JD’s ‘Successful Design by Failure, by Design’

Cryptic? Well, let us unlock some secrets of GigaInnovation, by revealing some uncommon sense! Have you heard of a fervent design engineer who breaks multibillion dollar - if it ain’t broke - convention with extraordinarily counterintuitive solutions on a relentless basis?

In the late 1980s this engineer was up to his neck in dept, with little more than a small studio-cum-workshop, drawing board, a few basic of tools, his wife’s love and belief, and rare aptitude for transforming convention. Only now, 25 years on, he has a personal wealth of $5.2 billion; a Georgian estate in Gloucestershire, England; a Chateau in France, and town house in Chelsea, London; a Harrier Jump Jet; and owns outright the global brand and GigaConcern Dyson: a disruptive maker enterprise, turning-over $840 million in 2012/13 alone.

This billionaire’s name is Sir James Dyson. A graduate of the prestigious Royal College of Art. With a string of awards for design and technology. And a paradoxical passion for both the novel and the flawless. But how does Dyson achieve all of this and a GigaMarket business to boot?

The route of his modus operandi is perhaps best explained via an antediluvian fable. Dyson’s HQ is based in Malmesburry; a seemingly unassuming rural village in the Wiltshire Cotswolds. Only, this ye’old English hamlet has a legacy of quite valiant innovation. In 1010 AD, a Benedictine Monk known as Eilmer, on reading the Greek myth of Daedalus, coupled some home-brew winged-kit to his waists and arms; then leaped and made a 200 metre flight off Malmesburry Abbey - perhaps man’s madden flight - before a panic crash landing and breaking both wings and his legs; took to Mead; and never flew again.

Only, Dyson is far from a Benedictine Monk. Because when he leaps, flies short and crashes, he gets right back on up, examines and introspects, then moves on in germane and deliberate ways. By way of example, how many prototypes would you say is acceptable for proof-of-concept of a bagless technology vacuum cleaner? 10 prototypes? 100 prototypes? 500 prototypes? Try five years of sustained effort and 5,127 prototypes!

Beyond the taxing challenge of finding engineering solutions, JD next had to find a major manufacturer to license his gadget, obtain rewarding financial royalties, and make his bagless design. However, the first objection was that these companies sold retrofit refill bags and filters for their machines, which was significant revenue stream for them.

It became apparent that he would have to set up manufacturer himself! He sought partners, exhausted his savings, and even mortgaged his own home to get the company off the ground. Since he could not get a European manufacturer interested. The first Dyson vacuum was built and launched in Japan in 1985.

When Dyson first began to approach manufacturing companies take on his ideas for bagless vacuum cleaners, they reject his concepts unabashedly. Only, those wise old incumbents became Dyson’s competitiors, the machine quickly gained popularity with consumers. Within 18 months of its launch it had become the UK’s fastest-selling vacuum cleaner. In 2002 the company entered the US market, its innovative design grabbed the public’s attention; sales quadrupled in the first 2 years. The brand has since become the category leader in the US, and is now sold in over 30 countries.

In recent times, a capital investment of 10 million dollars, employing 125 engineers over four years was engaged to develop a radically new hand dryer called Airblade Tap, which reimagines the way we wash and dry our hands. A high-end design faucet that rinses and then dries your hands with a 420 mph blast of air.  A striking piece of bathroom hardware that took 3 years and 3,300 prototypes to pass qualification.

And this is where the counterintuitive, and to a degree, cryptic logic of Successful Design by Failure, by Design, kicks in. Encrypted, because it takes some skilful reasoning to decipher one of innovation’s best kept secrets.

One of Dyson’s convictions and keys to unlocking innovation’s secret code, is that failure can be virtuous within the process of innovation (broken legs and wings or broken vacuums). It can be a kind of weather vane; not a painful calamity. In fact, success, he says, can be built through failure. Often, viewing problems as new starting points, which help figure out how and where to move forward. In Dyson’s case, it can take a decade and more to find a solution, and even then, the resolve, surprising. Innovation is a journey of learning and adaptation, not a clearly marked final destination.

Hence, Successful Design by Failure, by Design, means using failure as a deliberate and mediated tool to accelerate high value learning. Clearly, then, the highest value failures are the one that lead to the most salient solution.

He has a keen eye for weaknesses in homespun appliances and tools. But, more, also has an exceptional knack to reimagine devices giving step-change improvements in performance. And often in more than one critical dimension. In turn, often increasing utility, efficiency, and ease-of-use. Or, perhaps in this particular example, breeze-of-use!

The relatively new Air Multiplier fan is a prime example of identifying functional weaknesses and then using those deficiencies to drive ingenuity and speculative thinking. Curiously, you may have subconsciously noticed how uncomfortable a traditional fan is when nearby. This is partly ma result of school boy physics; that gas (air) under pressure acts like a fluid. Hence a mechanical propeller will chop up viscous fluids of flowing air into chucks or blocks; pulsing-out in a somewhat annoying manner.

Air Multiplier has no propeller, so kids can jam their heads into machines head and keep their ears on. But how does this clever ‘fan’ work? How does it blow its now famous smooth-as-silk, soft-as-cashmere, continuous warming, or indeed cooling, flow of air?

Cut a cross-section at the bottom of the fans supporting trunk, and you will find a digital motor unit that powers a 3D turbo-charged impeller, in turn forcing air-pressure and air-flow up into a so-called loop amplifier, splitting the flow in-half, pushing the compressed gas through the loop and out of 1.3mm silted annulus.

In turn, this process creates a jet stream that sucks in air from the back and sides, creating a strong even flow of up to 33 liters of air per second. Air is accelerated through an annular aperture passing over an airfoil-shaped ramp channeling direction. Then induced (inducement) from behind and drawn into the airflow. Then entrained around the machine amplifying it up to 18 times.

Dyson and his team have spent seven years and a staggering $42.3 million developing the new V4 motor, which is one of the smallest and quietest high-power motors, mainly thanks to a pressure-based sound dampening principle first observed by a 19th-century Prussian engineer named Hermann von Helmholtz.

The V4 is the world's smallest fully-integrated 1400W digital brushless DC motors was seven years in the making. That is digitally switched at 6,100 times per second, making the high compression fan spin 92,000 times a minute. There are only three moving parts, so there are no slip rings or carbon brushes to wear down. One of the smallest, quietest high-powered motors in the world is the V4.0 digital motor; taking 7 R&D years at cost ~$42 million. The specification, accelerates from 0-to-92,000 rpm in less than 0.7 seconds. Dyson labs have plans for V4.0 DM that extend far beyond bathroom sinks. 55 robots, capable of pumping out 4 million of the motors a year. engineers spent a year scouring the globe for the very best robotic equipment. A super-efficient electromagnet-based design has minute tolerances requiring precision, automated production. A dedicated $80 million investment factory facility in Singapore, increasing doubling production capacity. Four million digital motors are expected to be produced each year.

Dyson’s professional legacy and accent began with a fascination for furniture design; but soon developed a passion for industrial design and engineering. Constant frustration with incumbent or perennial domestic or commercial grade gadgets drives JD to develop and redesign his technology. This makes the technology expensive to develop, ploughing a lot of profits back into R&D.

Much is written about Dyson’s design engineering talents and innovation fortitude. But not so much about his GigaMarket mindset. He is a sublime and structured  strategic thinker. What markets can be addressed, what markets can be expand or created. What platform products and service can be invented and developed to monetise those markets. And what core-technologies and core-capabilities and commence are necessary to realise those platforms and develop those markets?

After thoroughly reinventing the domestic vacuum cleaner, the commercial hand dryer, the office fan, the compact DC motor, and washroom faucet, it is intriguing to speculate what is next? One indicator here, to whether a company is serious about the future is to look at patents pending coming out of that firm. It is clear that Dyson is looking further out at more blue-sky fandango; filing a new patent on the order of every day.

For example, on reading his many interviews in the British and wider media, JD is more than aware that the smart home and office is burgeoning, and the internet-of-robots and other smart thingamajigs is just around the corner. Only this may be a hard sell to Baby Boomer types, as Generation-X simply do not appreciate what most Baby Boomers, like JD, experienced gadget wise back in and before the mid 1970s. The television, for example, had no remote control. Having to get up off the couch, kneel down impatiently in front of the TV, and physically flick through the few channels of limited choice. Now GXers and teenage Millenniumists are swarmed with breeze-of-use gadgets. They expect 24/7 convenience everything. And Dyson is on to this, because no doubt (my emphasis), GigaMarket are afoot.

The idea of reinventing the home and domestic spaces with these kinds of products that are integrated with the internet and can be controlled remotely. Dyson’s products already incorporate high-level software and artificial intelligence (AI). In the future, downloading software upgrades and new apps will be vital. Seamless and push botton breeze-of-use Wi-Fi and your computer’s down for an hour. so you don’t have that awful business of, ‘Do you want this? Do you agree to the new terms?’ When entering your home in 2030, discreet computerized agents sense your needs, monitor your environment, and await your spoken instructions. All electronic devices are connected, e.g. a message will appear on the wallpaper while you are watching your favorite 5D movie to tell you that your meal is ready. Every room is linked to any monitored public space, or you can also see any private spaces for which you have access rights. For working at home, all necessary high-tech appliances for virtual video conferencing, etc. are built in as standard features in your house, and in all hotels you stay at Like all newer buildings, your house will be carbon-neutral, meaning that it doesn't use greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel energy to operate. Housing is based on organic, climate-adapted architecture for low-emission, recyclable homes and sustainability compliance. Since you have installed the latest technology, it is no problem for you to meet the targets set for water conservation, recycling and solar power usage In your hometown, like in almost any larger city throughout the world, "kit cities" have grown enormously over the past years. Accommodating the urban middle class, fast and modular housing is offered either through cheaper, pre-fabricated or flat-packed "kit houses" or in the form of instant roof-top add-on units that maximize existing rooftop space in high-density areas. Overall, more adaptable and affordable housing is mass-produced to enable three or more generations to live under one roof, e.g. to facilitate eldercare

Exponential GigaTechnologies that are at or near at tipping point. I have already deliberated a number of GigaMarkets that are lead by exponential technologies that have or are about to reach the point of take-off: Cobotics, 3DP, metamaterials, frugal medical equipment, AI design systems, et al. However, the industries analysed in part III, are a vanishingly small, however potent subset of what is going on out there.

The overriding mandate of James Dyson, is that he is more than a manufacturing advocate. Even more than a GigaInvestor in the maker world. He is one of a dying breed that actually makes sense about the importance of manufacturing to an economy. Making physical goods is not only important for creating and sustain volumes of higher-value jobs; or indeed the value created through international trade and supporting services.

When a manufacturing culture and infrastructure hits a critical mass, it become sustaining. You get synergy, because of the multiple and convoluted, mutually reinforcing value chains. Creating tier of value added.  This of what it take to design, develop and then make Roll Royce jet Engine, or a JCB Digger, Williams or McLaren F1 Racecraft, GlaxoSmithKline or Astra Zeneca biochemistry to make up Ventolin Inhaler?

Caterpillar, by way of example, is a giant compared with social networking site like tweeter and Facebook. As it employs 620,000 people where Facebook employs 2400 people.

Dyson employs ~5,000 people across the world; hired an over 100 assorted engineers in Wiltshire last year to design the next generation of Dyson gadgets. There are few firms out there so doggedly committed to rethinking things, and fewer yet that do it so audaciously.

He’s more focused on rebuilding Britain’s design and manufacturing expertise, and enabling the innovation of others. Established in 2002, the James Dyson Foundation has inspired and encouraged students to think differently, to consider careers in engineering and industrial design. Dyson, invested $8 million in a student design incubator focused on engineering. From an early age children must be encouraged to have inquiring minds and develop their own ideas: designing, building and testing. 

Miss Jackson’s ‘Multidimensional Boogie!’

 

The date: October 1978. The venue: The Brighton Conference Centre, England. The booking: The Jacksons and their celebrated ‘Destiny Tour.’ And it was something I shall never forget. And along with 10 thousand other fans, learned to move like a ‘Dancing, Dancing, Dancing - She’s a Dancing Machineeen!’

The groove struck like lightening. It is was the beginning of my youthful days of entering (and winning) some quite prestigious club dance competitions. However, it was years before I discovered that the now classic gold dance track was inspired by the Jackson Brother’s youngest sister; a wee small girl named Janet Damita Jo Jackson. An astonishingly uber-talented lady, who has risen to stardom and fortune far beyond expectations. Even beyond that of her late brother Michael.

Today, and after over 40 years in the business, ‘Miss Jackson’ is a burgeoning billionaire middle-octave R&B singer, composer, lyricist, poet, choreographer, dancer, fashion designer, brand innovator, movie actress and supreme stage artist: a true multitalented innovator.

According to Variety magazine, Miss Jackson has danced a total of $260 million in album sales; $81 million in music and publishing fees; sell-out global gigs earning $458 million; with an addition of $81.5 million from tour sponsorships and licensing fees. Then there is Janet’s acting exploits too; banking a whopping $304 million.

Her voyage really got going when she crossed-over from African American Club Goer markets to creating music that would be in every black home in America; or ‘the black album of all time.’ The result, the album, ‘Control.’ An innovative mix of genres, counting R&B, soul, disco, hip hop, pop, rock and dance, extensively broadening her listening appeal; raising her above niche status.

During the mid 90s, Miss Jackson was at the center of one of the premier bidding battles of the century, in pursuit of her name on a Walt Disney Company recording contract. Disney woefully lost, when the prolifically persistent Virgin Records succeeded to renegotiated. In turn, Miss Jackson received an historic $80 million bond; making her the world's highest paid musical act in 1998. Then, at the turn of the millennium, having sold over 100 million records, she was ranked as one of the best-selling artists in the history of music. And all of this mostly unnoticed, camouflaged by the storm of tabloid entangled brother Michael.

For me, one of the defining performance innovations for Miss Jackson was set in 1998. And when I say ‘performance,’ I do not solely mean her on-stage craft. I mean the n-innovation of The Vevet Rope Word Tour; an international symposium across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, New Zealand and Australia. There was so much of the desire and glamour of a Broadway musical in the Velvet project, that it is swimming with the creative imagination and clear direction. Velvet, had such an international resounding impact that HBO put on a one off Saturday special, Live in Madison Square Garden, looked-on by more than 15 million fans; beating the ratings of all four major networks. A feat I can tell you.

No one perhaps forget Miss Jackson's boobylicious performance with Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl halftime show setting new standards for raunch in an entertainment industry. Gone are the days when a powerful performance is all that's needed to deliver a watercooler moment. Nowadays, a barely there outfit, same-sex smooching or foul language and now, a flash of nudityare what's required to get America talking. When Timberlake snatched off part of Jackson's bustier, revealing a breast clad only in a sun-shaped "nipple shield," the barrier was not broken, it was shattered before 89 million viewers. "Hey man, we love giving you all something to talk about," he said, laughing. Jackson's official Web site was bombarded with angry postings.

But what has Miss Jackson done for us lattly? Miss Jackson’s collaboration with Blackglama, the luxury-premium fashion brand, recently launched a collection of coats, jackets, vests, scarves, gloves and other accessories under the ‘Janet Jackson Blackglama Collection.’ The art of fashion is one of Miss Jackson’s great passions; being instremental in the design process here. Creating an Uberbrand, where you do not only ‘Look like a million dollars;’ but in fact ‘Don a million dollars!’

Endurance and resolve, or lack of it, is often a personality trait. It can often come from nurture, life-experience and circumstance. But the big one; the permanent one, is a passion and love for what you do. And Miss Jackson has plenty of that. Build what Miss Jackson has and one can learning, adapt, and innovate to the edge of chaos, even challenges beyond one’s own control.

By firing up her exceptional individuality in her artistic and commercial ventures, she is esteemed as the ‘Queen of Pop.’ ‘Multidimensional Boogie!’

Gaining Empathy with Customer 

Needs and Expectations

Magic Gifts! Anthropology enters here. A deep, sophisticated, and highly methodological social science and discipline.

The one outstanding issue to achieve customer empathy is to get to the core of the customer culture. Here, anthropological field ‘researcher’ infiltrate organisational cultures to gather a deep empathic insight into the way things really are; instead of subjective supposition.

Social anthropologists go undercover in prisons, hospitals, and schools to get the unadulterated truth. Watts Wacker, who wrote, among other the books, The 500 Year Delta, went covertly into State Penitentiaries (he broke into prisons!). Other than the executive board, no one knew of him other than that he was a convitected brutal inmate. Tough job! But lead to real-world improvements for inmate prison service. Dangerous and stressful yes. Worth it? Wacker says it is.

It is the same in B2B, B2C and end-consumer culture. Empathic engagement allows the innovator to develop a deep grasp of the up-to-the-minute user settings; to extrapolate the progress into the future, and to reimagine potential needs and expectations as future offering or provision.

For one example (more below), customers that are inclined to innovate are so-called lead users. Customers that are well ahead of market trends and have needs that go a long way beyond those of the average user. Studying lead customers that have demands years ahead of mass market adopters gives a positioned to obtain early solutions to those needs. 

One of Innovation’s ‘Magic Gifts!’

I recently pondered the whys and wherefores of customer expectations analysis with a fellow research associate. It went along the lines, ‘Listening to customers is a good thing?’ That is, organisations that listen and build-in their clients wishes and demands in their offerings, result in better solutions!

My colleague’s conclusion was, ‘Yes; but not on its own!’

‘Why?’ I asked.

Because that is just the tip of this monumentally important issue! ‘Listening’ is reactive, and therefore too often lagging and off centre. It is also retrospective, relying on people’s actual experiences.

Further; ‘asking’ people what they want – even with quite sophisticated methods – is hit and miss; as different people have different moods at different times; have short-term-detail memories; have a stupendously broad range of personalities, and even have quite weird subjective experiences with the gizmo or venture they have parted hard earned cash for.

Then it occurred to me, ‘So, you don’t merely listen to customers (it is important), but DESIGN THEM A GIFT!’.

‘What?’ My friend frowned.

‘Well, have you ever given a GIFT to a friend you know extremely well? And immediately their eyes open wide, go bright with joy, and the atmosphere of the room goes warm and glowing?’ ‘How did you know,’ they screech, ‘how did you know?’

And that is the job of the innovator. To know their customer so intuitively well, that when they launch a new brainchild, the customer-base reacts in a similar – metaphorical – way. They love it, and the market goes high.

So, to do that, the innovator has to build acute customer empathy; learn their habits and patterns; discover their values and likes in their world, even their dislikes! And by thinking and behaving in this way, you will find that building empathy happens very quickly. And when that happens, your chances of getting a winner sky rockets… So design and build your customers a MAGIC GIFT!

 Accelerated Immersive Learning

If you have infant children (or have close relatives that has young children); you might recall some delightful experiences when they are just two years old. When they not only begun to string sentences together for the first time, but had deep semantic understanding of problems and tasks at hand? I recall my daughter doing exactly that. How on earth did she manage to pick up complex strings of grammar in such a short time, and then appreciate their context and relevance at two years old?

Take humour! It is arguably one of the most complex heuristic functions: meaning, juxtaposition of contradictory context leading to a punch line and unexpected consequence. My daughter would have me in hysterics even at her tiny age with her funny quips or facial expressions in synch with some spontaneous situation. So, how is it that a little toddler manages to learn so fast?

The prime answer, immersion! Little kids are immersed in the middle of an environment with parents, siblings and other family members. In conversations, they pick up the syntax and semantics at a hugely accelerated rate.

Now here’s the question: ‘Why has it taken me many years to master the German language?’ There are both physiological and psychological reasons for this going on in my adult brain. But one thing is true, my brain physiology is different in my adult life than as a small child. And facts are facts little kids learn more quickly than even their 12, 20, 50 year old counterparts.

But being immersed further amplifies and accelerates learning because you are cognitively engaged in a tangible setting. The simulation is physically visceral, not only is your brain more engaged, you body is too.

So why are schools and universities organised in sterile classrooms, and the pupils then merely spending less than half their time in four or five different classrooms (as in pupils walking fairly long distances between classrooms, breaktimes, lunch)? This is not real-world. It is artificial, unnatural and highly unproductive. Plus, the period of time that kids actually spend in the classroom, they are only engaged for a third-to-half of that time. Things like settling down, opening books, other kid pranks, monotony, teachers doing the same, etc. So in total, kids are at best learning for only about a quarter of the total time. If a typical school week is 30 hours, that's 7.5 hours of active engaged learning a week! Just over seven hours a week!

Alternatively, immersive learning environments, that are designed as multidimensional tools to accelerate learning, are now coming on-line. Kids are collocated in a single class (accept for physical education). And teachers run between classes. This make sense. For example, I went to a high school with almost a 1000 kids, so that's 30,000 collective manhours a week. There were 50 teachers, so that's 1,500 manhours. So 30,000 v 1,500. For a child with perfect attendance, 10,080 hours will be spent in school from fifth grade (age 10) to high school graduation. Then having teachers move between classes is much better, because in fact collectively the kids do most of the work.

My conclusion is if kids are given immersive learning environments and tools, and stay in the same class (mostly), they would all do better at school! They will all speak basic French in a few months! And after a year, quite well?

And as for the financial cost of doing this? What is the cost of 55 percent of kids (UK statistic) leaving school with very little academic and real-world learning achievements?

In the US, the average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by the age of 21. Statisticlly, that’s about the same as spend in a classroom for all of middle and high school if they have perfect attendance. It's a remarkable amount of time we're investing in games.  5 million gamers in the US spend more than 40 hours a week playing games. The equivalent of a full time job!

Gameplay may not contribute to the Gross Domestic Product… but scientific research shows that gameplay does contribute to our quality of life, by producing positive emotions (such as optimism, curiosity and determination) and stronger social relationships (when we play with real-life friends and family – especially if the game is co-operative). And for gamers who prefer tough, challenging games, they can build up our problem-solving resilience -- so we learn faster from our mistakes, and become resilient in the face of failure.

Virtual classes start at a different time every morning, depending on when your children are ready for school. Global superstar teachers lecture to classes scattered across the globe, using telepresence and 3D technologies. Classes are in all languages as a result of automatic real-time translation. Interactive media links diverse and dispersed groups of educators and students in ad hoc groups to establish new forms of collective assessments and qualifications

Virtual learning agents guide you through the massive quantity and different forms of education on offer. To meet your personal needs, the agent will assemble educational offers into a set of functions and roles, producing lifelong and needs-based learning plans tailor-made for you. You can of course adjust your personal learning plan at any time, and there will be automatic updates. Learning experiences are immersed in and mediated by a learning community as opposed to merely digital, computer-bound and isolating e-learning

Your children are much more technologically adapt than you, just as they were in 2010. Fully connected and equipped to live in a world which is simultaneously real and virtual, your child negotiates reality games and real-life interactions equally well. A culture of layered realities has become common and is having a positive impact on learning, involving cooperative, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills as found in digital games today. Younger members of society are mentors for their elders with regards to methods of urban and digital survival, computing and networking

Your children are much more technologically adapt than you, just as they were in 2010. Fully connected and equipped to live in a world which is simultaneously real and virtual, your child negotiates reality games and real-life interactions equally well. A culture of layered realities has become common and is having a positive impact on learning, involving cooperative, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills as found in digital games today. Younger members of society are mentors for their elders with regards to methods of urban and digital survival, computing and networking

Multiple gunshot wounds. Mass casualties. A biohazard incident. It may sound like a typical episode of ER, but a virtual rendering of such serious situations could provide valuable training for future medical professionals. Stanford School of Medicine's Immersive Learning Center will allow medical students to integrate their classroom understanding in parallel with simulation-based practice. By creating a virtual microcosm of a hospital, for example, students can seamlessly maneuver through a variety of medical settings, without worrying about making mistakes.

"The goal is to have experiential learning be completely imbedded in the experience, starting at the beginning of a student's education and maintained through their careers," said David Gaba, professor of anesthesia and associate dean for immersive and simulation-based learning.

Emphasizing technique over technology, the center provides students with a range of simulations, from a single patient setting to a mass casualty. A "Wet/dry" classroom gives students an opportunity to practice suturing and giving injections. Mannequins serve as rehearsal for applying splints or casts.  Actors help students prepare for patient care. A role-playing virtual world would allow students to represent nurses or doctors in a trauma ward and respond to a patient's changing condition.

Merging Gaming and Education: The Gamification of Learning. 

Improving learning performance across the board, from infants entering pre-school right out to retirees engaged in further and higher learning, is a Holy Grail for educationists. And there is a growing stack of evidence that supports that gaming platforms, in its many guises, substantially assisting in this goal. Gaming offers no panacea, but it is having a gross positive impact on learning.

Gaming, as applied to learning, is not simply sitting a student in front of Donkey Kong and then measuring the student’s net gain in academic performance. There is some quite profound at work.

Breaking down the gross positive gains, however, is a bit more tricky. While students may achieve higher overall examination scores as an objective measure, measuring student performance improvement in terms of enabling and learning skills and abilities, is altogether different challenge. These are universal life skills such as general problem solving, critical thinking, creative thinking, ideation, processing, et al (such fluid thinking skills are at a premium today).

The problem is that conventional formal examinations do not measure such enabling skills. But gaming can!

As a point of interest, gaming markets have grown to bigger than both the movie and music industries. And not being a gaming aficionado, that surprises me, considering the modern gaming industry is only around 40 years old.

In a wider context, gaming is a twenty-first-century way of leading, thinking, learning, communicating, and even selling and prototyping (as I will elaborate on later), and of working together to accomplish real change and improvement across and range social and commercial issues. The statistics are mind boggling. 180 million active gamers in the USA playing on average 13 hours per week. The great challenge is to integrate games more closely into everyday worlds, and to embrace them as a platform for collaborating on our most important planetary efforts.

Thomas Frey,

‘Steve Jobs famously stated that “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Educators have been working under a similar assumption that “students don’t know what they need so it needs to be planned out for them.” 

The key difference in these two statements is that Steve Jobs created products that lived or died based on market demand, and consequently, many of his products failed. Market demand in education is vastly different because the customers (students), have very few options, and future employers, the ultimate consumer of an educational system’s output, are only tangentially involved in the whole process. So let’s consider to a more consumer-driven educational marketplace. If a student had the ability, as in a grocery store, to walk down an aisle and pick and choose the “products” they wanted to learn, how different would that be from our educational systems today? To ask this another way, if every course lived or died based on its ability to build an audience, an actual consumer-driven following, what courses would still exist and which ones would disappear. More importantly, what would classes look like and would we even have classrooms, schools, and teachers? In the fluid learning environment emerging around us, the whims of a marketplace will be as fickle as in today’s retail stores’

Reward. One of the kernels of compulsive gambling is anticipation of reward. In fact, the worst thing that youths can experience in early life is run of luck at the slot machine or dog track. It imprints in their mind for a long time to come. The reward-dopamine cycle is route number one to dependence for over eating, watching soaps, sex, violence, politics and gambling. In the case of education, youngsters do not get the kind of feedback in terms of reward in the volume and depth necessary for them to be a compulsive learner. Giving a gold star for an essay and pinning in teacher’s wall only goes so far.

Learning rewards need a bit of inventive thinking. For a start, smart kid will outperform the not so smart over all. And that can lead to a green eye and a questionable ethic. But rewards do not have to be that big and they can be class (team) based.

The first step is figuring out what the would-be pupil, or indeed whole class, likes best. Day trips out (theatre, theme park, cinema, zoo, museum, waxworks, laser tag, football/hockey match? Strawberries, chocolate, ice-cream? Titles, craving infatuation dependence

 

 Gamification Mechanics.

An exciting and potent branch of the science of game theory is Gaming Psychology. Which explains the mechanics and dynamics of not only winning, but motivating in a way that makes the customer, comeback for more again and again, learn more quickly and independently.

 

There is lot of terminology in world of online virtual learning and associated platforms. And it is the same for the videogame world as well. For a start, gamification and gaming are two different things. Gamification is the act of applying rules of thumb, often called ‘gaming mechanics,’ to make a videogame or online course more effective. And gaming is the link between playing and games.

Tom Chatfield's TED talk on 7 Ways Games Reward the Brain. With gamification, these possibility spaces have been expanded beyond just games into other areas like marketing, education, the workplace, social media, philanthropy, and the Web, just to name a few. BioNetwork provides workforce training and education to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life science industries.

Immersive applications encourage imagination, support exploration, give risk-free environment, help our understanding, engage our interest, make inaccessible accessible, build relationships, bridge to physical world

Gamification, as applied to online learning is the use of gameplay mechanics for non-game applications. However, it must be made clear that Gamification is not about turning you course matter into addictive video game. The outcome should be focussed on proficient and competent understanding of the subject matter, designed and motivated through gaming mechanics.

Game mechanics are the construct of rules that encourage users to explore, learn, and push the boundaries of their aptitude through the use of clinical feedback mechanisms. The primary reason for applying gamification to online learning is to engage learners. Much of what is used to build engagement in video (and non-video) games can also be applied to other interactive material, such as online learning. But what mechanics need to be considered and integrated most?

Engagement mechanics is the effective pursuit of attention or increased effort of a learner. Basically, engagement occurs when a brain is rewarded, and for something to be perceived as rewarding it must evoke positive emotions. The are two prime mechanisms to the sensitivity of something being rewarding: desire and affinity. Without these motives, the learner will not find something rewarding. Neuroscientists says that desire and affinity occur in two separate parts of the brain. For the purposes of developing engaging online learning courses, the gaming mechanics need to reward the learner's brains by compelling motives to want the knowledge or skill, and develop course content they enjoy.

To do this, contents designers must know and understand the audience, not just the subject matter. This is partly a demographical issue, by studying the popular culture, brands, interests, and the general media the target audience get pleasure from.

You may have seen in the media the reports of activities, or gadgets, or pass times that for a great many people become somewhat addictive (if not ultracompulsive)? We all know someone who compulsively sends text-messages, or aches to post a Facebook comment, or spends every evening stuck in front of a video game.

Deploying motivation. Controlled and autonomous motivation achieve different outcomes. Extrinsic motivation leads to a discrete outcome, such obtaining a life goal. Intrinsic motivation leads to activities that pleasurable, exciting, or interesting, such a hobby or recreational sport.

Motivational theory proposes all humans require the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs, namely:

• Competence (a sense of being able to do something i.e. being competent)
• Autonomy (a sense of control and freedom)
• Relatedness (a sense of being associated or connected to others)

There are a number of strategies that can be used to motivate online situations:

• Give learners some level of control as they work through the module or course.
• Provide regular, meaningful feedback throughout the learning experience.
• Incorporate social elements.
• Provide opportunities for collaboration between learners.
• Keep the stakes low and allow learners to practice.
• Allow learners to make meaningful choices and pursue challenging goals.

Motivation plays an important role during educational experiences. Even though a person may be motivated to engage in an activity leading to a separable outcome, they do have a degree of choice and control if they have internalized their motivation. As educators we have an opportunity to assist with this internalization in the way we design and deliver learning experiences.

Contexts that satisfy these basic needs will support people's actions, resulting in more optimal motivation and positive outcomes. So, if we can use strategies to support autonomy, competence and relatedness needs we can assist learners to internalise their motivation.

DopaLearning. These are what I call DopaProducts; or here, DopaLearning. Products and games that you cannot but help to purchase, even if you do not need them or rarely use them. DopaProduct are any pursuit, interest, object or conduct that develops into a main focal point in an individual's life routines, work and leisure pursuit, often to the exclusion of other behaviours. In fact, people - all people - may become addicted or compulsively obsessed with even simple things (habits are more easy to form, yet harder to break).

Some studies imply that there are comparisons between physical addiction to different substances such as alcohol or cocaine; and psychological dependence to activities such as gambling, work, running, shopping or eating.

All addictions, whether behavioural or substance based, have a decisive thing in common. That they all produce elevated levels of dopamine in the brain. A neurochemical that causes an octane-like high. However, over time, the body begins to develop a tolerance to increased levels of dopamine. In turn, the person then must increase the behaviour such as watching more TV Soaps, Facebook shares, reading violent novels, ultra-cleaning the home, etc, to avoid withdrawal symptoms and achieve a high once more.

This in the realms of clinical bio-psychology is known as the distraction-​dopamine cycle. This behaviour (all behaviour is ultimately dictated by chemical activity in the brain) can promote a wide range of outcomes from food binging, acute gambling, violence, sexual addiction; all creating a lasting buzz and/or relived tensions. The key point is that the excessive activity (food binging) is not connected to the purpose it appears to be directed to (satisfying hunger). Other reasons are often present, but difficult to detect.

Examples could be a person who is afraid of bonding with a partner choosing to zone out with the TV, or a person who has never had enough love filling up on a kilo of ice-cream. Hence, addictive behaviours are often the consequence of invisible factors, but none the less are fulfilled or avoided by choosing an alternative outcome like spending all night in the pub or clearing out the cupboards every-single weekend.

So what does this have to do with commerce, or here, turning online gaming into GigaMarkets? Quite a lot in fact. We all have a passion. There is always something in our lives that we are fervent, zealous, and sometimes fanatical about. A hobby, a craft, a game, a collection, a sport, a TV games show (quick switch on the TV; American X-Factor’s on!). And that is your distraction-​dopamine cycle firing off. And the more you are caught up, the greater the cycle, the more reinforced those positive feelings are by seeking out more and more. And now you know way passion fed products like Harry Potter books and films or 40+ years of Star Trek are so successful.

And that is where a GigaMarket signal resides! Your passion is not a convergent focus, because the longer you seek it, the more you want it, the more you crave, the more the scope for innovation! The goal then, is to seek signals that highlight or embed distraction-dopamine cycles.

 

The learning whole. Student learns faster and better if presented with a holistic picture of the entire material right from the beginning. Thus, a student knows why they are learning the material before they begin to learn it. Small units does serve the purpose of easy digestive learning, but also leads to a fragmentation of the final outcome. It is not enough to pack each chunk with synthesizers, cognitive strategies, activities, discussion forums, and assessments. The learner should have the opportunity to realize, recognize, and comprehend why they are learning the content.

The student is the principal audience and receiver of the learning process. Online learning must be learner-centric and not teacher-centric. The focus of online learning needs to shift to a macro-holistic process. Put the learner in the center of the learning process. Designing instruction is about analyzing and addressing the needs of the learner in a macro fashion. A learner will always need to know the path and goal of instructions. Why is he studying this particular concept? For instance, take a simple example of crossing a stream by hopping from one stone to the other. You know where you are going. Similarly a learner needs to know the where, why, and how of instruction. And the macro-oriention answers this explicitly. It places the learner within the learning context taking the concentration away from hierarchical instructional events

Setting Levels and Goals. Video games are often structured so that players have a range of levels and goals. First is the long-term goal of completing the contest. This is important, as it depicts the overall themes, narratives and big concept challenge. Next, are the medium-term goals of concluding each level. And lastly, the short-term goals of completing the missions in a specific levels.

Each level of a game should get harder; a linear condition with each level becoming more complex. Hence in online learning, each level drives forward learning boundaries. However, if the would-be student demonstrates high performance proficiency, the next step level should offer a choice. A condition where the learning-player could choose whether to play a harder level, an easier level, or the same difficulty level.

Adaptive levelling system determine the level of increasing challenge to the player based on their performance on the previous levels. Good results are rarely achieved on the first round, but when they apply the algorithm to the earlier levels they get impressive results. That says a lot for cognitive tutoring, the ability to have a very customized experience by giving a challenge that is appropriate for the level of proficiency.

This allows players in games to learn and practice skills, prior to having to demonstrate mastery of those skills in the most challenging parts of the game (room to fail, room to play, room to learn in trial and error).

Minimizing cognitive fatigue. It is also important  minimize cognitive fatigue, the learning content within levels should be broken up into short, medium, and long-term goals.

It is typical that learners must complete several modules before completing a course. To complete a module, several topics must be completed. In order to complete a topic, several objectives must be finished.

Obviously, each objective requires several goals to be completed. Structuring online learning this way, allows users to learn new skills incrementally, and then practice those skills before demonstrating mastery of those skills in assessment exercises.

Growing learning competence through the learning game. Essentially, as the challenge of an experience rises, the skill of the participant must also grow in direct proportion. If a user's skill exceeds the challenge of the experience, they will become bored. And, if the challenge exceeds the participant's skill, they will suffer anxiety.

An optimal user experience is illustrated in the flow channel as the squiggly line. This line demonstrates the experience described above where a user is challenged to a high degree with new experiences, and then given an opportunity to demonstrate and master the skill of that experience, before given a completely new challenge to conquer.

Final test level. learners are given goals that get increasingly more difficult as they approach a final level. At this level, the level of difficult should reflect a kind of final exam or test.  The challenge of the test level must higher than any of the challenges in the prior levels. This need to be combo need with the opportunity to replay previous levels to master skills before the challenge ramps again. This keeps the player in the flow channel, thus engaging them in the experience. With learning, the challenge is ramped up immediately after an assessment with the introduction of new material. The learner is presented with new material, which gets increasingly more complex. They are then given a chance to master those new challenges as their skills increase, and after that they are given an assessment that demonstrates the knowledge of that material.

Provide Frequent Feedback. Have you ever used an interactive product, be it eLearning, a game, or a website, and felt lost or confused? It happens to everybody, and it's really frustrating. Maybe you are asked to recall some information that you swear you were never told (or, that you were previously told and you've just forgotten), and you don't even know where to look to find it. Perhaps you didn't know how to progress; you don't know what to do, where to go, or you simply can't find a UI item like a button. Or, maybe you find out that there's an assumption that you need some prerequisite knowledge or experience to even understand the basic principles of what you're doing, and you had no idea you needed this, and you have no idea where to get that knowledge or experience.

Employ smart strokes. Popular science and technology publications do this. The New Scientist, Wired, and Focus magazines induce the reader into thinking they are smart by pushing the reader’s intellect just a tad and dressing the language in techno-babble. Learning a course’s content should be the same. Especially for learning exercises. If a would-be learner is confused, lost or feels that they are thumping their head against a virtual wall, engagement will be lost. Because the contents and exercises will essentially say they are dim-witted.

Learning maps. Users should know precisely what they need to do next, or what options they have at any given time. Learner often take long breaks. Sometimes days or weeks. Would they know what to do when they returned? Keep apprentice informed of what to do now and next. This can be achieved by links back to essential information previously referenced or links to supplemental material that is prerequisite knowledge for the current learning.

Measure progress in easy to understand graphics. An significant part of providing feedback to users in online learning is to let them know how much progress they have made through each level. The course consists of a number of modules, and within each module there are several topics, show progress at each level. Use visual and sound graphics instead of ratios or number fractions. Get creative. The progress indices do not need to displayed continuously. It is possible to turn progress statics in to a reward, especially if it's displayed with some fanfare. However, if you do this, users should be able to access the progress bar somewhere at any time.

Evaluation. Blind tests will also put off the student. During assessment, describe why answers are correct or incorrect. Either in pop-ups or links to appropriate information. Many of the online learning course, game and tests I have viewed merely say, ‘Wrong. Try again.’ These people are not playing for fun, the yare thinking and have goals. So give them the support.

Reward effort. Any good teacher will tell that rewarding for effort, not just achievement, is a key to motivation and engagement. If this is presented in a way which is interesting, your learners will feel rewarded, and thus, engaged. Scale the reward in proportion to the effort, as in an animation graphic to congratulate a learner for a perfect score on a test, do not use that same graphic to recognize lower achievements (star, medal, trophy; or toffee, popsicle, huge chocolate bar).

 

The characteristics of gamification mechanics characteristics might include quests, tutorials, competitive versus non-competitive gameplay, and levelling.

Enjoyment of goal pursuing in learning. Quests are the goal structure in a game, the motivational storyline that keeps you going. Researchers have show that using the quest in the game helps learning outcomes and highly related to gameplay and really well received by the students. There is little increase in student motivation to learn mathematics, for example, but students spend more time playing the game and felt they had a more enjoyable experience when quests were highly aligned with the learning objectives.  Put in quests that are imaginative or fantasy-based to get people into the game and moving through instead of making sure that the quest aligns with the learning objectives.

Impact of tutorials on learning games with varying complexity. Think about how students will learn to play the learning game. Educators tend to believe they always need to give instruction; that we have to include a tutorial. Researchers found tutorials were not well received and were viewed as unnecessary when the mechanics of playing could be surmised through just trial and error or intuitively deduced.  For more complex learning do not force a tutorial, provided lessons that scaffold learning the gameplay, as opposed to mere instruction on how to use the interface. This results in more learning play and higher engagement.

Co-opetition (competitive cooperation) goal structures in learning games. When players think about games they are inclined to assume a competition. This may create an anxiety about building in competition because a defeat might lead to thinking that they have not learned anything. So design the game to make it both competitive or cooperative (co-opetition). They had two players playing against each other in each round of play. They were told in an obvious way and saw that while everybody learned that the groups told to compete and the groups that were paid if they won did actually see an increase in intrinsic motivation. Even adding a reward mechanism in this case did not detract from the learning. The people who won the money did actually have higher self-efficacy, but all winners had higher self-efficacy. It changes the way we have viewed reward structures in games and does illustrate some benefit to competition. I think that we think of it as a hallmark aspect of games because we want to have that "we want to work together" kind of experience.