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Values-Based Data Science & Design
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VBSD Work in Progress
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⚠️
Quest 2
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Space Jamming Materials
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Level 5 - Space Jamming

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Space Jamming is a chance to create small games for people to practice living by their values. And it's HARD! We want to support the value, but make sure not to jump over the hard steps... Space jams should be practice spaces to help us live by our values in everyday life.

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← Click here for hard steps help

Step 1: Come up with potential Hard Steps

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To generate a list of potential hard steps, ask yourself some of these questions:
  • What is hard about living by this value?
  • Which challenging action do you have to take to live by this value?
  • Where do your attempts to live by this value break down? What is it, that is hard to do?

Allow yourself to come up with many potential hard steps. You'll have time to select and refine later.

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For inspiration, you can check out these Cheat Sheets
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Actions that might be hard to do
  • Noticing—Noticing an internal or external stimulus, Attending to something, Tracking something.
  • Feeling—Noticing, Identifying the emotion, Disentangling the immediate cause and associated beliefs.
  • Focusing—Noticing, Selecting what to focus on, Attending to Something, Shifting focus, Tracking something over time, Keeping in mind, Staying in Touch with, Not getting distracted.
  • Recognizing, Identifying—Noticing an internal or external stimulus, Having a Referent (e.g. previous experience with the thing I am trying to identify)
  • Gathering information, Finding out—Discovering, Investigating, Scanning for—Knowing what you need (to know, to look out for), Gaining access, Interpreting what you learn.
  • Remembering, Recalling—Remembering how to do something or explicit knowledge, Having gained that knowledge, Remembering to remember.
  • Generating, imagining alternatives (creativity)
  • Assessing, discerning—Assessing, Evaluating, Discerning, Telling whether, Separating, Identifying.
  • Deciding, Weighing, Choosing—Trading off, Prioritising, Balancing more than one concern, Choosing the best ... (team, time, space)
  • Modeling, Foreseeing—Modeling interactions, Stepping into the shoes of the other, Foreseeing consequences, Anticipating.
  • Changing Situations and Games—Making space for, Creating, Getting, Finding, Arranging, Collecting, Building, Borrowing, Asking for support with, Pausing, Rearranging
  • Social Skills—Negotiating, Listening, Asking, Understanding, Reminding, Providing support, Stepping into their shoes, Empathy
  • Resources, Capacity, Experience—Setting yourself up ahead of time to do hard things later.
  • Changing Course, Dealing with Setbacks—Accepting, Sitting with, Bearing, Knowing it's okay, Improvising, Stepping back, Aborting, Changing mental model, gear, lens.
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People and Objects that might be hard to deal with
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Logistics and Resources you might require to live by a value
  • The (right) equipment (to) remember, identity, find, arrange, collect, build, borrow ❓Do you need a special kind of equipment? What’s hard to do about knowing what you need or getting those things?
  • The (right) people (to) identify, gather, select, find, get on board, convince, build relationships with ❓Does this value require a specific person? If so, what’s hard to do about gathering people who fit the criteria? What’s hard to do about knowing where to find them? What kind of information would you need to tell if someone is right? What’s hard to do about gathering that information? ❓What would you need to set up long in advance?
  • The (right) time and timing (to) identify, notice, make, schedule ❓Does the moment need to be right? What would you need to be able to tell if the moment is right? What’s hard to do about evaluating that?
  • The (right) setting (to) imagine, find, identify, set up, make, negotiate, decorate ❓Is this value easier in a specific setting? If so, what’s hard to do about creating that setting? ❓Do you need a certain mood or situation? If so, what’s hard to do about setting that mood / getting into that situation?
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The inner world of the other, the audience and myself
  • Current capacity and needs (physical, intellectual, emotional) (to) Assess, bolster, provide support, keep in mind, make space for, listen to, ask about ❓What do you need to be capable of handling as it unfolds? What is hard to do about that?
  • Skills, ability (to) Assess, bolster, practice, grow, accommodate, keep in mind
  • Current mood/emotions (to) Assess, make space for, acknowledge, change plans for, improvise, change gears, model, foresee, track, keep in mind ❓What do you need to be able to feel? What’s hard to do about that? What’s hard to do about knowing when you’re ready to handle and feel those things? ❓Do you need a certain mood? What’s hard to do about setting that mood? ❓Does this value require a person to be in a specific state? If so, what’s hard to do about getting people into that state? What kind of information would you need in order to tell if someone is in the right state? What’s hard to do about gathering that info? Is the state you/they need to be in fragile? What’s hard to do about getting yourself/others there?
  • Limiting beliefs (to) notice, identify, name, process, make time for, sit with, keep in mind, not get drawn into
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The relationship with the other, the audience and people not even present
  • Sense of safety, trust (to) Assess, reassure, call to mind, remember, remind, provide support, keep in mind, ask about ❓Are there reasons it might be unsafe to do this? What kind of information do you need to decide? What’s hard to do about figuring out whether it’s safe in this particular situation?
  • How might they see and understand me (to) model, assess, step into their shoes, remember, ask about, listen to, adjust course
  • Status, Relationship Durability, Communication, Willingness to cooperate (to) assess, take into account, change, remember, remind, track over time, change, ignore, make space for, address
  • Other consequences living by this value might have (to) assess, accept, sit with, make space for, hear out, mitigate, prepare for, remember, change, ignore
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Your potential hard steps go here. Once done, copy and plug into step 2.

Step 2: Screen and Pick

Go through the list of potential hard steps one by one.

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Screen them with the help of the toggled checklist.
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Copy and paste your potential hard steps from Step 1 in here. Screen & tag them: [not necessary] [not hard] [too specific] 🚷[not an instruction] 🚨[too general]

Look at the list of checked items. Which three potential hard steps seem essential and hardest in living by this value? Run through the next step with those three.

Step 3: Refine and Final Check

Refine these potential hard steps. Check them against the checklist. Celebrate 🎊

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Open this toggle to look at the checklist.
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Copy and paste your favorite three potential hard steps from Step 2. Refine them in here.
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Design for the hard steps that make decisions a moment for self expression...

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← Click here for the Structural Features cheat codes
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Don't panic! You've developed all the technical skills, now it's time to get creative. Think about games you know well—Truth or Dare, Charades, Twister, Tag, Chess, Basketball—what makes them interesting, powerful, fun? These 8 ways your game could suck will help you understand what the classics get right and improve the games you’re making:

YOUR GAME SUCKS BECAUSE...

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1. It has no satisfying beginning or end

Does the game begin and end in a satisfying way? Is the beginning scary? The end triumphant? What design elements are important here?

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2. Everyone has to begin fully engaged

Some people go all-in as soon as a game starts, and others are slower to warm to it. Ideally a game can accommodate a variety of levels of engagement and win people over to a kind of commitment through play. Does your game do this? How does it create room for the less engaged player? Will they have experiences that draw them in? Will social pressure exists even among less engaged players that will push them towards commitment? Can it accommodate different rates of engagement?

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3. It only uses obvious, common skills

Does the game have a skill set all its own, or does it just engage standard issue human skills (i.e., will the winner generally just be the strongest, the best at pattern matching, the most social)? Ideally, challenges of the game should be unfamiliar and worth improving at.

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4. It's immediately obvious how to play

The best games have a complexity and richness which isn’t revealed in the instructions but instead slowly through play. Does your game have strategies which a player would only hit upon after 10 minutes (or 10 hours) of play? Do the roles and tasks create an ecosystem together which affords a variety of ways of playing and of attending to the play of others? Are there different ways to use the room, to use props, or to use other players which take time to explore? Do the instructions manage to create a good beginning and a good end without spelling exactly out how they happen?

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5. There is only one winning strategy

In game design, the word balance is used to mean a game in which very different personality styles and very different strategic approaches can compete equally. So a game is balanced if offensive strikes and more defensive approaches can both seem like a good idea. Or if introverts and extroverts can play against one another, using their different strengths. Balance, more than any other feature, is what makes a classic game.

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6. It only has one thing to focus on

What do the players focus on, at each stage of the game? Do competitive or race condition tasks take players focus off of each other, and is that desired? Does a difficult task take focus off how a player is being perceived? If there are moments of conviviality, how does focus come to be on the group feeling?

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7. It's exhausting

Is there a rhythm to the engagement of the game? Does it give people time to breathe, to appreciate their accomplishments, to plan? Are there quiet moments, or moments of sub-group intimacy / knowing eye contact / etc?

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8. It makes no room for the individual personality/creativity of the player

At what level are players able to contribute something of their own? Do they invent their own strategy? Is there a performative quality they can bring? Are their creative tasks? Does a player have room to really invent or are they pressured to optimize? Is their contribution actually of consequence or is it merely a gloss?

Redesign notes:

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Time to let your creativity shine. Rewrite your rules from above to make a game environment for someone to practice living by a value. Offer support, but don't let them skip over the hard steps!

INSTRUCTIONS:

Next Steps

  • motivation and expectation setting:
    • expect it to suck, put in 20h / 50 games and you'll rock
  • Jam Bands
  • Other formats for Space Jamming
    • Valetine's day structure - Make it for a loved one with a team
    • Gift exchange space jamming around things you are working on
    • Jam band meetups
    • 5 minute games
    • Positioned within a larger redesign
    • Motivations — making things for loved ones
    • Twice a day or twice a week — an online event where people sharing circle and space jam