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John Kolm

Successful serious games depend on unstated human factors. Join us at this session to give those factors a name, and to understand how you can create useful real-world experiences.

Join a best-selling former NSA and CIA human factors specialist to explore what we know about the ways in which human beings in teams and groups really behave. Clever presentation does not compensate for game designs that ignore basic human factors principles.

In this session, we’ll explore some core human principles for making the Serious Games you design, play or purchase really work. You’ll emerge with six key human factors guidelines that will help you to design, find and use serious games applications that really pop.

Attendee Benefits

You will leave this session with greater insight into what we truly know about practical human behavior in game space. This will put you ahead of the curve in designing gamified experiences that work, coping with rejection and suspension of disbelief, re-examining the way in which game elements should interact, co-depend and vary, and knowing where some of the fundamental limitations and challenges for game-based learning might lie. We will look at a few of the common assumptions and claims, examine and compare with what 25 years of practice in human factors with about 100 different large organizations looks like, and also do an enjoyable group experiment with some of the ideas in order to stimulate discussion.