise and delight the player constantly. Players discover new things, are rewarded for their exploration, their observation, their achievements, their willingness to play that game. It is part of what keeps them playing longer.  Reward your users for their participation, not with points and badges. but with things that will make them smile or make them feel valued. I have said it before and will say it again – loyalty is earned and part of that is to make the user feel as though they value you. Google could have settled at just giving people unlimited and convenient photo storage, but they went a massive step further and that is why I staying with this service!

Generation Y all the Fuss?

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There is a lot of noise about Generation Y or Millennial’s, those born after 1982. They are seen as some kind of strange new evolution of the species, the saviours of our universe. One of the key things that is spoken about when they are mentioned is that they grew up with computers in their houses and gameboys in their hands. There are other differences, but this is the one I hear the most. The way they are spoken about you would expect them to be able to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes.

They do learn differently, they adapt faster, they need constant feedback and attention and are generally different to the rest of us. That is the theory anyway and for the most part, it is probably true.

But, I think there is more to it. It is not just about how tech savy they are. They are also the first generation where as children they had more power than adults.

When I was young and at school, there were many things that we accepted as normal that would make the toes of kids curl now. There were also many things that adults could do to kids that would land them in serious trouble with parents and the law now.

Back then,bullying was seen as boisterous behaviour and character building (how many times did I heard that when I was a kid??). Dyslexia was not considered when assessing children. Until my parents took me to a specialist in London to prove I was dyslexic, the school branded me as stupid and left me to metaphorically rot. Behavioural disorders such as ADHD did not exist (as in they had not been recognised then). Those who would be diagnosed now, were seen as disruptive and punished as such.

Go back only a single year from my entry into school though and teachers could do whatever they wanted to kids including dishing out beatings. The same was true of parents and police. Really anyone could hit a child if they so much as blinked at the wrong time. Whilst I may have missed out on official corporal punishment, the teachers still had their ways, from psychological bullying to throwing you across a room and claiming you tripped.  All of this led to kids avoiding one crucial thing. Questioning adults, asking why?. Adults were seen as knowing everything and questioning that had serious consequences.

Now, I am not saying any of that is ok, it is just fact that this happened and was true at the time. Adults had the power.

These days, adults have far less control. So much as point at a child and it can be considered child abuse — God forbid you shout at them. Childline can be dropped into any argument to instantly end it. With technology moving faster than ever before, kids also have a habit of knowing more than adults about important things  — and adults know this. Most importantly, they constantly ask why. They demand to understand the world around them rather than just accept what they are told blindly. They question authority with no fear of repercussions.

This is the “super-power” that my generation and older fear the most about Generation Y. They question the norm. They are not satisfied with the status-quo, they quite rightly want more and because they have grown up in a world were it is near impossible to say no to kids as they grow up, they expect more.

They are not super human though, they just have different expectations. I had different expectations to my parents. I had different tastes in music, TV, films, books. I had Metallica and Nirvana, they had The Beatles and Cliff Richard. I had ideas they did not agree with. I questioned religion and politics and even as a non millennial was starting to question why those with authority actually deserved it. My parents were the same with their parents and so on. It has always been this way and always will. Hell, I grew up with Apple II’s, Commodore 64’s and BBC’s. My 3 year old has a tablet now and is already more advanced than I was at 10!!

We have to accept that GenY is here and actually GenZ is snapping at their heals! Get ready, or you will get left behind.

(see the infographic below if you want to scare your self).

Brought to you by Marketing Automation Software by Marketo

Play, games, toys, playfulness and gamification

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Lately I have been thinking about play a lot. This is probably because of watching my children growing up and seeing how play changes into games as they develop. I have written about play before and it does form part of my general Game Thinking framework, but it is lumped with toys and games – rather lazily.

I wanted to give play and my surrounding thoughts on it its own post.

Play

Play is free form and unlike a game does not need to have a point or a goal to it. It exists within a set of rules created by the person or people playing and is born in the imagination.  Often it is a way of exploring the boundaries and extremes of something, in search for new and novel experiences.  It is undertaken for its own sake often for fun and joy.

When my daughters were very young, they used to engage in pure play. They did things because they were novel, a new experience, and judging by their smiles and their laughter – they enjoyed it. I would go so far as to say they found it fun. Play did not need external objects at first, they could just move their foot and find that hilarious. Many say that play is essential for children as it teaches them about their environment and themselves.  I have to agree – they learn essential lessons through play, but I don’t think that is why they actually play – they don’t think to themselves “I’m going to learn how my foot works now”. They play because they can and it entertains them! Like adults, they are seeking novel experiences.

As they developed, their own movements became less interesting (probably because they had discovered the boundaries of what could be done, mastered them if you will), so play needed to have some help. They would pick up things and do things they found entertaining with them. These things became toys.

Toys

Toys are an interesting concept when considering games and play. In this context, toys are objects or representation of objects that have their own intrinsic rules, but don’t come with extrinsic rules as standard! So a ball, a stick, a transformer etc. You can play with them however you want confined only by the toys own rules – effect of gravity, shape, fragility etc. If you throw a ball, depending on the material the ball is made from it might bounce, it might roll, it might stop dead – that sort of thing. These are not rules that the person playing imposes on the ball. If you throw a Transformer in the same way as a ball, it will obey its own rules. It won’t bounce and will probably break when you throw it at a wall!

There is another type of toy worth mentioning – I refer to it as a playground or a toy box. This is an entire environment rather than a single object. Take Gary’s Mod or Minecraft (in creator mode) as examples. You are in a virtual world that has it’s own intrinsic rules for how the world behaves and the constraints that you as the player have within the world (magic circle). With Minecraft this would be things like how far you can dig down, how far you can build up, how certain blocks behave with other blocks and more. However, within those constraints you can do what you want. You can use the world itself as a toy and play with it.  That can include turning the world into the setting for a game!

At first my kids would just play with the toys, they would not create any discernible rules around how they interacted with the toys. After a while though that was no longer enough. It was not fun just to throw bricks at the wall, they started to add rules to the play, stacking as high as they could, lining up the colours. The free form play now had  structure – it had become a simple game.

Games

Play begins to become a game, when you start to add explicit goals to it and rules that are imposed by the system. If I kick the ball through a goal, I get a point and I win (Zero sum). If we work together to get the ball through a series of obstacles, we win (non zero sum). For some this will boil down to competition (with the system or other players) and cooperation. For others, there is much much more to it!.

With my kids, I began to see them turning pure cooperative play into cooperative games as they both matured, individually and together. They would create scenarios such as being a chef and a waiter. They had to work together to get Mummy and Daddy their orders. Whilst it was still very free form, it was starting to have game like elements, rules and goals.

Now of course they play games with each other that are purely competitive as well as playing cooperatively. Either way, it is a joy to watch and try to understand!

Gameful and Playful

In my mind there is also a variation on the Game vs Play conversation. Gameful vs Playful. This is not fully formed in my mind, but from what I have seen there are games that are playful and play that can be gameful. So for example, Minecraft in Creator mode is pure play – it is therefore Playful Play. However, when you start to add game like rules and goals to it (create pac man, or hunger games or even play in the adventure mode) it becomes a Playful Game.

Call of Duty games offer little to no chance to play, they offer a single experience. There are opportunities to do stuff just for fun, but that is forced rather than designed. So Call of Duty is a pure game, a Gameful Game.

Toca Boca create games for children. Some of them have actual goals, create things and do certain things. However they are designed to encourage pure play as well. So for me they represent Gameful Play.

As I say, these are fairly embryonic thoughts!

So a quick summary

  • Play is free form and has no extrinsically imposed goals. It is done for fun or joy.
  • Games add defined goals and rules to play (such as challenges)
  • Toys are objects that can be used in play or games.

Games and toys are a subset of play.

  • You play.
  • You play a game.
  • You play with a toy.
  • You play a game with a toy.

Final Thoughts on Playfulness

As a final thought, I wanted to consider playfulness. If play is free form, does not need to adhere to rules and is undertaken just for its own sake, then being playful would require one to submit to those same concepts. To design a system that encourages playfulness you must create an environment that allows people to do things just because they can. You have to create experiences that exist purely for the sake of being novel and enjoyable to the user.

You need to break the rules a little and give the user a chance to do the same.

[Updated] Defining fun – some research results

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UPDATED 27/08/2014

After a few more responses, I have realised I missed off Learning as a type of fun!!!

As many of you will have seen by now, I am running a short survey on what people find fun. So far I have had 155 results, for which I am truly grateful! Of course, I need more – so tell your friends, I am missing any answers at all from the 17 or younger age group!

However, I thought it would be fun to share some of the findings so far, show those of you that have answered so far that there is something happening with your answers. I have been categorising the answers into various types of fun, creating new types as I find answers that don’t fit into those I already have. So far this has given me 21 types of fun. Part of this process is to get your feedback on the types I have so far – are they all separate for example, or can I group a few. Also, can I group them generally beyond what I have already. I really need your feedback to help this process!

But, until there, here is what I have so far! (updated 27/08/2014)

Type % Description
Challenge 15.8% Over coming obstacles. Attaining a sense of achievement.
Fellowship 12.6% Relatedness. Being with others.
Problem solving 8.9% Puzzles, use of problem solving (specifically) to over come challenges.
Exploration 8.3% Deliberately looking around and testing the boundaries.
Sensation 6.7% Joy in physical sensation. Smell, activity, sport, touch etc.
Discovery 6.0% Finding new or interesting things, deliberately or not.
Creativity 5.5% Building, inventing, creating new things (music, art etc)
Surprise 5.0% The joy of the unexpected.
Competition 4.6% You vs. the world.
Fantasy 4.4% Make believe
Learning 3.2% Learning new things, mastery.
Collaboration 3.2% Working with others on a common goal.
Narrative 3.0% Stories and plot lines.
Family 2.8% Joy from your relatives – not that same as fellowship.
Humour 2.5% Different for everyone, but jokes, funny stories and situations.
Altruism 2.1% Selfless acts, sense of some kind of greater purpose.
Progression 2.1% The feeling that what you are doing is leading to something.
Immersion 1.1% Believing in the fantasy world totally and losing yourself to it.
Curiosity 1.1% Wanting to know what is in the box, what happens next, what is around the corner.
Flow 0.9% As described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, losing your sense of self in an activity
Schadenfreude 0.2% Pleasure in the suffering of others.

There are a few there that look like they may be the same, but I have also split them in my mind between facilitated experiences and internal. So the joy of creativity is intrinsic – you don’t need external guidance or facilitation. However,  something like narrative needs to be created and facilitated extrinsically.

Fun Types Updated 27/08/2014

Challenge comes up a lot as something you guys find fun as does fellowship. This does not surprise me though, Relatedness and Achievement!  Things related to Autonomy are also high up, such as exploration. Altruism is low scoring, but other ideas related to greater Purpose are in there, but lower than I might expect.

If nothing else, it shows that defining fun is really REALLY hard! People find so many things in so many combinations fun. Just because you find it fun, doesn’t mean others will.  You have a good shot if you add challenge though it seems.

As I say, this is just the first run at the results and I hope to collect a lot more data over the coming months. I am sure some of the ideas will change!!  Please comment and add ideas though and if you have not done so yet – take the survey!. Oh, one thing to note.  No one there has said they enjoy collecting points and badges 😉

Quick note. The thickness of the circles just shows how often the type has appeared in the survey – does not relate to importance.

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