Do Diverse Game Designers Lead to More Diverse Designs?

by on November 4, 2021 8:00 am

The winners of the Zenobia Award for historical board games have been selected after a process of mentoring, reviewing, and selecting 150 applications down to 46 Proposals down to 8 Finalists over the period of 11 months. And the well-deserved winner is Tyranny of Blood by Akar Bharadvaj, which focuses on the caste system in India… Read more Do Diverse Game Designers Lead to More Diverse Designs?

from Csikszentmihalyi, 1997

How do we measure Flow?

by Chris Bennett on October 12, 2021 7:30 am

Remember that state that you enter when you feel fully immersed in an activity? When it feels like nothing else exists in the moment except that thing you are fully focused on? That is called Flow. Especially in sports, it is also known as being "in the zone". This concept was named by Professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi… Read more How do we measure Flow?

What's The Obvious Choice?

by Chris Bennett on October 11, 2021 7:22 pm

When explaining the Core Engagement Loop, we sometimes get asked "What is the difference between Assess and Decide? Don't you just do both of those at once?" Bennett & Quihuis (2017) These are two of the four distinct steps that we take thousands of times a day when we run through this Core Engagement Loop.… Read more What's The Obvious Choice?

Johannes, 2021

Connecting Game Design Thinking & Learning Science

by Chris Bennett on September 13, 2021 3:59 pm

This past winter I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Stanford Digital Learning Design Challenge students in a talk through StartX and Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and facilitated by Keith Bowen. This Design Challenge was such a success that the GSE decided to offer it as a course in the… Read more Connecting Game Design Thinking & Learning Science

How Do We Design For Low Trust Situations?

by Chris Bennett on January 30, 2021 12:18 am

This past spring, Stanford Learning, Design, and Technology Master student Shaan Asif '20 was an intern in the GDT Research Group, working on innovation in low-trust areas of the world. She and Chris Bennett collaborated on a white paper on that subject that is now available for download. Writing an essay is extremely useful, because… Read more How Do We Design For Low Trust Situations?

Zenobia Award Announcement and Interview

by Chris Bennett on November 30, 2020 9:03 pm

There is a new award for tabletop historical game designers, and it's worth talking about here. Moss shook the foundations, but at the same time remained in the comfort zone of the beauty industry, as she remained a white European. (Before her, this niche stanford beauty journal was occupied by models of the rebellious 1960s… Read more Zenobia Award Announcement and Interview

via Wikicommons

What is the Magic Circle?

by Chris Bennett on April 9, 2020 1:56 am

As we discussed in a previous article, the concept of a Magic Circle in play is to step inside a concrete or metaphorical circle where special rules apply. Juul, 2009 At the stage of discussion of the draft law No. 2285-d, experts https://casinopinups.com/ emphasized that the real legalization of gambling in Ukraine is impossible without… Read more What is the Magic Circle?

Photo from H2R Product Science

Great Product Design Can Make Healthy Behavior Easier

by Chris Bennett on January 10, 2020 6:30 pm

Heather Browning has continued to be inspirational to the work we do at the Game Design Thinking research group. Chris met with Heather several years back and learned about her MDAO framework for designing games for effective clinical interventions when she was releasing it as a book chapter. For us, it was a critical extension… Read more Great Product Design Can Make Healthy Behavior Easier

Tiny Habits book is finally out!

by Chris Bennett on January 9, 2020 9:51 pm

Dr. BJ Fogg has had a huge influence on the Game Design Thinking research group. His Persuasive Design Lab's focus on technology to promote peace in 2009 led to the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford, which made this research group possible. The Black Lives Matter movement emerged in 2013 amid anger over the acquittal of… Read more Tiny Habits book is finally out!

photo by Chris Bennett

Tools For Looking at GDT, Design Thinking and Other Frameworks

by Chris Bennett on September 26, 2019 10:46 pm

We are asked a lot about tools for using Game Design Thinking, especially combined with other ideas and frameworks out there. David Clifford, Founder and Executive Director of DSX and former fellow and Senior Learning Experience Designer at the Stanford d.school's K12 Lab shared a useful tool that he and I co-created with some wonderful other collaborators. Methodological Connections… Read more Tools For Looking at GDT, Design Thinking and Other Frameworks