GameChangers: Joshua Yavelberg

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Gamification Quest podcast series where we showcase the voices behind our new collection on gamification and game based learning, the Sententia Anthology. I'm your host, Monica Cornetti, and in each episode, I sit down with one of our authors to explore the ideas and stories they've brought to life in their chapter. Together, these conversations reveal how creative, passionate professionals are transforming the way adults learn. Let's dive in. Hello, my name is Monica Cornetti, and welcome to this special episode of the Gamification Quest podcast. My guest today is Joshua Yabelberg. We affectionately call him Doc. Since we met him years ago and he's become a member of our inner circle, everyone just refers to him Doc. I think he had just had a hard earned win in winning his PhD when we first got to meet him, and so that's why we call him Doc. But he wrote a chapter in our anthology and, uh, I know sometimes it feels everyone is either related to me either by birth or by choice. We're all part of a family. But actually, once you become certified as a master craftsman and you move into the inner circle, we are that. And so in his chapter, his chapter title is the Sententia Shift. How Gamification Rewrites How We Solve Problems. And if you think about Doc's background, let me give you a little bit of that. He's an artist, he's an educator, a designer, a strategist, and he bridges art learning and systems thinking. He has a company called Flying Cloud Solutions, and in that company he helps organizations transform anything that's complex and brings it clarity, brings it more clear using gamification, human centered design, and a term that I think is his. I think so. Doc, is this yours? Be AI Gile. Agile. How are you saying that? How do you say AI?

Speaker B: Be AI Gile.

Speaker A: Be AI Gile. All right. And that's a DOC Original.

Speaker B: That's a Doc Original trademark.

Speaker A: So being AI Gile, which is an approach that blends AI with adaptive design practices to prepare organizations for the future of work, uh, Doc is always extremely generous with anything that he learns. He shares it with us. We always learn and grow whenever he's around. So, Doc, thank you so much for being here with me today to talk about your chapter. Appreciate you taking the time. I know you got kids. And what have you called the other

Speaker B: meetings can wait for this. This is always my pleasure.

Speaker A: It's not called parent interviews. What do you call it when you

Speaker B: go meet parent teacher conferences?

Speaker A: Parent teacher conferences. I think they're really parent interviews. But parent teacher conferences. Right. And so as we think about this chapter, we go into this exploration of gamification not just as a method, as a trick, a strategy, but more about a, uh, mindset. So let me start right there, Doc. What caused you to choose this particular topic as your theme?

Speaker B: What I've been seeing in the community is it's largely focused on instructional design and training practices and how does gamification apply in those contexts. And I found my career trajectory going lots of different directions. Now I'm working on the modernization of the organ transplant program and some national initiatives. I've gone with defense intelligence. I've just kind of gone on all these different directions and finding ways that the gamification still applies in my design thinking practices to solve problems and to create engagement strategies for people to move people from one point to another in your objectives. And so, uh, a lot of what has been expounded on in the Sententia methodology seems to be broadly applicable. And what I was trying to get to was a conversation about the broader, uh, applicability of the framework that Sententia has produced.

Speaker A: So when you talk, when you're thinking about your clients, um, we think about the importance of this. In L and D, you work with a lot of what I would call military direct, like, connect, right? So they have some form of connection. Either they have a, uh, Department of Defense contract, or it's part of the federal government through funding from the federal government. So what kind of pushback are you getting with as far as, like, AI and gamification in that arena? Are they open to it?

Speaker B: So that's the interesting thing. Some, some people are when you bring up gamification, but you kind of use it sparingly. And as far as the term, and that's one of the unfortunate things about gamification, People don't really understand the term and how it's actually used in context that they're familiar with. If you just look at how your credit cards engage you with point systems and other things to keep you engaged, and marketing tactics are all based on these gamified mechanics to try to keep you engaged in their platforms and in their culture. And so from a business standpoint, it's used very effectively across varying contexts. But when you start using it in instructional design or somewhere else, they immediately click onto, like, edutainment. And a lot of the bad instructional design uses of gamification, of, like, points, badges, leaderboards, just quiz show elements, is, uh, one of the biggest things. It's like, how do you just test the learners on knowledge they should have and make it fun. And that's not really what gamification's about and that's what I'm trying to explain. So I'm trying to not explain it to people. I just use it as a design lens that comes in as I'm thinking about my strategies for designing that experience as a whole. And I think about the learner or the uh, stakeholders that I want to move through to the objectives. I think about what they might be motivated by and what I need to get out of them. And then I try to use the system that Sententia has produced to align and identify certain mechanics that are just choice. A lot of it is elements of choice for a uh, stakeholder to be able to engage in what you're trying to do. And so if you give those choice elements, not only are you giving them power and agency to do something to move along the pathway, but you're also gathering useful data. And so I find there's a lot that you can be using these things for to not only get data towards just defining return on investment and movement towards objectives and other things, but also to drive motivation. And so it's one of those, I wouldn't call it a silver bullet but it's pretty close. It's a really great system for thinking about those kind of problems and moving people down, down an objective pathway. And I think that's why I sort of lean to it. But then I also, I don't explain all this to people because it just takes a lot to get them, their mind around these things. So I just kind of push it into the design process in a, in a certain way and then um, yeah, I, I do have to get uh, watch out with things and we talk about it a lot in our group about like self hugging. Right. So yes, I want to do these and I want to make something engaging and then I have to usually pull it back because I'm using like non player characters in ways that they are not, they're not, they don't feel fits their context or because I can't get imagery. So I might use characters that are more of an animated type. But a lot of those barriers are falling away with AI. And that's where again I'm really interested in how AI can help us be more creative and, and at a fa, faster pace. So how do we move down these pathways but also remove obstacles? Like I mean I'm an artist and I can take the time to develop some visual content but it's so much Faster when I have a tool in my hand that. That can develop it faster with the same vision that I already had.

Speaker A: I love that because, like, even any kind of ideation that we're doing, it's very easy to get. Um, I'll use the frame reference in the ballpark, right? Like, okay, here's some ideas. Okay. I like. I always say that I'm not good at, like, don't ever do a remodel with me. Because if we choose a kitchen, I'll like the dark, I like the white, I like green, I like the blue, I like them all. So when we look at design ideas, I don't have a negative, really, about many of them. And then. But how do we get in the one that's going to be most effective for this audience? The other thing with that word, gamification. I mean, way back when we first brought a name to the company, this was 2016. We went round and round about whether we should include gamification in the title. And the formal corporate title is just Sententia Inc. But we do market ourselves as gamification. And it's interesting because inside the circle of gamification, people understand and converse, and it's easy to think about the possibilities outside that circle when we introduce it. There's a lot of pushback, especially from your audiences. I would think that they're thinking, we are serious people. We're doing serious work. And you're talking about playing games, and you're not talking about playing games. You're talking about the process and the mindset. I got an offer this morning because we're going to Seattle for an event, and we're flying an airline that we haven't flown in years. And I got an offer for them about their credit card and how I can add points and move status. And, uh, I was like, well, you know, they're targeting me right now, which they should. They. I'm. I am now new again in their customer base. But that's exactly what it is, using gamification to reel me in. Reel me. And that's all they got to do is reel me in a little bit. They don't have to get me all the way to do or Die. I'm not only. That's the only airline I'm flying. They just got to keep reeling me in a little bit, and that's what we can do. That's really good, actually. M. Go ahead.

Speaker B: It's usually you bring that up because, like, we're. You were mentioning school, and we have. So we go to we take my kids to a private school and they have a gala every year and they really. I've been impressed by the level of gamification they add into the gala and the way that they fundraise while at the event. And so they do a, uh, lots of different engagement techniques to try to drive that narrative. And my wife was just in a meeting yesterday and they're doing a whole speakeasy concept and they're do. They're having these unlocks and keys and other things like, and passwords and they're using a lot of those interesting like mechanics to create a story around this experience and essentially loosen people up to spending money at the very end.

Speaker A: Ah, yeah. And having fun while doing it. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And these people get really competitive about one upping each other on how much they're donating to the school. So it's really uh, so you can play off some of these motivators in really interesting ways. And I think that's something to be thinking about. It's not just about. Again, back to the chapter. It's not just about training experiences, it's also about all these other things. And a lot of our community is in the training field. But I've been kind of pushed out of it in m many contexts and I'm just like looking at it from the outside in and saying hey, there's other places we can be using this and, and we can, we can be using it to solve problems in interesting ways.

Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah, now we've kept ourselves like really in that lane, but stay in your lane. We've talked to companies who wanted us to do something more in marketing or that with their consumer engagement and I usually just refer them to somebody else I know in the field, uh, because I do love the L and D field. But then you start thinking about faculty or instructional designers at a higher ed institution or how in corporate training it's not just about the training, but it's also about in the follow up and the application and the growth and leadership and using narratives to persuade and influence. I mean there's so much that it can grow from. It's really good. Let's talk about the title and what this is all about. The sententious shift. Where were you going with that idea?

Speaker B: Well, it was sort of shift in focus and it was also shift in the way that I uh, approached problems. So I encountered Sententia Level 1 at a serious play conference and it was because I was investigating ways of making higher ed instruction more engaging and, and trying to figure out ways of meeting those outcomes, but not the way I learned. And so I was doing a lot of breaking down my ways of, my ways of knowing how to teach topics especially things like art history, where for decades and decades and decades it's been sort of a lecture course and it's been mired in this. And it used to be the most innovative course in, in a college because you use slides and images and you talk about images and no other course does that. And then PowerPoint came in and all this other stuff and then everyone had PowerPoints and other things. And so the pedagogy of art, uh, history never really kind of moved forward. So I was looking at it in those contexts and then, and then doing my research for my doctorate. And then of course as, as my career kept having curveballs thrown through it, leaving higher ed, moving into association education, I saw a lot of use in career and workforce development and how I was using these simulations and creating experiences for like teaching how to design and manage your splash pad at your park for instance and creating some creative usable experiences and like opening up a, a, a janitorial closet and saying what's wrong with this picture? And you can like highlight things. And so there we in creating narratives with, with non player characters throughout the whole thing. So they're. So it really started informing some of that practice and then obviously moving from there. I ended up in government contracting which was in project management and agile methodologies and then knowledge management and then modernization efforts and bombing prevention. That was a fun one. But like you're trying to figure out all these different ways of applying. I started seeing a lot more of the ways of applying that methodology of still in a human centered design focus, find your Persona of your stakeholders and then work from there to your objectives. And then what fits in between was like learning environment modeling for instructional design gamification and the Sententia methodology and then other just divergent and convergent thinking through design thinking really worked really well. And then most recently is the addition of AI.

Speaker A: Right, right. So are you when you think about how you're wrapping AI into what you're doing, is that a significant part of how you're designing now or using it for scripting? Narrative ideas flow, process flow. Like how are you using AI images?

Speaker B: Images is one. Uh, Vibe coding is one of the things that's the term nowadays. And Vibe coding is coding using natural language to allow something like an AI to then do the scripting for you. And so I've learned a lot more script languages just through Vibe coding. But vibe coding, not just JavaScript and HTML and whatever else, JSON and Python and those things. But you're also using it for thinking through problems. So how do you approach something you might not be familiar with, but knowing that these AI LLMs are trained on a data set that is far beyond any human could ever have in their lifetime, and it sees patterns. And what I see it is right now LLMs are just a pattern recognition system where it predictably models what might be next. But then how do you use that tool for your advantage to think through a problem, think through different. So in a divergent way. So it's really kind of neat to ask it to like, be divergent, um, and then to converge on a solution. And then you start learning, prompting to try to bring it all together and then chain prompting to drive up a bigger result. But what it's done is it's accelerated all of my process and my thinking and allowed me to sort of expand my creativity in new ways that get to a result in a fraction of the time. So if I want to test an idea, for instance, and this is what I've demonstrated at some of the, the events that Sententia's had in some of the game garages, is that if you want to play with an idea, you can, in the matter of 10, 15 minutes, design a game design, have your whole Personas already put in there. If you've trained it on the Sententia methodology, it can stick to the things that you want it to do as far as guardrails. Then it can design a game of some kind or a training experience. Then you can run the Personas that you've had in a simulated. In a simulation against the experience and see if they like it. I mean, it's all fake, but see if they like it. You can iterate on that. So now you've gone two iterations in on an idea, just on this sort of narrative story that you've. That's been designed, just sort of concocted, but you start to feel the human elements of it coming through as you're making those decisions. And then of course, when you feel it's. It's baked enough, you can then throw it in front of someone. But the baking of. And you can design. I like to design movie trailers in about like 10 minutes. So you can kind of pull together a movie trailer about your idea and see if you would go and see that movie.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Like, that is a, A really useful way of like, judging and a barometer of, like, would it sell? And you show that movie trailer to someone else, would they like to play that game or do that, have that experience and then test it when you've got something baked and you can get to that market testing with a more polished product and a clearer idea than you did in the past.

Speaker A: And I think, right, yeah, in a fraction of the time. It's not just like, I wish it was plug and play, which, ah, anyone who's using AI guy asked yesterday how to do something because I couldn't. I was like, how do you do this? And it gave me how to do it. And then I said, well, that's not actually happening. And. And then it came back and said, well, yeah, it doesn't actually do that. And I was just like, well, wait a minute, I just asked you how do you. And so it's, it's still that we still have to massage it. We have to make sure that what we're asking it in the prompt. And that's where it gets wrong a lot too is like my prompt did not tell them exactly what we're looking for. So yeah, that's really good.

Speaker B: Okay, so you have to understand the biases of AI, uh, as you're doing this, it's going to give you an answer. It can't not give you an answer. And that's part of a bias. There's a huge bias for it. Then there's other biases that are going to be even more problematic as we move forward because people want the thing that just does, does it for you. And unfortunately it doesn't do it accurately. And if we, if we perpetuate a narrative where it's doing it for you, then and it's only getting you 80% correct on certain things, and that 20% is there in its system, what it starts to do is it starts to increase a bias that 20% where it starts referring back to the incorrect things that it's done. So this is the kind of danger right now of AI in general is it's creating so much misinformation on the Internet that is referencing the same misinformation on the Internet and giving that as information. And so like, it might seem like it's a small percentage, but that percentage grows and grows and grows as it keeps informing itself on its wrongdoings. So we need systems, we need people in place to actually do that last step and make sure they vet the material. You do this. So that's why my, my framework of be AI trial is about the human and the AI. Like, I'm not trying to have AI replace us. I'm trying to figure out the best ways to use the tool to improve our processes and what we do. Uh, and so that we may. We. We stay at the control center and it remains a tool. And if we maintain that mentality, it's very helpful. It's very quickly. Not. It's very quickly automating things, though, as you get into AI. And so if there is something I want to replicate this whole system, let's say, of designing a game and going through all these steps, I made a system of chain prompts that goes into a PDF and you can just go through the PDF form and it will design this game for you. But again, it's then. But if you go through it a second time with just a tweak, it's going to be a completely different thing. Yeah, so it's amazing, the divergence of ideas based on its generations, but I see that as a positive. So, like, there was a really interesting, really cool app, uh, base 44. And what it does is it creates apps. So it's an AI agent that creates applications for you. And the owner of the company had a brilliant idea. He made an app on his app that makes more apps. And as it's making apps, it sends it to you, like in a. Like a dating app method, where you just like swipe left or right. If you like the app, you swipe right and you want to investigate it more if you want to go left. So it gives you just enough information about an app idea and then if he likes the idea, he just keeps swiping them into a folder and say, all right, these are ideas that we like and we might want to investigate further. And then, you know, he can then spend more time on those ideas that he wants to investigate while quickly removing things out of. And it. I thought it was a brilliant idea. It is, because now he's already has the app to make the apps and then he can just quickly just roll up new app ideas that are just randomly generated. And I'm like, that is so cool.

Speaker A: That's very cool. That would be right up your alley. That would be something that excites. Yes, I can see that. That's very good. We're going to run out of time soon, but I want to just go back to one more thing before we close out about the chapter. You've done a lot of work. You've really advanced the concept of Personas and matching those two, um, mechanics. So the things that make games fun, what. What is it in the design and you were talking about the fundraiser for your children's school is, you know, that's, you know, these unlocks and these probably some boosters in there. And uh. Right. And so then this friendly competition enters in because they're all moving towards a common goal. They've got this common goal at the other end of it. But you've really advanced that conversation in our inner circle as far as that matching of mechanics and motivators. So when you thought about this sententious system, how do you ensure that that alignment is really there? Because some designs can get rather complex and it's easy to forget. I always say we forget one of two things. We forget what the objective was in the first place and we just focused on the fun or we forget who we were designing for and we've put mechanics in there that aren't really going to align with who our Persona is. So what are you doing to keep that alignment in place?

Speaker B: Well some things are mapping what people are doing and having as much data as possible. So we did that with the training Mag Network conference where we just turned on points, badges and leaderboards and, and pulled the data afterwards. And that was useful for that context, for instance because we could design a new experience that really engaged exactly what the pathway we wanted people to go on. So designing a pathway upfront and thinking about the learner upfront or your state, whatever your stakeholder is and really putting them at the center and done a lot of human centered design work, thinking about that in the center and then kind of going from there. And I have to do that because as you're aware and Jonathan who's also pushed this framework, I'm an outlier in many cases in most systems of Personas. I'm an intj, I have for Myers Briggs, for disc, I'm a straight D and for Sententia and looking at Reese motivation I'm a uh, high vengeance for instance. So I am motivated by very different things than most people that I'm designing for for. So I have to think and put them in the circle and say here's what we're, what I'm designing for, what would work for them. And then I have a pathway I want them to get here and I need to think about what are the steps. I could put them down that way that bring in things like constructivist, other lenses in like I love learning environment modeling for drawing out how the interactions are taking place and creating flowcharts like that and then understanding where the objectives are being met and then at each step like am I getting a useful piece of data from that step that I can learn forward or move forward. So again, back to the uh, training mag network. We got all this Excel sheet of data and I can map out exactly where someone was at any point in this digital conference, this online conference, what decisions they made, what places they went, which what did they click on as far as discussion forums and where did they contribute across the three days. And I could see exactly who was our intended audience and what we wanted people to do who didn't do anything and possibly why. And then also those who cheated. Yeah, useful. Yeah.

Speaker A: Really, that was a big. Right.

Speaker B: Like why it was evident they uh, were at three sessions at once. They were able to do all of these things. They did any way they could get points. They figured it out and so but that was like 20 people out of 900 and that's not useful. So we learned that that's what we don't want to engage that type of Persona. We want to engage them, but give them a different outlet for that. And then how do we engage the people who weren't doing that thing? And we also didn't know who was using the game based on what it was. So creating elements that, you know, people are actually doing the thing. So any mechanic where they have a choice that's tied to the game, you know they're playing the game. So that, that was super useful data to have because they had the option to not open the app, not play the game. And I would have known that because they wouldn't have used any points.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, but they could have still been engaged, but not to the percentage of the people who actually use the game.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Increased engagement in that case by 30%. It was amazing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So yeah, it really was a good.

Speaker A: All of that. And of course that was, you know, in the early days of removing everything online. And what tools are we going to use to. For that engagement? Everything's different for everyone. But it was really uh. We always talk about unintended outcomes. Like if we start and it wasn't that they were rewarding the wrong thing. I'm not saying that about. But we did learn quickly how people could gain the system if they chose to. Right. So uh, yeah, that was good. Very good. All right, we need to close out because we're going to be out of time. So if anyone was going to walk away from your chapter with one idea, what would you want that to be?

Speaker B: So if there's one thing I would like people uh, to take away from the chapter is that Gamification is a very powerful tool and it's not limited to instructional design, which a lot of the book is about. So being able to think about it more broadly as a term and apply it, um, in different contexts and to start measuring that a little bit more effectively is very useful. Again, coming from a background where I was interested in serious play and, and sort of other elements and having to experiment with it in different contexts, I think that's a good story to understand that like it is useful in a lot of contexts. It's just how you approach it and how you sort of engage in, in that. And it's always around humans. Right. So the main thing, both AI and gamification and all these objectives that we have, they're all human based. There's always humans at the center of it. So how do we make sure that we utilize what we know as an empirical way of understanding base principles of humanity, which is motivation and the desire to not have pain and move towards pleasure. I mean that's all it really is. One thing that sensation does is it uses the Reese motivation profile that, that focuses on the psychology of positive psychology. So the movement of people towards pleasure and away from what they find painful. And so that is a very useful framework for that human centered element. And that's one that sort of distinguishes it from other, other frameworks I've encountered. Because Disc, Myer, Briggs, they don't really, they shift and they're not as empirical in that sense and as rigid in how someone tests. So when someone tests, usually in Reese, they tend to test the same way over and over and over again. For instance.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So that's very, it's extremely useful when you're trying to design experiences and think through these, these things. But of course still with human centered design, there's a lot of guesswork because you don't have the time and energy to test everyone. But if you do have a data set before, then you can get an understanding of what's actually motivating people in a certain context. So getting that past data is very useful. So how do you think through problems, how do you inform your understanding of that problem is very useful. But then how do you drive people towards outcomes and design towards those outcomes? I find that gamification has been a very, very helpful tool in that framework.

Speaker A: That's really good. I think that, uh, your chapter, uh, they're all my favorite chapters. Everyone, I always say, oh, this is one of my favorite chapters in the book. And it is true. They all have something different about them that really stands out to me. So again, Doc's chapter in the Game Changers anthology is called the Sententia How Gamification Rewrites How We Solve Problems. So you'll want to make sure and get that. I checked this morning. We are live on Amazon so you can order the hardback. It's a hardback copy of the book and all the different authors are focused on that experience, learning design, bringing that gameplay, game based thinking, human centered design into, ah, whatever it is that you're working on, uh, whether it's for clients or within your organization. So Doc, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here with me and doing this recording. It's been a blast.

Speaker B: Thank you. It's been a blast here too. I really appreciate the time.

Speaker A: All right, thanks everyone. We'll see you at the next edition of the Gamification Quest podcast. Have a great week. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Gamification Quest podcast series. If you'd like to go deeper, you can get your own copy of the Sententia anthology where you'll find all of our author's chapters collected in one place. Simply go to www.sententiagamification.com anthology. And if you're ready to take the next step in your own practice, visit our homepage@uh, www.sententiagamification.com to explore our certification programs and our community of practice. Until next time, keep designing. Learning that engages and transforms.