What Games Can Teach Us about “Communicating” with Learners

Recently I came across the paper “Learning from Games: HCI Design Innovation in Entertainment Software” from the folks at The Interaction Lab at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

Game interfaces with maps, transparent windows and draggable configuration.

The paper describes several ways that ideas from game interfaces can be provide clear benefits to users in non-game applications. I immediately thought of self-paced e-learning modules and how much game-like interface design techniques can be leveraged to create more engaging learning.

Here are some of the ideas.

• Calm Messaging–Games tend to provide information and messages to players in an unobtrusive manner that doesn’t require the player to dismiss, acknowledge or click on them. In contrast, make a mistake in a typical application and window appears asking you if you really want to do this or telling you that an error has been made. This is true in many LMS applications and is true when a person answers a multiple choice question wrong in a typical self-paced e-learning application. Games, the authors of the paper state, “have shown that reducing demands on the user’s attention can aid performance; through the user of sound, speech, transient text (text that doesn’t require any user action), and subtle animation, games communicate in a calm manner that promotes a fluid, uninterrupted workflow. E-learning, not so much.
• Attention-aware interface elements–Many games contain  user interface elements that “know” how much attention they are receiving from the player and modify themselves based on that knowledge which reduces visual clutter in areas of non-interest. This includes transparent windows or windows that appear only when the cursor is in a particular location or only when the cursor hovers over an object (like the enlargement of a map by hovering over the map icon). In most e-learning interfaces, you must click on something to see information, the interface is not aware it just demands clicks.
• Context-aware view behaviors–When performing a task in a game, often the game camera will zoom, pan and rotate the view of the workspace to best suit the task at hand. This reduces the amount of effort of the player but also draws attention to specific elements or actions. For example, before starting a maze level, the camera action might actually show the location of the treasure so the player gains a general idea of which direction to go. What if the e-learning could automatically scroll when the learner movers the mouse near the bottom of the screen or the focus of the learner could be zoomed in on a particular area of a photograph or a particular piece of information. Context-aware view behavior would reduce the amount of effort required to modify views and navigate the learning.
• Anything-goes interface malleability–Game interfaces are plastic; they are design to be changed and to be different at different stages within the game. Gamers have learned that different interface configurations can impact performance in different game situations and that no single configuration if appropriate for all tasks. E-learning designers and developers have not learned this. The same interface is available for every learner who journeys through the instruction. Every screen has the same non-configurable interface. Sure, this might mean that the sacred cow of “consistent” interface design that requires a next button on every screen might get changed in favor of pull down floating maps, transparent screen overlays, minimized but still visible windows, changes in key mapping and mouse clicking.

So next time you are developing self-paced e-learning, take a look at a few games and see what tips you can borrow.

*Dyck, J., Pinelle, D., Brown, B., Gutwin, C. 2003. Learning from Games: HCI Design Innovations in Entertainment Software. In Proceedings of Graphics Interface.