by Annie | Education, Game Design
I recently attended at an event in the Bay Area for prospective Vancouver Film School students as an alumni speaker. It’s rare in life that you have a chance to deeply reflect on the experiences that have shaped your career and life, which is why I so enjoyed this event. Out in the crowd, I saw myself from several years ago, eager and anxious, and with a burning passion and dream to make a difference. Now that I’ve made it through the rigorous VFS experience, I can say that that intense year has had a profound and lasting impact on my career, the opportunities that have come my way, and the successes I’ve experienced. Check out the full presentation, and feel free to reach out if you want to hear more....
by Annie | Education, Game Design, Interaction Design, Product Design, Psychology of Games
Early on in parenthood, I thought I’d somehow magically received the perfect child. He was no picky eater, rather quite the opposite. He was into steak, broccoli, watermelon, pretty much anything we put in front of him. …and then that phase ended. Nowadays, we spend dinnertimes bargaining, pleading, and joyfully cheering when even a single bite makes it down the hatch. Contrast that with the time he spends in front of a mobile device, wholly sucked in and willing to do anything to progress the game or storyline. That’s where new innovations like Yumit come in. Yumit is an interactive dinner tray that reinforces healthy eating habits by converting actual bites into virtual energy. Whether this actually has long term effects on kids’ experience and interaction with food remains to be seen. But more and more, the lines are being blurred between reality and the virtual world, which isn’t always a bad thing. After all, people are often much more engaged when cleaning a virtual room through a game than cleaning their actual room. Why? Because we all crave feedback for our actions, and online worlds often provide that instantaneous feedback to let us know the path toward a desired behavior. As for parenting, I’m on the fence as to whether I’ll try something like Yumit. While it may instantly boost veggie consumption, I’m curious about the lasting effects. But hey, I guess even one broccoli happily ingested is a...
by Annie | Design, Game Design, Instructional Design, Tech
I’ve been part of the tech industry off and on since 2006, and in that time, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of talented and passionate people, most of them men. This is pretty typical for the tech industry, especially in game development, in which the percentage of women is lowest amongst all other tech fields. I’ve experienced firsthand the impact that gender equality can have on team dynamics. I’ve been on teams in which I was the only female, which, I’m proud to say, taught me how to drink beer and enjoy it. I’ve also been on teams with much smaller or nonexistent gender gaps, and for me, as a woman, the difference is palpable. According to the latest data, while game development has the lowest percentage of women amongst the tech industry, elearning has the highest percentage, which means I’ve now been on both ends of the spectrum. Each team composition brings out a different side of myself, but regardless of the gender makeup, I continue to push myself to be the best I can be. So while I love my sisters in tech, I’m also a fan of the brogrammers. Check out the full breakdown of the gender diversity data from this post on Measuring Gender Diversity with Data from...
by Annie | Design, Product Design
Early on in my design career, I focused diligently on the problems that were assigned to me. A specific market segment had been identified, a specific need had to be met… I was on it, immediately researching the problem and coming up with a variety of potential solutions. But design has taught me to stay young. To look at everything through the mind of a beginner, to question everything, and to forever be curious. I’m a designer by trade, but I’m also a designer at heart. Even when I’m off the clock, I examine everything, always looking for hidden opportunities to use design to improve the world. As Tony Fadell, the guy behind the iPod and the Nest thermostat, puts it, “It’s easy to solve a problem that almost everyone sees. But it’s hard to solve a problem that almost no one sees.” Indeed, the world is full of invisible problems that most people are accustomed to and thus can’t see. As a designer, I have the unique and exciting challenge of finding those hidden issues and designing a better world, one small solution at a...
by Annie | Instructional Design
Today marks the end of my second week as a learning experience (LX) designer at LinkedIn. It’s been quite eye-opening to go from my previous experience with small companies and startups to the hypergrowth and lightning fast pace of this 8000+ global organization. Yet despite the size of the company, the startup spirit burns bright, and people are proud of the scrappiness and trailblazing that’s core to LinkedIn. There’s a sense of urgency to everything and an ongoing connection of every little detail to the greater mission of building the economic graph and changing the world. The air is abuzz with energy and passion, and I love it. I started my journey here with [in]troduction, the full day orientation that marks every employee’s first day. Along with about 30 other new hires (yes, LinkedIn has about that many new hires every week in just the Bay Area alone), I learned about LinkedIn’s culture and values, history, and vision for the future. And even though I’m only 1 of 8000+ employees, I know that my work can make a difference and play a part in impacting the world. And that’s worth getting out of bed for. The part of [in]troduction that has stuck with me most is when one of the senior leaders came in and thanked us for joining LinkedIn. At most places, you get congratulated when you start a new job. But he explained that he was thanking us because we represent the top 0.5% of talent in our respective industries, and we could have chosen anywhere to work, but we all chose LinkedIn. A truly thoughtful message and a great way...
by Annie | Instructional Design
Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to design a variety of incredibly interesting online courses that have impacted thousands of people around the world. I’ve worked with great teams at companies like Microsoft, Adobe, LinkedIn, and Benefit Cosmetics. Best of all, I’ve had the chance to work with the awesomely talented, incredibly fun, and passionate people of Studio i, the San Francisco branch of Allen Interactions. When the news came down that Studio i would be dissolved, we banded together, helping each other with resumes, cover letters, and networking. With the huge amount of talent and passion in this bunch, I’m confident everyone will find great opportunities, but it’s with a heavy heart that I close the book on Studio i and the awesome times we’ve had together. As for me, my next adventure is about to begin! Stay tuned for more… ...
by Annie | Illustration Station
About a week ago, my father passed away after a year long battle with lung cancer. Before he passed, I was able to visit him and spend one good day with him and his old friends from college before things went downhill. As I was making funeral arrangements, the funeral home offered to create memorial cards for my father. Unfortunately, the samples they presented were far from the visual design aesthetic I’ve come to appreciate (i.e., randomly placed gradients, faded photos of clouds and flowers in the background, and overly scripty fonts). Thus, as a final tribute to my father, I designed his memorial cards. It’s hard to sum up a person’s life into a single card, but I know that for those who knew him, this card will summon all the good memories they had of him. Rest in peace,...
by Annie | Interaction Design
There’s nothing quite like the buzz you get from a creative conference. So many new ideas, rich conversations, and memorable characters. The annual Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference, held right here in San Francisco this year, just came to a close today after three days of engaging sessions, keynotes, and workshops. My head is swimming with new ideas, my notebook is filled to the brim with sketches and notes, and I’ve made a number of new friends in the community. Here are my top 5 takeaways from Interaction15: 1. Selling the design is as important as doing the design. Like many designers, I often assume that a strong design will speak for itself. In actuality, any design relies upon the designer to make it come to life. And as such, designers need to be sellers. And performers. Just as a realtor sells a house by helping the client envision their life in that home, we as designers must sell the vision of our designs. 2. Communicate the vision throughout the project. I realize now that I often start meetings as if we’re picking right back up from where we last left off, as if clients have spent just as much time as I have thinking about and tinkering with each aspect of the project in the days since our last meeting. In actuality, clients are often coming in from other meetings and need to be reminded of the status of the project, the connection between what will be covered and the project vision, and how they can contribute. 3. Confidence is part of the job. Humility is expensive. Being a designer can...
by Annie | Typographically Speaking
I remember my grade school cursive lessons with pride, recalling how my teacher taught me to slant my paper just so, and the first time I mastered that tricky lowercase ‘r.’ These days, handwriting is at a premium. It’s no longer taught in most schools, having been replaced by the click click click of the keyboard instead. However, there’s so much you can learn from a person’s handwriting. And that’s why I decided to upcycle some old thank you cards to create handwritten business cards. Time consuming, yes. But a chance to make a memorable first impression and stand out from the sea of glossy and printed cards. All it took were some old greeting cards, scissors, washi tape, and a decent amount of patience. But now each time I hand out a card, it’ll mean something more to me, and I’ll be exposing a little more of who I am through those carefully handwritten letters....
by Annie | Instructional Design
It’s been about a year since I started using the Successive Approximation Model, or SAM, as we call it in the eLearning world. In that time, SAM and I have gone through growing pains, endless rounds of trial and error, noticeable progress, and memorable successes. SAM is the predominant development framework we use at Allen Interactions, so I have gotten to know it well. At its core, SAM is about rapid prototyping and iteration, bringing you closer and closer to the final product through successive approximation, as its name would imply. I recently gave a presentation on SAM at the Bay Area Learning Design and Technology meetup, with nearly half the audience having never heard of SAM before. After fondly recounting my first failed design attempt at Digido, involving a big honkin’ design doc that nobody read, I told the story of our successive attempts to learn about our audience and to build a product that would make a difference. All those lessons, in the form of our prototypes MotionMaze and Pop & Dodge, led us to create Zoopnium, which made it into the top 10 kids’ games in the App Store. Looking back, I realize that through the multiple rounds of iteration, we were essentially living SAM. And while SAM doesn’t always work for every client, it does push me to work quickly to create and test prototypes, which teach me much more about the project needs and learner audience than documents and discussions. So thank you, SAM. Thank you for getting me out of the design doc mode, for giving me the creative freedom to test and retest different...
by Annie | Illustration Station
I’m a huge fan of roasting veggies. Broccoli, squash, carrots – you name it, I roast it. However, I’m always nervous about getting the roasting time wrong, since different veggies require different amounts of time in the oven, so as I’m tossing the veggies in olive oil with one hand, I’m often clumsily googling the roasting time with my other hand. The solution? I’ve created a cheat sheet for roasting veggies. I hope this simple chart helps you roast with confidence. Enjoy....
by Annie | Game Design, Instructional Design
Ah, eLearning. Unfortunately, when most people come across that term, they immediately groan and roll their eyes, recalling that last boring mandatory online training course in which they spent an hour reading a bunch of seemingly irrelevant text on screen and learning nothing to apply to their day-to-day jobs. But this doesn’t have to be the way it is. Increasingly, eLearning is moving away from the traditional model of content presentation followed by a skills test. Instead, training courses are becoming more exploratory, allowing the learner to try their hand at a real world challenge, make mistakes, and learn the information relevant to the task. Take the example of teaching a learner to use jumper cables. The traditional approach would be to provide learners a manual to read, maybe with a few graphics illustrating the process. If you’re really lucky, you might watch a video showing someone else completing all the steps. However, this doesn’t provide learners with any practice in applying the information and doesn’t provide intrinsic feedback that points to the real world consequences of the learner’s actions. Instead of telling and then testing, exploratory eLearning flips the traditional model on its head. Test first, then tell. In other words, start with the challenge up front, then provide the content in feedback relevant to the learner’s mistakes. In this example, the learner might be tasked with parking their car the correct distance away from the dead car. If the cars touch, they might get a spark and hear a crash. After correctly parking your car, the eLearning might move to a view of the car engines and...
by Annie | Game Design, Instructional Design
Last week, I started my new position as an instructional designer with Allen Interactions, a company on a mission to wipe out boring online learning. With my interests in education and design, you’d think I would’ve stumbled into instructional design earlier. And in fact, I did briefly consider a career in instructional design before but shied away due to the boring e-learning courses that have become the stereotype in instructional design. I didn’t want to spend my days working on boring courses that people would dread taking, writing walls of text to throw in front of people, and utilizing the same ineffective training models again and again. Boring for them, boring for me. Thankfully, my interpretation of the field of instructional design was a bit off, or at the least, not universally applicable. Though there will always be boring e-learning courses out there (I’m sure you’ve taken one or two), there are an increasing number of engaging, interesting, and effective e-learning courses impacting every field from sales and marketing to health and education. And that’s why I’ve joined the field. One way that these courses are becoming more engaging is through adopting game design principles to create effective game-based learning. The term “gamification” is often thrown around in corporate meetings these days, both as a way to increase customer retention and to more effectively train internal employees. If you think about it, using games to teach makes a lot of sense. All games aim to teach the player something or other, whether it’s how to solve a puzzle or how to make your character jump, so why not use that...
by Annie | Game Design
It’s no surprise, but children’s use of mobile devices is on the rise, with most of them using mobile devices to play games. Check out Common Sense Media’s latest...
by Annie | Game Design
Coursera is at it again, offering another excellent online course about games, this time on the topic of video games and learning, presented by Constance Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire of the University of Wisconsin. The course promises to cover everything from the culture of games and human cognition to practical applications of games in the classroom. The course begins today and spans 6 weeks, each of which offers new video lectures, suggested readings, and assignments. So if you haven’t already, register now and join me for this exciting new...
by Annie | Game Design
Some of the most memorable games create the most preposterous of scenarios. Flying whales, ravenous zombies, or this scenario, created by a recent science game for kids: a giant cheese that’s out of control and taking over the city. Developed by biotech company Genentech, Ralph’s Killer Muenster is an iPad game that sends players on a mission to restore a killer cheese to its edible form. Puzzles challenge players to reconstruct phylogenetic (evolutionary) trees, making the science of genetics more accessible to a young audience. In addition to the game, a whole site dedicated to the fictional cheese monger was created to give more of the backstory behind the game. Even a food truck serving grilled muenster sandwiches can be seen on the streets of San...
by Annie | Education, Game Design, Psychology of Games
Have you heard of gamification yet? If not, you will surely run across it at some point. Gamification is one of the hottest topics at the intersection of game design and business. Many companies are incorporating game design elements in business practices, both externally (e.g., marketing and consumer behavior) and internally (e.g., HR and employee training). In addition, gamification is being used to transform all kinds of fields, from education to journalism. If you’ve ever used a stamp card at a coffee shop (buy 10 and get one free) or gone through the LinkedIn registration process, you’ve been part of the gamification movement. People are just starting to discover the vast potential of gamification in changing human behavior, so many exciting things are happening in this field. If you’re interested in learning more, Coursera is offering a FREE online course on gamification, taught by Prof. Kevin Werbach from the Wharton School at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Over 70,000 people have already registered, myself included. You have until Sept. 9th to register, so get on it! (Coursera also has tons of other free online courses, so check them out if you get a...
by Annie | Education
Back when I first started down the bumpy road into educational games, I had heard about a new school in NYC that was starting to make games front and center in the classroom. Quest to Learn is now a few years along and seems to be transforming the traditional teaching model and the way students interact and learn. Called the Hogwarts of the real world, Quest is creating an environment that actually gets students excited about learning. Who wouldn’t want a science class called “The Way Things Work,” a math class called “Codeworlds,” and “boss level” exams? Pretty exciting stuff, to say the least. Quest is definitely a school to keep an eye on in the coming years. Here’s a great article about recent goings-on at...
![I’m [in]](https://dickersondesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/introduction-photo-400x250.jpg)
