Episode 102 Terry Pearce on Untold Play and Applied Games
Terry Pearce on Untold Play and Applied Games
Episode Summary:
In this episode of the Experience Points podcast, host Dave Eng interviews Terry Pearce, founder of Untold Play, a games-based learning expert. Pearce discusses how he helps trainers, educators, and designers incorporate gamification into learning programs. He highlights his work with organizations like HSBC and the NHS, adapting complex topics like project management into interactive games. Pearce shares his process of tailoring existing materials using gamification principles, mentioning frameworks like Octalysis and Lazzaro's Four Keys to Fun. Listeners can connect with Terry Pearce through his website www.UntoldPlay.com or on LinkedIn for more insights into games-based learning and gamification.
Terry Pearce
he/him/his
Games-Based & Gamified Learning Designer, Untold Play Limited
Terry is a learning designer and games-based learning expert, with over 20 years’ experience designing, managing and delivering interactive learning experiences. He's won several awards for his learning experience design, and has created solutions for organizations such as HSBC, Zurich, YouGov, Barclays, the NHS, Wyeth, and the Metropolitan Police. He founded Untold Play to help people create more effective and engaging learning experiences using games-based principles. He has spoken at international conferences including Spiel Digital, the Playful Creative Summit and the Games-Based Learning Virtual Conference, and published gamification books and audio talks via BookBoon. His flagship gameful learning product, the Transform Deck, has sold copies in over a dozen countries worldwide.
(Twitter): https://twitter.com/UntoldPlay
(LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrypaulpearce/
(YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIgeLeFGVvvTu2SPVsNaujQ
(Other): https://linktr.ee/terrypearce
Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your Host Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com. On today's episode, we'll learn from Terry Pearce. Terry is a highly experienced learning designer and games-based learning expert. He has won awards for his designs and created solutions for organizations like HSBC and the National Health Service NHS in the UK. He founded Untold Play to enhance learning experiences using game principles. Terry has spoken at numerous conferences and published gamification books worldwide. Terry, welcome to the show.
Terry Pearce:
Thanks, Dave. Thanks for having me.
Dave Eng:
So Terry, I'm glad you're here because I really want to learn more about your work at Untold Play and generally just your work as a whole. So I'd like to start off with the question, as the founder of Untold Play, how do you help trainers, learning designers and educators incorporate playfulness and gamification into their learning programs? Specifically, what types of products and services does Untold Play offer in this particular area?
Terry Pearce:
Yeah, great question. So in terms of services, I design and facilitate gameful learning experiences. So there used to be a specific brief or project for a client. It might be that they've requested something that's playful or gameful in the first place. So I might be commissioned to design a game to fit into a learning program, for instance. Or it might be that they have a kind of learning brief that's not specifically for games-based, but I have some of those kind of requests come in because I have a long career as a kind of generalist trainer before I start to specialize in games-based learning and gamification learning. And so I would tend to try and guide people in those cases towards the benefits of games-based learning and the benefits of gamification for learning and try and introduce that into the design process. So either way it'd be a kind of design brief to put something like that together.
Also, sometimes just to facilitate an existing game. So there are games like Evivve, which is an online multiplayer game, which brings out all kinds of things around strategy and decision-making and leadership, so facilitating a ready-made game like that for some clients. So those are the kind of services side of things. And then in terms of products, kind of really starting out on the journey of offering products and have one kind of flagship product in kind of two installments almost at the moment, which is the transform deck, which is a deck of cards that's designed to inspire people who are designing learning. And that could be people who see themselves as learning designers, or it could just be trainers or educators that don't really see themselves as designers, but they do put together learning.
And the idea of the deck is it's a physical deck of cards, and each card represents a different way to take what might be quite straightforward pedestrian kind of content and turn it into a more interactive, engaging kind of activity. So there's a Transform Deck 1, and I've just released the sequel to that, Transform Deck 2 to help people through that process of making their own work more interactive and more engaging.
Dave Eng:
Great. Thank you Terry. I appreciate it. A bunch of things resonated with me there. I think particularly that learning brief, specifically we're working with different clients and trying to determine what specifically their organizational outcomes are, what specifically their learning outcomes are. I know that in the past, individuals have asked me for a games-based learning solution, their particular learning outcome, and sometimes games do work for those particular purposes, but other times I've kind of advised against it, specifically because maybe their organizational philosophy doesn't align with games-based learning or anything else. I'm glad you brought up Evivve because I know that we both know Mohsin Memon from Evivve and specifically the Transform Deck. Although I want to set aside some time to talk a little bit about the Transform Deck later, but I'm glad you're able to share all of that, particularly with the Transform Deck 2, which we'll hopefully talk about in a few moments.
Terry Pearce:
Fantastic.
Dave Eng:
But the second question I wanted to get into, and you talked a little bit about this before, is applications of games-based learning. So I know we talked about specifically HSBC and the National Health Service before, but what are some notable other organizations you've worked with in the past and what solutions did you create for them using games-based learning?
Terry Pearce:
Yeah, so it's something I've been doing for quite a while, so it's quite a long list there. If I could just pick out a couple. So I did some work with Illumina who are the world leader in genetic sequencing hardware machinery. And they have some quite complex systems, some quite complex pieces of hardware and processes for using that for sequencing genomes, things like that. And there's a whole learning challenge there obviously in terms of taking that quite complex information, which is quite complex for them, quite complex people in the field. It's always also quite complex for me as someone who's not a scientist, not in that field working on that. But the brief was to try and take that learning and really make it, first of all, a little easier and more effective for people who are just learning this stuff. And then secondly, to make it more fun and engaging.
And so I developed a card based kind of mapping. I mean it probably does qualify as a game, although it's not a full on game with kind of a lot of the trappings of games, but it's a kind of game for activity perhaps, of taking in stages the process of exploring a process or the way that a piece of hardware works by using cards and building a map as a kind of collaborative kind of game almost. So there's one. I can go onto another one. I didn't know if you wanted to ask any questions about that one.
Dave Eng:
No, go ahead. I'd like to learn more about that second game you created. And I'll save my questions for the end.
Terry Pearce:
Sure, no worries. So I mean, the NHS actually is a kind of repeat client of mine. So for those who might be outside of the UK, the NHS is a kind of federation of separate organizations really in a way. And one of the NHS trusts, separate entities that I worked with, worked extensively with and designed quite a few different modules for both their leadership program and for different individual courses for their managers. But a couple of those in particular for that one client, 'cause they were quite keen on trying to make their shift towards playful and gameful learning and to harness the effectiveness of it.
So created for a module around performance management and conversations around performance management, an activity trying to make things more gainful called Hawks & Doves, which is really just about kind of with the rules and with the way the activity was set up, trying to push people towards more hawkish behavior and more dove like behavior in some kind of role plays to make people just that little bit go towards the extremes, see how that plays in a situation and a scenario where you are trying to discuss somebody's performance that's quite difficult discussion.
And then use that by a kind of series of stages that follow on from that about exploring the effects of that and what would be the effect if we went somewhere in the middle to kind of show that actually there are problems with either end of that spectrum, and that actually what we probably want is somewhere in the middle. So that was kind of one activity on that program. Or there was another one where we took... You might have come across the 9-Box Model for talent management, which if anybody hasn't, it's just a way to look at people who you're trying to manage through your organization in terms of talent and put them in a kind of three by three grid in terms of their potential and how they're fulfilling it.
And took that grid and made that into our game board for a game where you had your pieces being the people which are placed on the game board and kind of say, "Okay, if this person placed them here in terms of their potential and how you want to manage their talent, let's turn that into a kind of turn based thing where, okay, you placed them here, now this happens through some cards and events, what happens next in a series of interesting decisions, which is really the core of most interesting games."
Dave Eng:
Great, thank you Terry. Lots to discuss and unpack here. I think specifically with, I forget the name of the original organization about genetic sequencing. Could you say that name again?
Terry Pearce:
Yeah, Illumina.
Dave Eng:
Illumina. Oh, I see. So I think that with any sort of learning development or any sort of training or educational program, you're going to have to take those very complex topics and kind of break them down into more digestible chunks, particularly when you're trying to reach specific learning outcomes. So I find that games are good ways to abstract some of that information there. And I don't know if you're covered by NDA or anything else, but I think that card game as a whole would be a good case study for how that content can be developed. Is that card game available or is it covered by the NDA by your client?
Terry Pearce:
I mean it would be covered by NDA, but also it's quite specific to a proprietary piece of kit.
Dave Eng:
I see.
Terry Pearce:
But the kind of general principles behind it absolutely could be applied to a different piece of hardware with a little bit of work.
Dave Eng:
I see. And the second part here I wanted to talk about was your work with the NHS and I think specifically talent management. I think that the market and the application of that is very wide, right, in that other organizations are usually working with their managers and talent management in general. I'm not familiar with the 9-Box cycle that you were talking about before, but I could see taking a schema or heuristic like that and translating it to an analogous game-like environment would be very useful, because a lot of games are already based on those sort sort of formal structures. And I think what you've done, me not being really familiar with this process overall is applying that to this game-like environment in order to have managers better manage their talent in their organization overall. So I think those two were really great applications of taking games and formal elements that we both know of games and applying it to those specific learning outcomes. So thanks for sharing. Appreciate it too.
Terry Pearce:
Great, thank you.
Dave Eng:
Yeah. So last question I wanted to get into here, and again, you talked a little bit about this before and I want to kind of tease this up with some more details is you're basically your work and your process. So can you provide examples of how you've tailored or refreshed existing learning materials to meet the specific needs of your clients? And then how did gamification play a role in these adaptations? I know that you talked about adapting that 9-Box Model before, but have you ever worked with any clients that have provided base level information or maybe the start of a gamified system that they wanted you to take and adapt or anything that was like that? And what was your process like for adapting that content?
Terry Pearce:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's quite common. So I work with a lot of corporate clients or someone like the NHS who's public sector, but it's still quite a similar kind of environment in many ways. And in those environments I think there is a tradition quite often of Sage on the Stage kind of slide-based learning, lecture-based learning. And there'll often be some kind of legacy materials or a kind of course that's existing or some materials that are existing, and people recognize I think at some point or somebody new comes in perhaps and recognizes that actually it doesn't excite people and it could be more effective. And that's where I might often come in and trying to take what is in place and then look at what we're trying to achieve the learning objectives and then see how we can do that in a way that excites people and is more effective.
So for example, do that with a client with some project management materials, which were very much, here are the principles of project management, we're going to talk through them very one way kind of materials. And then kind of taking that and saying, "Okay, if we've got these very specific learning objectives, what can we do to make that into a game?" And a little bit like I was saying with the talent grid saying what things are there there that suggests some kind of gainful approach or could easily lend themselves to it? So for instance, with project management, you have several stages of most project management processes and different things that are happening at those stages.
And once you start to kind of map that out, you can start to see a process that could be turned into... Again, it's not a game in the sense that something like Ticket To Ride or Wingspan or whatever as a game, but it's a game in the sense that there are turns and goals and unexpected challenges that you throw in at the players that they have to then guide their project through in order to reach the project's objectives.
So it's kind of almost abstracting something, which in reality would be full of detail and richness and complexity, but just trying to make it simple enough that it can work within the context of the training room and the time that you have, but still get the key learning messages across and still feel relevant and real, still feel like things that they're going to take away from the room and be able to use and are practical. And one of the things that I often try and take into account with that, and again did in this case, is some key kind of models around gamification and games-based learning that to me kind of always spark and inspire ideas. Things like the Octalysis Framework or Nicole Lazzaro’s Four Keys to Fun or Jesse Schell's Deck of Lenses is another great one. So I've got quite a few kind of key models like that that I'll kind of use to inspire me to think, "Oh, could I work this in this principle? Could I use this to build on something to make it a little bit more gainful, playful, interactive, et cetera?"
Dave Eng:
Great. Thank you, Terry. Appreciate that. I think that particularly approaching project management is a really ripe example actually for applied games-based learning. Because again, I think in most organizations your managers are going to be working with talent management, but also there's many organizations that work on a project based basis. And I think that the aspect of project management is a critical one to undertake. Having been in a project management role myself and also working with other project managers, working on projects as an individual contributor is incredibly important. I know that you cited some of those frameworks before, particularly the Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou, which I will link in the show notes for this particular episode is incredibly useful. And I think it's also indicative that you don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel here. There are frameworks that you can follow in order to adapt content and existing content for applications like games-based learning, series games and gamification. So thank you Terry. I appreciate you sharing.
Terry Pearce:
No problem.
Dave Eng:
All right, so thanks for joining us today. Where can people find out more about you, Terry?
Terry Pearce:
Yeah, I mean the key place is my website, UntoldPlay.com and via the website as well. People could join my mailing list, which I try and keep full of interesting links and insights into games-based learning and gamification for learning, as well as the articles that are published on my blog, post those out through the newsletter as well. Very happy to connect with people on LinkedIn. Very happy for you to pop the show notes to put my LinkedIn profile on there. There's probably two main ways that I connect with people, either via the website, which is also where they can find the Transform Deck or via LinkedIn. Yeah.
Dave Eng:
Great. Thank you Terry. And again, all those links are going to be included in the show notes for this particular episode, so just check it out there. I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more then a great place to start is my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at https://www.universityxp.com/gamification. You can also get a full transcript of this episode, including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining us. Again, I'm your Host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you like this episode, please consider commenting, sharing and subscribing.
Subscribing is absolutely free, ensures that that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you. I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. I live to lift others with learning. So if you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit. Also make sure to visit University XP online at https://www.universityxp.com. University XP is also on Twitter at University_XP and on Facebook and LinkedIn as University XP. Also, feel free to email me anytime. My email address is dave@universityxp.com. Game on.
Cite this Episode
Eng, D. (Host). (2023, December 31). Terry Pearce on Untold Play and Applied Games. (No. 102) [Audio podcast episode]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/102
Internal Ref: UXPXQPMEEUFM
References
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