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Imitate Good Stuff

Nicky Case developed this game on Anxiety Disorder: https://ncase.me/anxiety/  This game-like experience is hard to categorize, but is best described as an "explorable explanation." This term was coined in 1994 by Peter  Brusilovsky, professor of Information Science and Intelligent Systems at the University of Pittsburg. As Wikipedia puts it, "Explorable explanations encourage users to discover things about the concept for themselves, and test their expectations of its behavior against its actual behavior, promoting a more active form of learning than reading or listening." To say it more simply, if not too simply, it refers to "learning through play." The term was popularized in 2011 by Bret Victor in a blog post of the same name (http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/). Some board games that…

The Creative Process

What is creativity? What does that look like? What does a creative person do? Are these types of people creative – artists, poets, musicians? Most people would say yes. What about people who are mathematicians, computer programers, engineers, administrators. Are they creative? It really depends on how they approach their work and lives. Today I parked in a far off lot and making my way to my office I decided to take a different route. Because I took a different route, I hit a dead-end, I got lost and had to ask directions from another person. I accidentally ran into an old friend and had a good conversation. Then I met an student from a previous class who gave me a good idea.…

Brainstorm & Ideation

Thinking Inside the Box: When I teach my Visual Design course I have students participate in the following brainstorming activity. I ask them to pair up. I tell them that they are working for the breakfast cereal company Post, and Post wants to get more children to eat Honeycomb Cereal. The bosses have decided that the best way to appeal to kids is to include a prize in the box. They’ve gotten a deal with the movie company that produced the Harry Potter movies. So, the theme will be Harry Potter books and movies. The Goal: The team to come up with the most ideas (doesn’t matter how good they are) wins. Next I list the the Restrictions of the Game (which…

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