Designing for fun

Yesterday, I gave a lecture at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Tel Aviv. It was a lot of fun, talking about fun.

The lecture was at the invitation of Yoav Ziv of the Industrial Design department, who, coincidentally, was the designer of the Major Fun Keeper Award-winning Ring-o Flamingo.

After the lecture, we had a little time for some questions. One of the questions I was asked was about how to make educational games more fun. I explained that the problem with educational games is that they are designed to compensate for a system that has already taken the fun out of learning, and then to hope that educational games will somehow magically put the fun back. Talk to any experienced mathematician or writer or scientist and they will tell you about the joy that they find in their work. To make a good educational game, you have to go to the discipline before education got hold of it, find the fun that keeps people engaged in it, and make that accessible to kids. Unfortunately in all likelihood educators will not think it sufficiently educational, but for the kids who get to play the games, the experience could very well help them discover the fun that is central to the exploration of science, art, mathematics, language.

Another was about changing culture, specifically the experience of living in Israel - the lack of humor, of fun, in every day life. I responded by talking about New Games, how, when we wanted to bring a change, we didn't try to change the game that was being played, but rather started a new game with some of the people who weren't playing. People walking in crowded, noisy streets, driving in crowded traffic, having no escape except in going to a store or restaurant where spending money suddenly becomes the major focus, really have no other games to play. I explained that we can proliferate alternatives. Like Bob Gregson did with his Thursday is a Work of Art program.

We had more than 100 people, and they were wonderfully, deeply engaged in my silly seriousness. So good to find my work so relevant.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith