

Using Game Mechanics To Teach Users MS Office - patio11
http://lostgarden.com/2010/01/ribbon-hero-turns-learning-office-into.html

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sachinag
I'm really getting upset that people are learning about game mechanics. It was
my little secret for so long. :(

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DenisM
Don't worry most people will ignore it in lieu of their preconceived notions
of what should work.

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patio11
Relatedly: Some of us have egos. The rest of us have A/B testing. It is a lot
like signing up for a lifetime subscription to Humble Pie Magazine, but it
certainly works.

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lawn
Does anyone know of a similar method to learn vim? It would be a lot easier,
faster and more fun if there was some kind of game which would teach you all
the keys and combinations.

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ehsanul
I really want to make one myself. My idea is to have the terminal screen as a
vim-editable 2-D ASCII environment, which you manipulate with vim commands.

The goal can be anything. Say a plane or something going straight through a
cave and you have to use vim commands to move the cursor to and clear ASCII
obstacles before the plane hits them (and you can't use 'dd', just to make it
harder).

Or a game where you have to fill in blank spaces randomly strewn around for
some purpose, and also make it time-based. Or any other kind of game you can
think of; I think it has a lot of potential for fun + vim-training.

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prole
Exploring the linked site a little deeper, there's this gem on making
applications more game-like:
<http://lostgarden.com/Mixing_Games_and_Applications.pdf>

From what the author explains in the presentation, vim violates the tried-and-
true video game mechanics of starting the user with only the most basic
functionality. To teach vim using the author's method, one could start by
removing all but the most basic commands. Then, these missing commands could
be introduced to the user one at a time, in a controlled environment where
there is a clear task (eg. jump the cursor to a particular point in the text)
that can be measured as success or failure.

In the linked presentation, the author draws a comparison to the game Metroid.
In the game, the player falls into a deep pit and has to find a way to climb
out before being able to continue on. Failure to perform the new skill
(accurately timing the character's wall-jumping) is immediately clear because
the player will fall back down into the pit. When the user finally times it
correctly, he's free from the pit and the brain rewards him with a sense of
accomplishment.

Back to vim, if you wanted to create such an environment for learning a new
command to move the cursor around, you wouldn't want the user to fall back on
basic navigation with h, j, k, and l. You could disable these keys
temporarily, or leave them but only reward the user if they accomplish the
goal using the _fewest_ key-presses possible.

Once they "win" this "level" you've designed, those new navigation keys should
be considered part of their arsenal of skills for solving future problems.
Each skill mastery could be further rewarded by filling in parts of a cheat-
sheet (like this one: <http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif>). This can
be seen in the section where the author talks about Link to the Past and the
picture of the player's item inventory. The vim player's goal could be to
"unlock" and master these keyboard skills and ultimately fill in the complete
chart.

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ZeroGravitas
I don't know if I'd call it a game, but there is vimtutor, which is a document
that tells you how to edit it:

<http://www2.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~mdisney/teaching/unix/vimtutor>

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ZeroGravitas
Having read the comments I found it interesting that one of the features is to
show you which of the features of Office other people actually use. I've had
the same experience with blog posts or hacker news submissions about Vim or
Unix tools in general. Simply being informed of their existence is a real
benefit, otherwise they'd just sit there in my machine unused. (The hefty
guidebook _Vi IMproved_ by Steve Oualline was good too)

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patio11
Game mechanics: not just for WoW and StackOverflow anymore. Read this -- it is
worth your time.

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varaon
I think you're referring to StackOverflow's points and badges; is there a
deeper dynamic that you'd like to explain?

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patio11
I'm just referring to points and badges as an incentive mechanism for
directing user interaction of a site in ways which provide business value.

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ryanelkins
I think we're going to start seeing alot more ideas from gaming start to creep
into applications. I've definitely been noticing a trend of this even recently
here on HN. It's going to be interesting to see how these two worlds collide
(and what startups form from the debris).

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Mz
This is wonderfully on point for me. The main reason I belong to HN is because
I want to create an educational game. Glad to see it here and hope to see
other similar stuff in the future.

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jodrellblank
Funny, the main reason I read HN is to procrastinate and _avoid_ doing other
things.

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maqr
If only Excel had some kind of Flight Simulator...

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wglb
This is a seriously interesting innovation.

