May 22, 2014 - This is my Pecha Kucha Presentation for FRCC Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference.

1. UX, Games, and Education:
Reimagining the
Learning Interface
Sherry Jones
Teaching and Learning with Technology
Conference
May 22, 2014
sherryjones.edtech@gmail.com
http://bit.ly/playuxinterface

2. K-12 and Higher Ed. have extended their presence to the
web, using LMSs and MOOCs to provide massive
educational reach and delivery. The over-emphasis placed
on massive education has de-emphasized the individual’s
need for a better learning experience, one that affords
an intuitive web environment, agency, differentiation,
choice, interactivity, and greater access to the
learning community.
Preface

3. The future of education may
include shifting focus from
content delivery to learner’s
experience.
● Apply UX Design Thinking to the
Interface.
● Map bodies and actions to
Interfaces to create embodied
learning environments.
● Promote Learner-Generated
Interfaces.
Interface & the Future of Education

4. Problems with Online Learning Interfaces:
One Model Fits All
Currently, Learning Interfaces offer
a single, “one model fits all”
approach.
● Limits access.
● Prevents differentiation.
● Imposes one type of learning
environment.
● Cannot personalize experience.
● Leads to low retention rate.

5. Problems with Online Learning Interfaces:
Limited Agency
Agency-Less Interfaces is another
problem.
● No simulations of physical
bodies.
● “Bodilessness” deprives sensory
interactions with others
● Limits learner’s agency to “act” in
virtual space.
● Diminished sense of community.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/indieman/13580279/

6. What is an Interface?
“Interface: software that shapes the
interaction between user and
computer. The interface serves as a
kind of translator, mediating
between the two parties, making one
sensible to the other.”
-- Steven Johnson

7. Interface is a Door/Window/Extension
“Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man—the
technological simulation of consciousness…. Any extension, whether of
skin, hand or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex.”
-- Marshall McLuhan

8. Interface is Not Just a Door/Window/
Extension (Interface as the Palimpsest)
Galloway argues the Interface is not just a
door/window/extension. Like the palimpsest, the
Interface reprocesses and displays past mediums,
and carries political messages and stories of
those mediums.
-- Alexander R. Galloway, p. 44

9. Interfaces and Hegemonies
Digital Humanists find Graphic User
Interfaces (GUI) oppressive epistemic
frames:
● Present only certain affordances.
● Frames/Restricts the extent of
user’s comprehension of a virtual
environment.
● “a mechanism of hegemonic
repression that forces its users
into pre-existing epistemes.”
-- Kat Lecky
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/articnomad/16153058/

10. Interfaces and Cultural Oppression
“the interface [is] the newest layer
of cultural oppression weighing
down a human consciousness
already burdened by the overarching
nexus of power that subjugates the
individual to society.”
-- Kat Lecky
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/martinlatter/8439764034/

11. Interface and UX Design Thinking
A Possible Solution? UX Design Thinking.
● Consider the “User” in Interface Design.
● Interface is not meant to impose on the user. Rather, it meets the
demands of the user.

12. What is UX Design Thinking?
“UX Design Thinking addresses the
needs and wants of the intended
user (and this could include the
study of user-psychology, usability,
information infrastructure, color and
media theories), to optimize
‘pleasantness’ and ‘accessibility’
of the interface for the user.”
-- Sherry Jones and Daniel Singer
Source: http://www.careerfaqs.com.au/images/news_pages/ux.png

13. Why is UX Important for Online Ed?
● Focuses on learner
experience rather than on
content delivery.
● Designs course Interface
based on learner research.
● Tests usability to improve
learner’s interactivity with
course and with others.
Source: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3442/3883611573_3f2b84a4b5_z.jpg

14. What is Play UX Design Thinking?
“Whereas UX Design Thinking
focuses on the elements of
‘pleasantness’ and
‘accessibility’ in design
considerations, Play UX Design
Thinking reconsiders
‘pleasantness’ and ‘accessibility’
as ‘play’ and ‘inclusion.’”
-- Sherry Jones and Daniel Singer

15. Play UX Design Thinking, Magic Realism, and
Immersive Inclusion
A Play UX principle is “immersive
inclusion,” creating Interfaces “in
which one loses a sense of one’s own
physical body while navigating the
magic realism of digital space with
one’s virtual self (i.e. Immersion);
And, one gains a sense of meaningful
participation within a community of
participants and its discourse while
being immersed (i.e. Inclusion).”
-- Sherry Jones and Daniel Singer

16. Game Interface as Door/Window/Extension
to Community
The Game Interface as that
which “connects players to the
fictional world of the game –
and via this, to one another in
Miguel Sicart's ‘virtuous
community of players’.”
-- Chris Bateman
Community of learners
cultivated through a Game
Interface?Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/european_parliament/6882048441/

17. Game Interfaces and Embodiment
Via Game Interfaces, “the combination of
controller and game system provides both
physical affordances and intentional
affordances, the latter often designed to yield
a sense of augmented embodiment.”
-- Andreas Gregersen and Torben Grodal, p. 69
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ceslava/3367170953/

18. Possible Future of Education - Embodied
Game Interfaces
“Interaction with an embodied
system might lead to high levels
of performative knowledge (i.e.
ability to perform actions)
without the corresponding
explicit knowledge (i.e. ability to
describe how to perform the
actions).”
-- Jonne Arjoranta

19. Possible Future of Education - Learner-
Generated Interfaces
Another possible solution is to
invite the learner to design the
Interface.
Offering learners the ability to
“subvert,” and “re-envision” the
Interface helps learners create
their own “access to the world.”

20. Possible Future of Interfaces and Impact on
Education
Various types of Interfaces currently being developed, VR, AR, Invisible
Interface, Sensory Enhanced Controls and Apparatus, Interactive Objects, will
have foreseeable impact on education.

21. References
Arjoranta, Jonne. “Games & Embodied Cognition: What is it Like to be a Cat-Person?” First Person
Scholar. 5, Mar. 2014. Web. 5, Mar. 2014.
Bateman, Chris. “Is the Interface the Game?” International Hobo. International Hobo, Ltd. 16, Oct.
2013. Web. May 1, 2014.
Galloway, Alexander R. “The Interface Effect.”Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.Print.
Gregersen, Andreas, and Torben Grodal. “Embodiment and Interface.” The Videogame Reader 2.
Ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf. New York: Routledge, 2009. 65-83. Digital file.
Johnson, Steven. Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and
Communicate. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Print.
Jones, Sherry, and Daniel Singer. “Composition in a New Scale: Play UX Design Thinking in Online
Writing Instruction (OWI).” Conference on College Composition and Communication, 19-22,
Mar. 2014. Indianapolis: National Council of Teachers, 2014. Web. 21, Mar. 2014.
Lecky, Kat. “Humanizing the Interface.” Hybrid Pedagogy. 27, Mar. 2014. Web. 27, Mar. 2014.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994.
Print.

22. Questions? Comments?
Sherry Jones
Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Game Studies
sherryjones.edtech@gmail.com
@autnes
Access Slides: http://bit.ly/playuxinterface