A request! I’m trying to bring three workshops to SXSW & SXSW Edu this next March.
And it turns out, in order to get selected you have to get all your friends on the internet to vote for you (whether or not they intend on going). It all feels a little like campaigning for president of your fourth grade class.
So… if you’re willing to vote (you do have to very quickly sign up for an account 😬), I would be so grateful, and I promise everyone a weekly ice cream social and also free licorice forever.
Pretty please vote for all of them below — it won’t take more than 90 seconds, promise:
🔗 Vote for “How to Design a Warm-Up That Doesn’t Suck” here 🤸♀️
🔗 Vote for “Emotional Ergonomics; Designing Furniture for Feelings” here 🪑
🔗 Vote for “The Future Design Language of Robots” here 🤖
Ever since I was tiny I have firmly resisted being told what to do.
I was kicked out of ballet because I found the rigidity of the moves overly restraining, and preferred to tornado in the corner instead.
And so rules (when I think they are dumb) will, out of pure obstinance, have me pointing in the exact opposite direction than they surely intended.
Asking Why? Or Why not? Or What if instead I…? Or Well let’s see about that, hmm?
I have always preferred a multiplicity of divergent possibilities to the singularity of “Don’t.”
Which brings me to the workshop I’m currently building for the Good Chaos Club. This one is about how we, as experience designers, can leverage the mechanics of game design in whatever we happen to be designing.
And one of the fundamentals of game design? My nemesis: the rules.
Which has had me noodling on why I always push back against them…
I think it’s because rules are so often crafted as things that are telling me what not to do. That are No’s.
No talking. No cell phones. No standing closer than 6 feet apart.
No’s are not particularly enjoyable walls to bump up against.
And yet…
Rules are important and necessary. To making experiences work. And in making them enjoyable.
And so may I instead offer you four different ways to think about designing your rules of play:
1. Rules as creative constraints
Rules can be the ways you make your experience not just functional, but interesting.
They can be how you challenge participants in a way that encourages productive struggle, nurtures skill development, and makes success infinitely more satisfying.
For example…
Giving children at a birthday party a large bowl of candy? Fine…
But put that candy in a cardboard donkey, string it up to a tree, blindfold the children, spin them around ten times, and hand them a bat? A much more entertaining way to acquire a lollipop.
2. Rules as invitations
What if you thought of rules as invitations, rather than limitations, to play?
A hand held out asking you to come this way, try this thing, step into something new.
The difference here is that these types of rules trust you. They offer you agency. Create enticing, desirable possibilities. Motivate you towards, rather than promise punishment for a wrong move, or cordon off what isn’t allowed.
For example…
Imagine you wander into a garden. And there are two signs.
One says “No walking in the flower beds. Don’t touch the plants. No running. No picking vegetables.”
And the other says “There’s a portal here, hidden and waiting. If you follow the paths where they lead, perhaps you can find it. It’s been hoping for you. That is your quest.”
How different does each make you feel? What type of experience do they set you up to have?
3. Rules as bumpers
What if we designed rules that acted more like the bumpers in bowling? And less like the bowling alley attendant coming over to yell at you for bowling indecently?
Bumpers help you bridge the skill gap that makes an experience enjoyable. And, they help keep yourself and others safe, without limiting participation.
Less accidentally flinging your bowling ball into the next lane (or onto the next child) over, and more still being able to knock down some pins even if you are very bad.
Again, they prioritize choice and reward self-awareness. You ask for the bumpers, they aren’t forced upon you.
For example…
Ski resorts employ the rules-as-bumpers model when they grade ski runs. Signs let you know the difficulty of each run, from an easy green circle to a medium blue square to a challenging black diamond, so that you can choose what’s right for your skill level. You aren’t forbidden from doing a double black if this is your first day on the mountain, but you are warned that it is extreme terrain, and there are clearly labelled directions for the “easiest way down” from any lift.
4. Rules as thresholds
Lastly, rules can serve as the threshold between what is and isn’t your experience.
They help form the boundary known as “the magic circle” — the delineation between the world you, the experience designer, are constructing, and the version people are leaving behind.
They are the divergent formulations and agreements that govern how we relate to one another and to space. That set up the interrelationships that structure the container of your experience.
For example…
It is the rule of darkness in a restaurant in which everything happens without light, so that your other senses turn on in newly heightened ways.
Or the 10 principles of Burningman, that seek to redefine the ways in which attendees show up in relationship to one another, themselves, and the Playa — and are fundamental to how different from your normal Burningman can feel.
And so friends, there you have it — rules that are far less likely to make your participants say “Hell no, don’t tell me what to do” and more likely to lean in.
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
What experience are you designing in this moment? A bachelorette? A back-to-school soirée? A basketball tournament?
How might you reimagine the rules? Sidestep the No’s and the Don’ts in favor of creative constraints or invitations, bumpers or thresholds.
As always, send me your experiments.
Yours, Olivia
If this has you feeling like… Ooh ooh! Game mechanics. I am intrigued. I want more!
Well then come on in, the water’s warm.
Join the Good Chaos Club for our next workshop 🎲 Game On; Game Mechanics for Experience Designers 🎲 — Wednesday, August 27th @ 9 am PT.
Joining the Club gets you the exclusive invites to our monthly, deep-dive, immersive workshops (with recordings), downloadable and playable tools, discounted coaching hours, creative jams, and various other treats and delights.
Intro pricing won’t be here for too much longer.
(And also… if budget’s feeling TIGHT, email us to get help submitting for professional development funds, or sign up for a single month to get access to just this next workshop!)