Creating passionate users - kathy sierra

 Among the things we use to try to get people flexing brain cells are:

1) We use cliff-hangers, where the learner is drawn into the scenario only to be left hanging without the full answer, to help spur their curiosity into speculating on the solution or result. 

2) We use debates/arguments/discussions between two characters (which could be people or even anthropomorphized parts of the system like the compiler vs. the virtual machine) where there isn't always a clear winner. Both sides might make compelling, convincing cases for their personal view, and this kind of forces the learner's brain into evaluating (one of those higher-level thinking tasks on Bloom's taxonomy), weighing the merits of each side, and drawing his own conclusions. Sometimes we have a definite side, but looking at the same scenario from more than one perspective is in an of itself a way to help inspire deeper thought processing of the concepts.

6) We provide "garden path" scenarios, where the learner is led down a road that looks so right, but turns out to be SO wrong. This is based on the theory (Roger Schank has a lot to say about this as well) that we learn a lot more from mistakes and surprises than from things that work as expected. Think about it... what are the things you're most likely to remember when you're working? When things go just as you expect, just as you were told, there's nothing memorable. But when you're humming along and suddenly the thing you expect fails, and you get just the opposite... you get that WTF?? feeling. And that is what you remember. So we try to provide at least a few of those visceral, "I won't make THAT mistake again!" experiences when they happen. (And thanks to the wonderful Java APIs, those doesn't-work-the-way-you'd-think counterintuitive scenarios are plentiful in some of our books : )

the flow state psychologists call optimal experience that game designers know as "make them want to get to the next level by getting the challenge/skill/seduction blend right."

And they now know the agent responsible for my, um, less-than- A college final exam grades: CREB-2. Your brain is constantly doing a balancing act between CREB-1 (enables long-term memory formation) and CREB-2 (prevents it). It's all connected to protein synthesis, needed for encoding memories to long- term storage.

So if you're a teacher, trainer, author, advertiser... and you want to increase recall and retention, you're in for the fight of your life against CREB-2. Why is CREB-2 there? To save your life. Or at least your sanity. You obviously don't want to remember everything.

The big problem, of course, is that you aren't in control of your CREB-2. Your brain is making the decisions about what's important and what isn't

How, then, do you get past someone's CREB-2 (crap filter)? How do you make something memorable? Exploit what the brain is tuned to pay attention to. Exploit what the brain thinks is important.

The rough part is that even when people TRY to tell their brain "this is important, this is important, this is important", the brain says, "no it isn't, no it isn't, no it isn't." So if you're trying to get people to remember something, the sad part is that even when they WANT to remember, it's not guaranteed. You know this, of course, since you've all tried to remember things you read and study, but it just doesn't happen the way you'd like or even need.

So what does the brain remember? There are two main roads to memory--the slow painful one, or the much faster one. The slow painful one is through repetition. Repeated exposure (or what Kandel and others call "trials") eventually works. It's as if your brain says, "this sure doesn't FEEL very important, but he's read this damn paragraph 17 times, so I guess it is..." The quick one is to use the chemistry of emotions. Or as Roger Schank puts it:

"You remember that which you feel."

I'm really blending two things here--getting their attention, and getting them to remember. And they are closely related, because they're tied to triggering things the brain thinks is worth paying attention to. But I'm still mixing them more than is technically correct, because it is certainly possible to get someone's attention without getting them to remember, but for the most part, the distinctions don't matter. All I'm concerned about now is how to make the brain care.

And the key is to evoke feelings. The stronger the feeling, the more likely the brain is to pay attention and record what's happening. If you register a big flatline on the emotional richter scale (as you would during a dry lecture or reading a dull text book), your brain takes that as a perfect sign that "this is SO not life threatening."

That means humor, shock, horror, surprise, delight, joy, sex, thrill, etc. The problem today is that there's already so much of that, especially as advertisers try to break though the noise when the noise level today is already so high. It takes a LOT more to, say, shock someone than it did even ten years ago as people become desensitized. But context matters. In Colorado Springs, CO, I'd be shocked to see a billboard with a naked person on it. But when I worked in Hollywood, I wouldn't even notice the posters, billboards, store displays featuring naked people (often of uncertain gender) selling everything from shoes to software, because they were so common.

The brain is highly tuned for novelty. It spent thousands and thousands of years scanning for the unusual, the moving, the changing, the doesn't-quite-pattern-match. USE THAT. The brain is tuned for sex... (like I had to actually tell you that : )), so USE THAT. I was about to add the requisite (where appropriate of course), but then... using where it is NOT quite appropriate works even better. Again, if you can get away with it. Please don't give me a morality lecture... I'll assume that everyone is using good judgement with respect to children, sexual harrassment, etc. I'm just talking about how the brain works, period.

The brain is tuned for things perceived as scary or threatening. USE THAT. (Although that one is a little riskier, because too much stress leads to the opposite effect). Shock and surprise are great, though. Again, anything you overuse will dimish its effectiveness, so the more variety of brain-triggering techniques the better.

In other blogs, I'll focus in on individual techniques. But of all the approaches to getting past CREB-2, the one that might be the best and easiest in most situations is simply "novelty". In other words, "don't do what is expected in that context." I think that'll probably be my next post...

Note to our authors: expect me, Bert, Eric, and Beth to be grilling you on what you're doing to get past the CREB-2. Even just a little cleverness, something just slightly off-center, something ordinary in one context but a little bizarre in

thiscontext, or anything that elicits even the slightest head tilt or slight smile can be a big improvement in a technical text book, so it doesn't take a lot.

If you're an advertiser/marketer, on the other hand... wow. That's more of a challenge. On the other hand, people are so used to (and tuned out to) bullsh**, that simply being brutally honest (once they stop being cynical that you're just PRETENDING to be honest) is a major out-of-context experience that will work. If everyone finally gets on the Hughtrain, though, that'll only work until it's become the norm. (I doubt that'll ever happen, but the world would be a much better place if it does!).

If you want something to be remembered, CREB-2 is the moat you gotta get past. Shock on.

this is gold!!!!

"Information is surprises. We all expect the world to work out in certain ways, but when it does, we're bored. What makes something worth knowing is organized around the concept of expectation failure."

when someone's expectations are met, they won't talk about it... even if they believe that what they got was awesome! Even if expectations were high, everything is as it should be when they're met.

People talk about things that are surprising, or that really suck.

 

I've already talked about ways we try to use this in the books: * Garden paths (things that look like sound approaches, but then blow up at the end).

* Counterintuitive examples. * Using show-don't-tell on common mistakes. * Examples that have a common framework, but often with a weird twist. * Unusual visuals and metaphors.

Care ONLY about what your users think of themselves as a result of interacting with your creation.