(CNN) — History has a funny way of repeating itself, especially when it comes to concerns over the cultural and psychological impact of video games on children.

In 1993, the Senate’s hearings on video game violence gave birth to the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the industry’s current rating system: E for everyone, M for mature (17 and older) and so on. Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will test the constitutionality of a California law that would make it illegal to sell violent video games to minors.

But what gaming insiders find most surprising isn’t that such arguments remain topical. It’s that some 30 years after video games became a popular form of mainstream entertainment, we’re still liable to hear less about games’ positive impact on kids’ lives than sensationalistic accounts of their hidden dangers.

“Games are an amazing invention that entertain and inform in ways different than traditional media,” says Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. “But many critics have little or any experience with them and therefore don’t understand where there could be artistic or educational value. No different than with film and TV, media sensationalism and ignorance can contribute to the fear that games are harmful to children.

“There’s absolutely no scientific evidence showing a positive correlation between violence in individuals and the games they play,” continues Olin, who points to studies from the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health, The Journal of Adolescent Health and The British Medical Journal.

Also, Olin says, nearly two-thirds of all games sold are rated E or E+, meaning they’re found to be appropriate for players of all ages or children over 10 years of age, respectively.

Researchers like David Thomas, who teaches critical video game theory at the University of Colorado, say the most curious misconception about the field is that games are strictly for juveniles. Such arguments — the impetus for countless political battles — ignore the fact that the average player is 35 years old, and more adult women play than teenage boys, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Furthermore, according to the software association, 63 percent of parents believe that games positively impact their children’s lives.

Games are simply a tool, Thomas argues, which, like any other implement, can be used for good or ill, and require reasonable balance and oversight.

“We live in a media-rich world, and video games are part of that diet,” he says. “Kids are incredibly savvy these days. But being children, they still need guidance. Games can be beneficial to children as a modern form of media, albeit one that they need to learn how to use, cope with, contextualize and manage.”

All too often overlooked in debates are the sizable educational and social benefits that games offer kids, says Winda Benedetti, who writes the Citizen Gamer column for MSNBC.com.

“A lot of parents are unfamiliar with gaming and afraid of the unknown,” she says. “But games can be a huge positive for children, as long as you set reasonable limits. When my 3-year-old watches TV, he just passively zones out.

“But when he plays games, he’s actively engaged, thinks about what’s happening, talks to me about what’s happening on-screen and takes away so much more from the experience. Games offer parents enormous untapped potential.”

Experts say that playing video games helps develop kids’ lateral thinking and decision-making skills. Children are also encouraged to discover and experiment at their own pace, failing and trying new approaches to solving virtual problems, which helps build confidence and self-esteem.

“Games aren’t solely an entertainment medium anymore. [Many] emphasize cooperation and sharing, and encourage kids to learn economic basics,” says Olin, referring to such popular kids’ titles as “Animal Crossing” and “Club Penguin.”

“Other games like ‘LittleBigPlanet’ foster creativity, while online games such as ‘Toontown’ teach lessons on teamwork and community, and the Professor Layton series focuses on critical thinking and puzzle solving,” Olin says. “Games illustrate the concept of risk and reward in a manner that’s comprehensible and engaging.”

Nevertheless, journalists focus mostly on violence in games, says Ariella Lehrer, CEO of software publisher Legacy Interactive.

“Some of the complaints that games destroy a child’s ability to concentrate or do harm to the developing brain are silly. The research is not completely clear, but in general, the data paints a very different picture,” she says.

Ultimately, gaming experts say, whether games are beneficial or detrimental to kids comes down to fundamental playing habits, exposure to age-appropriate content and, most vitally, active parental involvement.

“Games are a social currency that can enhance the relationship between parent and child — no different than any other medium,” says Olin. Most parents know their kids’ friends, the shows they watch and some of the music they listen to. I always recommend that they take the same approach with the games that their children play.”

Lehrer, whose titles include sophisticated animal doctoring simulations such as “Pet Pals” and “Zoo Vet,” says games for kids can be challenging and don’t have to dumb down the experience for them.

Maybe it’s time that we held the debate over the impact of video games on children’s lives to the same standards.

Editor’s note: Scott Steinberg is the head of technology and video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global, as well as the founder of GameExec magazine and Game Industry TV. He frequently appears as an on-air technology analyst for ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CNN. His most recent book is “Get Rich Playing Games.”

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Scott Steinberg.

Written by: Scott Steinberg
Posted by: Situated Research

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Are you suffering from blogger’s block? Is it hard to find time to create content for your blog?  If so, look no further.  This article lists some easy-to-implement tips to help you get over the hump.

But first, there’s a big myth (and it may be your roadblock) that needs attention.

The Myth:  I Have No Time to Blog

Every now and then I poll my blog readers and ask about their challenges with blogging. Without fail, most people say that their number-one challenge is that they don’t have time to write on their blog.  Frankly, I think that is a false problem because you make time for what’s important.

I suggest re-framing the challenge from “I don’t have time to write on my blog” to “I make time to market my business.”  In the context of your business, blogging is a marketing tool.

A business blog is one of the best tools you can use for extending your online visibility because it’s the dynamic hub of your business on the web. The content you create can be leveraged in many ways that will work for you 24 hours a day, so making time needs to be a key part of your marketing plan.

I propose you devote a minimum of 30 minutes per day focusing on your blog marketing activities.

It’s not really that much time when you think about it, especially for the return you can get from consistent effort. Yet I know there are other social marketing tasks competing for your attention. Just keep in mind that the content you create on your blog can be syndicated and leveraged on other platforms as well.

So how do you make time? I’ll state the obvious: you’ve got to schedule it.  That’s how I advise my clients and it’s how I manage my blogging time.  Following are six tips for how you can efficiently tackle your blogging tasks.

#1: Create an Editorial Calendar

There are two steps to creating an editorial calendar. First is to assign your blogging to time slots when you know your creative juices are flowing, when you typically feel inspired and productive.  For me, that’s usually in the morning.

To build a body of content that is quickly indexed by the search engines, I suggest writing on your blog two to three times a week at minimum.  So block that time off—for example: Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9:00 to 9:30 am is blogging time.  That’s the time you spend writing.

Next, two days a week, spend 30 minutes reading other blogs in your industry and leaving comments where appropriate when you have something of value to add.  Not only does that help give you more visibility and more exposure, it also can drive traffic back to your own blog.  It positions you as being active and brings you to the attention of other people who you might not have known before.

#2: Plug in the Types of Posts and Topics You’re Going to Write About

This will make your blogging time more efficient because you don’t have to spend precious time trying to figure out what to write every time you’re scheduled to write.

Make a list of categories that are of interest to your audience. Take a look at your categories and make a list of 5 to 10 subtopics that relate to each category.

If you have 10 primary categories and 5 subtopics for each category, you have 50 blog posts at your fingertips. You can add another layer to your planning by assigning each topic to a style of post:

• How-to
• Top 10 List
• Opinion
• Case Study
• Q&A
• Interview

Finally, assign each subtopic idea to a date on your editorial calendar and you’ve got four months of blog post ideas so you’re not facing a blank page. Of course this system serves only as a guide. There’s nothing stopping you from being spontaneous when a current event or hot topic in your business must be addressed with a blog post.

#3: Keep a Running List of Blog Topics

The more you blog, the more ideas you get. Everything you do, every conversation you have, every book, article or blog you read, becomes fodder for your own blog posts.

I have a long list of ideas and links that I find and want to share. Most of them will never become blog posts, but if I’m stuck or uninspired, I’ve got my list to prompt me.

#4: Write Several Blog Posts at One Time

Many bloggers use this time management strategy. Maybe you really do only have one hour a week to focus on your blog. If that’s the case, grab your laptop, head to your favorite coffee house and pump out a series of blog posts.

Queue articles up to publish over the course of a week or two.  All blogging software I’m aware of has the option to schedule your blog posts.

#5:  Find Guest Bloggers to Help You Out With Content

Occasionally if you’re pressed for time, find someone to help.  Depending on the purpose and goals of your blog, a great feature to add is the voice of others in your industry. Perhaps once a month you showcase the ideas of other members of your team, your vendors, your colleagues and thought leaders in your industry.

#6: Interview Experts

Finally, another great way of creating content quickly is doing interviews.  This could be a weekly or monthly feature that you plug into your editorial calendar.

Identify 12 to 20 industry leaders who’ve written books on your subject. Prepare a written interview with five to seven questions and invite them to respond, then post the interview on your blog. Not all of them are going to take the time to respond, but some will.

Tell them what’s in it for them… Exposure to your audience and links back to their blog, website or book. I don’t know of any authors who don’t want more readers and more visibility for their book! What’s in it for you? Content you don’t have to create that positions you as a credible expert and trusted filter of the best information for your readers.

Don’t forget to plug the interview posts into your calendar – either weekly or monthly depending on the posting schedule you’ve created.

This is a sample model that may or may not work for your business and schedule. You need to develop a schedule that works for you so you can maintain an active blog.

Posting two to three times per week keeps your blog fresh and relevant. Investing a couple of hours a week on creating content that works for you 24/7 will pay off in more traffic, more leads and more opportunities for your business.

These are a few ways to save time and be more efficient with your blogging time. I know there are many more and would love to hear how you manage your blogging time.

What’s your top tip for managing your blog writing so it doesn’t suck up too much of your time?  Share your comments in the box below.

Written by: Denise Wakeman
Posted by: Situated Research

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Your business on the web is far too important to leave to a bunch of techie people.  In their quest to show off their dazzling skills, the web developers often forget that your digital strategy needs to fit into overall strategy.  The result is usually wasted money and missed opportunities.

Here are a few simple rules that will help you get the most out of your web development and digital strategy.

Usability before Design

The most important thing about your web site is how people will use it.  Before you are shown any snappy graphics, you should insist on a functional, clickable model of your web project.

It should give you a basic idea of what your web project will look like, but mostly focus on how users will interact with it.  You can concentrate on design elements later.  This will help you concentrate on what’s important – how users will understand what you expect them to actually do (as opposed to showing off great graphics).

Nielsen / Norman Group Website (www.nngroup.com)

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has what is probably the world’s ugliest website.  Nevertheless, it is highly popular and extremely valuable (which I believe is part of his point).

You should also conduct ongoing usability testing to ensure that users are getting as much value out of the web site as possible.  Here’s a useful and easy to understand guide that will help get you started.

Clarity before Creativity

One of the hardest parts of forming a digital strategy is that new and exciting things are coming out all the time.  Everybody feels like they are getting left behind.

However, like anything else, the most important part of your digital strategy is that everybody understands it – both internally and externally.  Marketers often forget this simple rule and it’s even worse with digital marketers.

On the web, originality is the original sin.  You should always follow web conventions (i.e. logo and home page link on the top left) unless you have a very good reason not to.  Conventional design and functionality allow people to use your site easily without a steep learning curve.

That doesn’t mean that you should never do anything new and different, just that when you do the reasoning should be clear and compelling to your end users.

Use the Simplest Tech that Can Get the Job Done

Technology moves fast, but people change slowly.  Humans, by nature, form habits that we are altering.  If you are hearing about technology for the first time, you probably shouldn’t use it.   New tech is often full of bugs and there is usually a shortage of people who know how to deploy it properly.

The web was designed to be scalable, so it’s usually easy to upgrade later if the new tech is really that important.  If the old stuff works, go ahead and use it.

Iterate

All too often, people start their digital strategy with big plans:  A new web site with lots of features, a complex new social media initiative that will engage consumers as never before, etc.  What usually happens is that after the initial excitement, the big proposal gets bogged down in internal politics, technical glitches, and other problems.

I have found an easy way to solve this problem – roll out your strategy in stages.  Start with something so simple that you can’t mess it up.  Then you can build in complexity.  A stupid strategy that is well executed will outperform a smart one that is overly complex.

As for social media, the strength of a network comes from building tight communities.  So starting off with just one or two social media channels is perfectly viable.  You can always add more later on.

By starting simple instead of launching a massive initiative that you think will solve all of your problems you are more likely to encounter small issues that are easy to deal with rather than massive problems that will kill your initiative.

It’s much better to launch three 2-month projects that build on each other than to go for a six month project that might never get done.

Your Web Site is a Starting Point

Your digital strategy, most likely, has very little to do with digital and everything to do with your business.  You might want to get more customers, engage them more, service them better, and so on.  That means that it will need to work well with your existing personnel and processes directed at the same goals.

The problem with many digital people is that they don’t know anything about your business and they usually do not care. What they want is to impress other digital people and are not so much concerned with how your digital strategy fits in with everything else you’re doing.

So don’t leave your web strategy to web developers.  You know your business and where you want to take it.  It is their job to help your business succeed so make it happen.

Written by: Michel Sharritt
Posted by: Situated Research

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How many times have you heard someone say, I just want that top search result on Google? For a business website, the top spot in the search engine returns can be a lead generating machine.

Think about it. Google is where most people go when they are researching. What if there was a way to get your company’s website on that first page?  Well there is…

One of the best ways to gain that top spot is by blogging. Incorporating a blog into a website can have a huge impact on the overall website’s search engine rankings.

A blog does two important things in terms of the search engines:

1. Adds naturally occurring, keyword-rich pages.
2. Increases the potential for incoming links from high-quality websites.
3. Keeps people coming to your website because the content is changing weekly and is important to subscribers.

This article will reveal the why and how for improving your search engine rankings with blogs.

Playing the Numbers—Static vs. Dynamic Websites

The average small business website includes anywhere from 10-20 static web pages. These are the basic pages you see on most sites such as the “home page”, an “about us” page, “product descriptions” and even pages with contact information. Once created, these pages rarely change. In some cases, even small changes on these pages can be an expensive proposition that involves bringing in a web designer.

If the site is well-built with all the appropriate code and metadata, the search engines will index these 10-20 pages of content.  If the site is highly optimized and focused on a limited number of keywords, the search engines may connect those 10-20 pages with the right keywords (the search engine terms used to find information). However, due to the inherent needs of a website, some pages aren’t indexed for the desired keywords (i.e., contact forms).

Best-case scenario, 10-20 pages are recognized by the search engines as possible returns for the targeted keywords.

The Impact of Blog Posts

Now let us take our static website and add a blog. For the sake of this example, let’s say that there are five representatives in the company who have each agreed to write one blog post per week.

Here’s where our blog really starts to pay off. Each time a new blog post is added, a new page is indexed by the search engines. By the end of the first month, the website has doubled the number of pages originally indexed by the search engines.

Within a month, our website—which originally had 10-20 pages in the search engine pool—now has 30-40 pages that can possibly be returned in the top spot on Google. Stretch that out over the course of a year and our 10-20 page website now has around 250 pages indexed in the search engines.

And while a blog post a day is a lot of work, scale it back to one blog post per week and we’ve still more than doubled the number of indexed pages during the first year.

Each indexed page adds another ticket to the great Google lottery. The more tickets you hold, the better chances of winning the top spot in the search engine rankings.

The Power of Incoming Links

Now let’s say that our faithful bloggers have been adding their daily posts on topics of interest to their industry. Word gets around that they put up some valuable information and at the very least offer a voice for the company.  A couple of blog posts have been emailed to fellow colleagues and even better, fellow industry bloggers are starting to link to the blog. The site starts to appear on fellow bloggers’ blog rolls and specific posts are linked as references and points of discussion in other online publications.

Google loves these incoming links. Google likes them even more when the links come from sites that are relevant to the content in the blog. Your website starts to look more important on the internet as you increase visitors and Google will notice this.

Then one day, someone is conducting research for a story related to our company’s industry. Because the blog has added a number of indexed pages to the website and others have started to link to the blog, it pops up in the reporter’s Google search. Our someone includes a link to the blog in his article and you have just increased your inbound linking to your website.

Google really likes incoming links from big, high-traffic sites. Along with the initial traffic sent to the blog from the article written by our someone, Google sees that they linked to our site in an article related to keywords indexed in our blog. Google recognizes that our someone has an important Internet site and makes the connection that because they have linked to our little blog, our blog must be important. Thus Google moves it up the search engine rankings.

Congratulations. Thanks to the addition of a blog, our little website of 10-20 static pages now holds one of the top spots in Google search results. Now some people do ask how long does this take to happen, well it can take anywhere from six months to a year to get on page one of Google. A lot of time and dedication have to be put in to keep this going for Google to notice.

Indexed Pages + Relevant and Reputable Links = Search Engine Success

At the 2009 Word Camp San Francisco (a gathering of WordPress users), Google’s Matt Cutts pointed out the importance of being both relevant and reputable. Incoming links from reputable sites in which the content is relevant to the content in the post are highly valued by Google. A blog is one of the best ways to continually add pages to a website that generate relevant and reputable links.

In the scenario above, our business blog has managed to provide both relevant content and generate reputable links—two big keys to success on Google.

Incorporate the Blog

If the goal is to raise the search engine results of the website, it is important to incorporate the blog into the website. Use a call to action at the end of the blog post to direct the reader to other parts of your website. Keep it on the same domain and provide clear links that encourage visitors to explore the rest of your website.

Make it easy for your reader. If the path to your website isn’t clearly marked, they will never find their way. That is why it is so important to integrate the website into the look and feel of your current website. You never want anyone to be taken from your website otherwise it is hard for them to get back. Integrating your blog will keep this from happening. As an example check out our blog and website to see how this integration can work for your business.

ROI

Measuring the ROI of social media is tricky, but consider the value of the top spot on Google. How much would you pay for the top organic search return? Although it doesn’t happen overnight, a blog can be one of the best ways to get there.

Have you seen a jump in the search engine rankings since adding a blog? If your business is not blogging, what’s holding you back? Contact Situated Research today to help you with your blog integration. Don’t have time to generate stories for your blog or even to social network? Contact us about our special Social Media Marketing Campaign where for two months we will create social media accounts for your company and get the buzz out about your website, business, product or service.

www.situatedresearch.com
(630) 522-0855

Written by: Michel Ann Sharritt
Posted by: Situated Research

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Understanding that kids are excellent innovators, Latitude Research in conjunction with ReadWriteWeb recently conducted a study asking children to ideate concepts for new computer and Web technologies – and the results are in.

While it’s not too surprising that kids today think about digital technologies (and the experiences they enable) as a given, the study found that kids desire increasingly immersive content experiences, better integration of digital technology into physical objects, spaces and activities, and more intuitive interfaces – 37% of participants’ creations didn’t even bother with the traditional keyboard/mouse interface.

What’s more, our participants’ ideas weren’t just forward-thinking; they were also surprisingly down-to-earth, with only 4% of kids’ “future requests” being impossible demands for today’s developers (e.g. time-travel, teleportation, etc.).

“Future computers” – Natalie, Age 10

“We chose to use kids for this study because they’re closer to the problem at hand – closer to their core desires,” said Jessica Reinis, an analyst at Latitude who headed up the study.

“They’re not thinking within the confines of current market offerings or in terms of routine life situations; they’re thinking about what they’d like to do right now, without regard to what’s possible or what would be popular with other people. Those are questions that we explore more in adult innovation studies like The New Sharing Economy, but kids are able to tap into a more basic creativity that’s great for ideating on really broad questions like this.”

Kids today have different experiences with technology during a critical learning period than present adults did, which means they also have different understandings about what it can and should do. “Kids will figure out how to use whatever they get in front of, and that will become the framework inside of which they experience, critique, and create everything else,” said Geoff Barnes, Director of User Experience at Elliance. “I think that kids’ visions into what the future of technology will look like are highly collaborative with present-day, actual paradigm shifts, like the interaction paradigm shift of multi-touch.”

“The computer becomes 3 dimensional and, instead of a keyboard, it’s controlled by voice.” – Aisling, Age 11

Study Background

The study was comprised of 126 children, aged 12 and under, from across the globe. Here’s what we asked them:

“What would be really interesting or fun to do on your computer or the Internet that your computer can’t do right now? Please draw a picture of what this activity looks like.”

Parents told us some basic facts about their child’s Internet usage and technology exposure, along with household demographic information, and submitted their child’s drawing.

Screenshot of participant drawings in a Web application (part of Latitude’s Lumière Suite) that allows users to contribute and interact with visual input in a behavioral environment.

Latitude coded each of these images (future technology ideas) for common themes, then analyzed them in aggregate. Some examples of broad themes included: interest area, interface characteristics, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence, user’s desired end-goal, social connectivity, etc.

Study Findings: Digitize the Offline World

Thirty eight percent of children’s innovations called for more immersive content experiences than are commonly available now, with features like 3D effects (10% of all submissions incorporated 3D) or seamless integration of digital technology into the physical world. In many cases, devices could create physical objects such as food or facilitate physical activities such as playing a sport.

“I’d like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real.” – Joanna, Age 10

These requests don’t seem too radical if you’ve ever encountered MIT’s SixthSense technology, which transposes digital information onto everyday, physical surroundings, and relies on more instinctive, gestural interactions:

For kids today, true synchrony between physical and digital worlds is becoming an expectation rather than a novelty. And the demand for it is expanding beyond the realm of visual media.

“Currently, we have the ‘iGeneration’ understanding of device as simply an extension of oneself – and we still think that’s pretty novel,” said Reinis. “But kids are showing us that the next step will be exactly the converse of that. It’ll be a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere.”

There may be openings to apply mobile RFID/sensors, or even something like Stickybits (which allow people to attach digital content to real-world objects) to register and socialize offline activities through smarter device interactions. HopeLab is currently developing gDitty, a wearable device for kids that records and converts physical activity to points which can be redeemed for “virtual goods and real-world rewards, including customizable avatars, gift cards, even the opportunity to make a donation to a cause.”

Regardless of physical world integration, the vast majority of participants, 83%, desired technologies capable of highly intuitive interaction. They requested responsive virtual environments, 3D games, “homework help” computers, telepathy as a form of device input (4% of all submissions), etc.

“Virtual mind-reading games” – Mark, Age 12

Future Request: Content Interaction (As Opposed to Device Interaction)

Kids are already thinking about 3D effects for in-home gaming and media viewing, an offering which is just beginning to hit the market as 3D-enabled TVs. This anticipation of the near-future suggests that visually immersive features alone won’t satisfy any audience for long. “We’ve been investigating a number of emergent media trends and this big idea always comes through; essentially, that users are, more and more, desiring additional ways and means to interact with content – to interact with it and to personalize it,” said Reinis, who has worked on 3D studies recently and specializes in interactive advertising research at Latitude.

Kids today approach technology with matter-of-course acceptance – and greater expectations. “It took my 7 year-old son, Alex, under 10 seconds to figure out how to turn it on and unlock the iPad’s screen, and no time whatsoever to understand that touching icons launched apps. Or that swiping the screen controlled pagination. Or that pivoting the screen revealed different data presentations,” wrote Barnes in a recent blog post.

“I’m hard-pressed to envision his generation entering college and enrolling in required courses with names like ‘Introduction to Computing,’ to learn about file systems, Microsoft Office, the worldwide web, and email. As I watch Alex, in fact, the idea is as nonsensical to me as offering college courses on how to read an arrow. It’s become that obvious,” he wrote.

So what might next-generation interaction be like? Based on study findings, it seems that, eventually, each user will crave the ability to architect his or her own content experience: to step into it, to interact with characters, to add and remove plot constraints – ultimately, to alter the course of future events. It would mean the difference between interacting peripherally with a technology, and interacting with the actual story being told through the device.

Download a PDF of the study summary. Part two of the results will be published July 8.

*The names of some of the children have been changed to protect the participants’ privacy.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude’s user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. “Children’s ‘Future Requests’ for Computers and the Internet” is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.

Written by: ReadWriteWeb
Posted by: Situated Research

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Students at Quest to Learn in New York City huddle around a computer to work on a podcast. At the school, students can design and create podcasts and video games as part of the curriculum.

A novel public school in New York City has taken the video game as its model for how to teach. Students use video games and design them as part of their classes. As Quest to Learn is wrapping up its first year, those behind the program say game-based learning is integral to 21st century literacy.

A ‘Key’ To Learning

Most kids don’t need instructions to figure out how to play video games. Something about these games turns kids into phenomenal learners.

“The big idea of the school is we looked at how games work — literally how they’re built and the way they support learning — and we thought could we design a school from the ground up that supported learning in the way games do,” says Katie Salen, one of the executive directors of Quest to Learn.

This idea has been advocated for years by scholar James Gee, one of Salen’s mentors. They believe video games are key to a new kind of literacy.

“In math, we’re traveling around the world,” says sixth-grader Rocco Rose, a student at Quest to Learn and a citizen of Creepytown — an imaginary city where his class learns math and English. The students play travel agents, convert currencies, keep blogs about their travel experiences and budget trips.

Creepytown is structured like a video game that has jumped out of the computer. During their 10-week “missions,” students learn to adapt and improvise.

“The second trimester, Creepytown went broke,” Salen says. “They had … an economic crisis. So the kids worked to figure out … what had gone wrong. And then they proposed the design of a theme park to bring revenue in.”

Getting involved with the school, since there has been no program previously existing quite like this, was a complete leap of faith … like jumping off a bridge.
- Sam Clayton, who sends his child to Quest to Learn

Systems Thinking

Salen says playing with complex dynamic systems gives kids opportunities to learn.

Students “learn how to solve problems, how to communicate, how to use data, how to begin to predict things that might be coming down the line,” she says.

They also learn something called systems thinking, which Salen says is one of the cornerstones of 21st century literacy. It helps you understand how the behavior of a derivatives trader in Hong Kong affects housing prices in Florida. When a system becomes sufficiently complex, Salen says, you start to get outcomes that are hard to foresee.

“Suddenly you begin to get what’s called emergent behavior, and in emergent behavior, that system, the elements in it, begin to relate to one another in ways that can be unpredictable,” she says.

‘Complete Leap Of Faith’

In a classroom across the hall from Creepytown, 12-year-old Liam Smith is working with his team to storyboard one of Aesop’s fables. It’s the first step of the game-design process.

At Quest to Learn, students not only play in gamelike environments, they also make video games. Salen says there’s no better way to learn systems thinking than by making one. It’s also familiar, says Liam.

“When you start playing games at age 3, I think it just comes naturally to you,” Liam says.

For parents, though, video games aren’t necessarily so familiar. Sam Clayton says choosing to send his child to Quest to Learn was a difficult decision. “Getting involved with the school, since there has been no program previously existing quite like this, was a complete leap of faith … like jumping off a bridge,” Clayton says.

Will It Make The Mark?

But Quest to Learn participants take the same standardized tests that all public school kids take.

Katie Salen, an executive director at Quest to Learn, says video games are an important component of 21st century literacy.

“The school is under a huge microscope right now,” says Valerie Shute, who has a grant to asses the school from the MacArthur Foundation, which put up the seed money for the school. “There are people hoping for a wild success, and there are people hoping for the opposite.”

Shute says she has already seen significant improvement in systems thinking among the students, and she is optimistic traditional skills like math won’t take a beating.

For Salen, the bottom line of 21st century literacy is empowerment.

“What systems thinking does is it gives you a tool to manage complexity,” she says. “Because of the complexity of problems, if you’re not able to look at them as a system, you’re just going to look at a blur. You will just be overwhelmed by the complexity.”

The school had around 500 applicants for 80 slots in next year’s class, so Creepytown should thrive for at least another year.

Listen to the Story (NPR)

Images courtesy of Quest to Learn
Written by: Heather Chaplin
Posted by: Situated Research

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2010 appears to be a breakthrough year for gaming technologies.  In case you haven’t heard, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and many others in the gaming industry have just announced their latest releases at this year’s E3 Expo in Los Angeles. The E3 press conferences revealed trends toward motion-based game controllers, 3D technologies, controller-less gaming, and an array of retro game titles that are back on the scene.

New Technology

Folks stood in line for up to three hours to try out the new Nintendo 3DS at the E3 Expo. Was it worth the wait? Let’s look at the pros and cons of the new device.

Pros:

• Displays three dimensional (3D) graphics without any glasses
• Wirelessly connects to the Internet
• Takes 3D photos of you and your friends
• Has three cameras (one internal, two external)
• Two screens (one 3D and one touch screen)
• A slider to turn down the 3D effect (down to 2D)
• A motion and gyro sensor
• Microphone

Cons:

• Difficult to change your 3D view (with the round button in the upper left corner; see picture below)
• After staring at the screen for two minutes, many people were complaining about their eyes / headaches
• Second screen is small; hard to view images
• Nintendo’s exhibitors had a hard time connecting the device to the Internet (took several tries)

While the pros outweigh the cons, the point of buying the 3DS is to experience games in 3D. Nintendo has some issues to work out. Release date is set for sometime next year.

Our next stop was at the Microsoft exhibit, where we experienced the new Kinect technology (formerly Project Natal). With camera, audio sensors, and a powerful motion sensor, this add-on for the Xbox can track the detailed movements of everyone in the room simultaneously.  No longer will each player need their own controller. As demonstrated at the E3 Expo, the Kinect will allow new games like Your Shape to not only track your body movements, but also to analyze your dimensions for precise exercise regiments that are tailored specifically for you.

Pros:

• Light weight; sits on top of your TV or on a shelf
• Precise
• People had fun while playing the games
• Promoted exercise, got users active
• No lost remotes!
• Next step towards virtual, controller-less gaming
• Many possibilities for accessories

Cons:

• Four of the new game titles are fitness games
• Games on demonstration seemed childish
• Kinect had a hard time with voice recognition
• Voice recognition feature in only in two languages right now
• Only one person at a time can communicate
• Voice recognition picks up everything (background noise / chatter can accidentally have unintended outcomes)

We highly recommend getting Microsoft’s Kinect, which will be made available for gamers in fall 2010. The gaming experience was fun and enjoyable by those that tried it out at E3.

Next, we visited the Sony exhibit to check out the new PlayStation Move for PS3. The PlayStation Move controller is Sony’s response to Nintendo’s tremendous success with the Wii. Using a combination of internal sensors and the PlayStation Eye, the PS3 is able to track the Move’s position and orientation to enable Wii-like motion based controls. Both the PlayStation Eye and a Move controller are necessary to enable motion controls. For games that require an analog stick, a regular Dual Shock controller can be used, or a more optimized one-handed controller that Sony dubs the PlayStation Move sub-controller. So what did we think?

Pros:

• Built in rechargeable battery
• Nice color
• While play was similar to the Wii, the PS3′s better graphics made it more appealing to players

Cons:

• Weak rumble
• Too similar to the Wii controller
• Motion was not always picked up
• Cannot be used as a regular controller like the Wii remote

We didn’t care for the Move remote when we tried the new game Sports Champions at the exhibit. The archery game was the most fun to play; however, the accuracy of the arrow was not always dead on. In addition, when we played the ping-pong game with the remote, the rumble feature was weak and did not feel lifelike. Still, for under $100, it is worth a try and adds new possibilities for gameplay on the PS3.

Games

The E3 Expo previewed many of the games that will be released in the next few months. Our first stop was at the Electronic Arts exhibit. Wow! How could they go wrong with their huge TV screens, awesome Need For Speed display, and the Sims 3: Ambitions demo? With Gus Johnson, CBS Sports announcer and the voice of EA Sports “it’s in the game” in attendance, EA did not disappoint the huge crowd this year.

The Sims 3: Ambitions demo was worth the wait in line, and we plan to purchase the game upon it’s release. As you entered into a theater you were greeted by a live Sim character, much like you would find in the game. Unlike the other versions of Sims where you must make sure your character eats, sleeps, and bathes, the new version allows you to keep your character happy with one click. An added feature of the new Sims is ‘karma’ where players can curse other Sims, ‘score’ easier with other Sims, and even cast plagues on neighbors: making for some entertaining gameplay. The Sims 3: Ambitions is available on all consoles and will allow online play with your friends.

Retro Titles

We saw some ‘oldies but goodies’ – some great game titles that are coming back. First, we looked at Sega’s exhibit where Sonic the Hedgehog is coming back in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1. We were lucky enough to give it a try, so what did we think? The new game is just as fun as the last version that came out in 1994. Although the game was structured similarly to previous Sonic games (with check points, etc.), we felt that Sega nailed it with the great graphics. Check it out for yourself and tell us what you think: http://www.sonicthehedgehog4.com/us/

Sony is reviving Twisted Metal and it is crazier than ever. Our experience with the new game was in a multiplayer match with 16 players. We had a blast zipping across a city map, shooting missles from a helicopter. Behind the wheel of a car is exciting too. Players can pull off quick 360-degree turns with the handbrake to stay close to an enemy or evade strikes from an oncoming chopper. Players drive or fly through the environment, snagging power-ups in the environment. During the match, a big-rig would speed by that players could drive into for health boosts. The new game provides hours of fun and great competition, and can be yours in early 2011.

Our last stop was the THQ exhibit, where they had a great demo of Red Faction: Armageddon that will be released in March 2011 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Set fifty years after the events of Red Faction: Guerrilla, Armageddon sees the Martian colonists going back into the tunnel systems featured in the first two Red Faction titles. To shake things up this time around, the colonists accidentally stumble upon some alien life lingering in the mines.

Besides a new threat, Armageddon features some prominent changes to the Red Faction: Guerrilla game mechanics. Building on the Geo-Mod 2.0 engine’s able to destroy pretty much anything; Armageddon will allow gamers to rebuild structures thanks to a new tool called the ‘Nano Forge.’ Apparently this Nano Forge will host a whole slew of new abilities including a “Magnet Gun.” This game will definitely go on our list of games to get.

With all the ground-breaking innovations in technology, the gaming experience is moving into the future at lightning speed.  Developers are doing everything they can to enhance the graphics, controls, usability, and emotional impact of video games.  These new technologies open up completely new possibilities for video games; not only making games more fun, but more lively, intuitive, and appealing to people of all ages. Overall, the E3 Expo was a huge success and we will definitely be back next year.

Written by: Michel Ann Sharritt & Travis Larsen
Posted by: Situated Research

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(CNN) — Goodbye computer mouse, keyboard and monitor.

Say hello to a new, simpler era of human-computer interaction — this time, with no clunky hardware standing between you and digital information.

In this new world, there are options aplenty.

Instead of sliding a mouse across your desk, you could just point at whatever you’d like to select. Instead of pecking away at a keyboard, you could just say what you’re thinking. And instead of glaring at a big screen all day, why not just project that information on the surface of your contact lenses?

None of this is science fiction. These ideas are here today, some of them in research labs and others already on store shelves.

And, thanks to a remote-control-free video gaming system called Kinect, these futuristic concepts for computer-human communication are about to get a lot more popular, technology researchers said in interviews this week.

Microsoft’s Kinect, which hits stores November 4, lets players control games by moving their bodies. To make a digital soccer player kick, you just swing your leg.

It’s an effort to make gaming more “natural.” And that concept — that we don’t need intermediaries to help us talk to technology — is likely to bleed into every aspect of electronics and computing in coming years.

“It’s all fantastic, because it’s a really useful educational opportunity for the world,” said John Underkoffler, creator of a real gesture-based computing system that was featured in the 2002 movie “Minority Report.”

“It’s only been a few years that people have started to realize, ‘Wait a minute! We’re not stuck with the mouse and Windows-driven interface for the rest of time.’ ”

‘Natural user interfaces’

A whole field of technological research has developed around the idea of “natural user interfaces,” which try to let people communicate with machines in the same ways they would interact with other people and with the real world.

Kinect, which was demonstrated at a video gaming conference this week in Los Angeles, California, is a prime example of this, because people control the system with body gestures and by talking instead of clicking buttons or messing with joysticks.

Researchers are trying to expand this idea of “gesture-controlled” electronics into computing more generally.

Underkoffler, for example, developed a system called g-speak, which lets users shuffle through data sets and other information by waving their hands.

He says several large companies, including Boeing, already are using custom-built versions of the system, which range in price from $100,000 to millions of dollars.

Underkoffler expects consumer-level products to be widely available within five years.

History of ‘natural’ computing

These developments may seem to have plopped into reality out of sci-fi. But they’ve been a long time coming.

Touch-sensitive screens were some of the first natural interfaces.

They’ve been in research for decades, but they didn’t become cheap and popular until 2007, when Apple released the touch-screen iPhone and Microsoft showed off a touch-screen coffee table called Microsoft Surface.

Now, as computer hardware becomes cheaper and people get more used to the idea that the mouse and keyboard aren’t the only way to compute, researchers are pushing into areas like brain-controlled computing, eye-tracking software and voice-recognition technology, which is common on smartphones.

Bill Buxton, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, said that new ways for people to interact with computers have to be radically different to catch on.

People are used to touch screens and video cameras now, he said, so the transition into gesture computing makes more sense.

“The trend [of gesture computing] has been around for a while, but it’s sort of hit a critical point where I think the game is changing,” he said.

“The most significant thing that’s changed about computing is who’s doing what, where, with whom and for how much.”

When simple is complicated

Despite the recent advances, a number of hurdles remain in the “natural” progression of electronics.

New methods of input sometimes come with new problems. Using arm and hand motions to control computers, for instance, can become tiring, said Beth Mynatt, director of the GVU center at the Georgia Institute of Technology. And if such motions are taken to TV sets, as Toshiba has demonstrated, then there may be some unintended and hilarious consequences, she said.

Imagine changing a channel by waving your arms.

“Are they trying to change the channel or are they making rude gestures to the umpire?” a computer might think, she said. “[The computer is] going to get it wrong and nobody’s going to want to do it. They’re going to be much happier fumbling around with that remote.”

Robert Wang, a PhD student at MIT who has developed a gesture-controlled computing system, said it’s also difficult to use hand movements to manipulate digital objects because you can’t feel them.

“It’s going to be a little bit difficult to make a compelling sense of touch,” he said. Good visual cues may have to suffice, he said.

Death of the mouse?

There’s disagreement in the tech community about whether these new methods of human-computer interaction will completely kill the mouse, keyboard and computer monitor — or if they’ll just offer alternatives.

Generally, researchers think the mouse might be the first to go.

The keyboard, however unnatural, likely will be around longer because it is such an efficient way to write, and because people don’t want to learn new systems, said Mynatt of Georgia Tech.

Buxton, from Microsoft Research, said these new options aren’t competing with each other because they’re all good at something and terrible for something else.

Using Kinect on an airplane would be “completely absurd,” for example, he said, because you’d have to stand up on your plane seat and flail your arms around. Likewise, typing in a car is unsafe, and talking about private matters in public — or even entering voice commands — can be problematic.

“What I see is not that the gesture stuff is in competition with the mouse or with multitouch,” he said. “What all of these things do is they’re enhancing the palate of colors or the resources we can draw on, so that when we have something to do that involves technology, we can use the most appropriate means.”

Screens may be the last hangovers of the desktop world.

Some researchers now are projecting the internet and information on walls and even onto peoples’ hands, in effect turning fingers into buttons of their own.

Pranav Mistry, a research assistant in the MIT Media Lab, said his goal is to get rid of computer hardware entirely — so that people just interact directly with information.

“The hardware is becoming invisible,” he said.

Ultimately, he said, the digital world will fold completely into the real one.

The story includes several videos: view them on CNN’s website.

Written by: John Sutter, CNN
Posted by: Situated Research

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1. Run an interview series on your blog, video cast, or podcast.

It might seem counter-intuitive to provide promotion and publicity for others when you’re trying to provide it for yourself, but in reality, an interview series can actually accomplish both of those goals at the same time. Decide on a great topic that’s relevant to your target audience and that you’d love to get the perspectives of others on. For example, if you are a virtual assistant, you might run an interview series on the topic of getting things done.

Next step, set a target quantity of interviews. A good starting point would be 25, but you could go much higher  (“100 Business Owners’ Tips for GTD”). You want to do at least 10 interviews, because the more interviewees you have, the more people there are who will promote the series and the more attractive it will be to readers, viewers, or listeners.

The setup doesn’t have to be very complicated either. You could ask 100 business owners, for instance, one question through Facebook and Twitter, like, “What’s your best tip for getting things done?”

2. Hold a free (and irresistible) tele-seminar.
Think of an in-demand topic, something that concerns or interests a lot of people (one idea could be “Take Control of Your Facebook Privacy”). Consider sending out “formal invitations” to 50-100 VIPs in your network (making sure to let them know they’re your VIPs) and ask them to “bring a date.” The setup for this can be simple, too. A free conference line will fit the bill.

3. Arrange a “coffee date” or informal luncheon around a favorite book.

Pick a book that’s relevant to your target audience and set up a discussion or “one-day book club.” A great idea would be to get local sponsors, too. One business owner I know coordinated a luncheon at a local farm to discuss her favorite book.

If you’re really nervy and live in a good market for it, you could even try to coordinate a book signing, especially if it’s for an up-and-coming author who would love the publicity (and on that note, why not call in local press to let them know about the event?).

4. Hold a dinner party.
Invite 10-15 special guests who are nearby, maybe people who run complementary businesses to yours. If you want to keep the cost down, make it a potluck and ask everyone to bring a dish. Get together to brainstorm joint venture possibilities for marketing and co-promotions. You might even put together package deals and steep discounts when customers purchase something from every vendor in the group.

5. Coordinate a group-sponsored contest.
Put together a really awesome “business start-up” package or something enticing to your ideal audience. Then run a week-long event where folks tweet for chances to win. Get creative (the more creative, the better), because that means more interest and buzz around the contest.

6. Host a blog carnival or content round-up.
Remember those? Decide on how you want to set it up, set some ground rules, and then invite people to participate through Twitter and other social networks.

7. Go on a “promotional tour.”
You know how actors heavily promote their new movies in the week of their release? Why not set up a promotional tour for your business? Decide on a topic that’s relevant to your audience, one on which you’re very knowledgeable. If you’re a child safety blogger, for instance, there’s your topic. Contact 10-20 related and complementary bloggers and offer an interview on the topic of choice (so, if you’re the child safety blogger, contact 10-20 parent bloggers to offer up an interview on the topic of child safety).

In the week before your “promotional tour” begins, start internal promotion of the tour, mentioning that you’re participating in upcoming interviews on the topic on your blog and on social networks. As you do the interviews, link back to them, and at the end of the tour, send out a “round-up” blog post or email newsletter with all the links.

Promoting a business doesn’t have to be a dreaded chore and can actually be a fun way to interact with your target audience and fellow business owners. Instead of having to worry about direct mailers and business cards hitting the trash can, email marketing pieces ending up reported as spam, or being turned away from disinterested prospects, wouldn’t it be great to have folks saying, “I can’t wait to see what you come up with next!”?

What’s the most creative, buzz-worthy marketing you’ve ever done for your business?

Photo by: Flickr user lululemon athletica, licensed under CC 2.0
Written by: Amber Singleton Riviere
Posted by: Situated Research

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If you search Google on Tuesday, you may notice that the information you’re looking for is a bit “fresher” than it would have been on Monday.

That’s because the world’s most popular search engine has unveiled a new search method called “Caffeine,” which claims to index new information 50 percent faster than Google’s old search.

“Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for Web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of Web content we’ve offered,” the company says in a news release on its official blog. “Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.”

That doesn’t mean Google has changed its search formula entirely, or that search results will pop onto your screen faster than before. Essentially it means that Google is able to find new content more quickly. So, for instance, a new Twitter update that, in the past, would be been missing from search results because Google hadn’t found and indexed it yet, would be posted to Google search results more quickly with Caffeine.

Here’s a promotional video from Google that explains how the search works.

The update — which has been anticipated by tech and search-engine blogs — comes as Google faces increasing competition from both traditional search engines and from online social networks with search-like functions.

Google is still the top search engine, with 64 percent of search queries, according to a report from the Web traffic monitor comScore, which cites April numbers. But that’s down 1 percent compared to the previous month. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been winning new fans, and, in general, increasing traffic. Microsoft and Yahoo! combined now make up about 30 percent of the search market, according to the report.

In terms of social networks, Twitter has become a go-to site for finding up-to-the-minute information. And Facebook in April debuted its “Like” functionality all over the Web. Some tech writers see that as a threat to Google, since Facebook is essentially trying to organize information on the internet according to the likes and dislikes of someone’s friends.

Mashable, a social media blog that has a content partnership with CNN, says Google Caffeine is effective at making the Mountain View, California, company’s search results more immediate: “This search is not only faster, but in some instances in our few tests, seems more capable of producing real-time results,” Ben Parr wrote on the site last year when rumors of Caffeine were surfacing.

The Google search update is a sign that the company is feeling some heat from its competitor Bing, writes Charles Arthur at The Guardian.

“It’s interesting to see that Google is focusing again on the element of its offering where it does lead the pack: search,” he writes. “That’s what made its [Google's] name, but it’s clear that even if Microsoft’s Bing hasn’t (yet?) won the market share, it has got Google thinking about how it can improve what it does.”

The blog The Next Web says the move is significant for the development of the real-time internet, and that it also “could provide a tremendous boast to not only Google’s stock price, but also to its ad revenue.”

To better understand how Caffeine works, it might help to think of Caffeine as a blog and the old Google as a newspaper. Where a newspaper collects content and then publishes it all at once, at the beginning of the day, a blog is constantly looking for new information and updating on the fly. This is sort of how Google Caffeine works. Rather than collecting big “batches” of Web pages to index for its search, Google is trying to publish more frequently as it goes.

“Every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second,” Google says.

In a blog post, Google software engineer Carrie Grimes acknowledges that times are changing for search.

“Content on the Web is blossoming,” she writes. “It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average Web page is richer and more complex.

“In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.”

Written by: John D. Sutter, CNN
Posted by: Situated Research

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Paper Abstract:

Applied research will be presented from a qualitative study that highlights high school students’ learning and use of several game interfaces, describing how particular affordances and game interface designs can encourage learning. Inductive generalizations from several ‘commercial’ games for good, including Civilization IV, Making History: The Calm & the Storm, and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 describe patterns of learning among game players, showing how the design of in-game visualizations either led to success or failure to learn to use basic game controls. This analysis, inspired by ethnomethodology and grounded theory, sought patterns from gathered video data of student gameplay to highlight learning episodes and patterns of interface use. Patterns in affordance use (uptake of a perceived action potential) during collaborative gameplay reveal relationships among the video game interface and player behavior, giving focus to how an interface design can guide game player interaction. In line with Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, a proper balance of difficulty (between feelings of boredom, and too much difficulty) encouraged player engagement and learning. As evidenced in transcripts of collaborative gameplay, feelings of frustration with a game interface often led students to abandon in-game tasks, as did boredom with a given task. However, frustrated goal achievement often led to the re-negotiation of in-game strategies: an indication of engagement. Additionally, games that presented information using multiple channels encouraged learning, as did the use of specific visualizations such as the animation of in-game objects. Finally, a discussion of the affordances created by different game designs will offer educators and game designers guidelines to encourage motivated gameplay. [Read the full article]

To cite the article:

Sharritt, M. J. (2010). Designing game affordances to promote learning and engagement. Cognitive Technology Journal, 14(2)-15(1), pp. 43-57.

The journal editor has asked us to share information on this journal as he is opening up submissions to a broader community of researchers (view the brochure). Feel free to share with anyone you think might be interested.

Written by: Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D.
Posted by: Situated Research

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We’ve compiled ten of the most compelling reasons that you should consider using social media tools to promote your business.

1. Brand Recognition: Using social media allows your company to reach the highest number of potential customers possible. Getting your name out there is incredibly important – studies have suggested that customers need to hear a company’s name at least seven times before they will gain the trust and respect needed to become a customer.

2. Brand Monitoring: Having a social media presence allows you to better understand what current and potential customers are saying about your product or services. Through active social media monitoring, you have the opportunity to address negative comments and correct false or inaccurate information about your brand.

3. Be Forward-Thinking: Your target audience is becoming savvier when it comes to the using social media sites in their daily lives. If you want to appear relevant and in-step with the latest advances in technology, your potential customers will want to see you on these sites as well.

4. Find New Customers Through Friends: You shouldn’t neglect your personal social media accounts as potential avenues to promote the activities of your business. Posting regular updates relating to your business and activities can remind your friends of what your company does and either to use your services or refer one of their friends.

5. Find New Customers Through a Company Profile: Your company profile is a great opportunity for you to post regular updates on your activities, but also about important news and trends in your industry. This will catch the attention of new customers interested in your industry and increase your reputation as an expert in the field. It’s critical to post regularly if you want to increase your followers or fans and convert them to potential leads.

6. Generate Site Traffic: By updating regularly on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with posts that link back to your site, you can create additional traffic to your site. Social media bookmarking tools like Digg, Stumbleupon and Slashdot can also generate additional traffic to your site if you create frequent articles and blog posts.

7. Links for SEO: Many social media bookmarking sites use NOFOLLOW tags that limit the outbound link value of posts made on their sites. There are still many leading social media sites that allow DOFOLLOW tags including Slashdot, Digg, Furl, Mixx and FriendFeed. However, you can see benefits from posting to social media bookmarking sites that use NOFOLLOW tags if people read your posts and link back to your Website.

8. Increased Search Engine Rankings: Social media profiles frequently rank highly with major search engines. Using brand names and keywords in your profiles can help you to generate traffic for your social media sites and company homepage.

9. Integrated Social Media Results in Search Engines: Search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing are increasingly interested in indexing and ranking posts and other information from social media sites. Videos from popular Internet sites like YouTube can also be optimized for indexing by the major search engines.

10. Niche Marketing: Social media allows you to reach very specific subsets of individuals based on their personal preferences and interests. You can create social media strategies based on reaching individual interests or even create unique social media profiles to target these audiences.

If you are interested in creating a comprehensive social media marketing strategy, our team is ready to help. Visit Situated Research to learn more about our services and how we can help your business establish a meaningful social media presence.

Written by: Michel Ann Sharritt
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When Glenn Harrington donned a motion capture suit complete with more than 40 reflective spheres he wasn’t being turned into the latest video game character, but helping to design car manufacturing jobs that are less physically stressful on workers.

At the Ford Motor Company Assembly Ergonomics Lab in Dearborn, Michigan, the company uses technology typically found in the gaming industry to reduce on-the-job and repetitive stress injuries on its assembly lines.

For a video report on the technology, click here.

“The cameras pick up the markers [on the suit] and create an avatar,” said Harrington, a technical specialist in the Ford Assembly Ergonomics Lab. “What we’re ultimately trying to do is confirm the assembly feasibility of the vehicle.”

During a demonstration Harrington stood in the middle of a room with more than a dozen cameras pointed toward him, shining a dull red light. The light reflected off the markers, which were positioned all over his body, got captured by the cameras and then were processed by computer software that created an avatar called Jack or Jill. The company can scale the avatars from a short female to a very tall male to make sure that all of the jobs on the assembly line can be done by people of varying statures.

Harrington then walked toward what looked like a basic skeleton of an automobile. Projected on the wall behind it was the CAD data of the recently debuted Ford Fiesta. The CAD data represented the virtual vehicle, while the metal skeleton gave something for the users to interact with in the physical world. Once Harrington got close, the on-screen avatar looked like he was working on the car.

Going one step further, users could wear a 3D virtual reality headset that immersed them in the scene and allowed them to view the car as if they were actually there. The cameras and software tracked the users’ hands and showed them on screen, otherwise the users wouldn’t know what they were touching.

The motion capture technology wasn’t without its problems though. During most of the presentation the left arm of Harrington’s avatar was stuck in a single position. When users wore the virtual reality headset, it appeared that the system wasn’t calibrated correctly because where the users were reaching in the physical world did not correspond to where their hands appeared in the virtual one.

Aside from the problems during the demonstration, Harrington said that the lab helps Ford save time and money and reduce job-related injuries.

“In the absence of this technology, years ago we would stand in our pilot plant with physical parts and then we’d identify a problem in production,” Harrington said. “Now we’re identifying inadequacies to the build of the vehicle two to three years before the vehicle ever launches.”

Written by: Nick Barber, Businessweek
Posted by: Situated Research

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Rockstar Games was nice enough to send us a copy of Red Dead Redemption to try out. After spending time playing the game, we recommend grabbing a copy.

For those that saw my status last week, I said I was ‘testing’ the game. By ‘testing’ I meant ‘playing’, and as such this will be an informal review / opinion of the game, not meant at all to reflect Situated Research’s game research services. Game research requires several users (not using the researcher) and lots and lots of in-depth analysis. This review is simply based on a weekend of having fun playing the game.

Graphics

Graphics in the game were outstanding. Rockstar did a great job at harnessing the power of the Xbox360 and created a vivid, realistic depiction of the Old West, as shown below:

The game scenery added a lot of ‘flow’ to the game, and helped pull me into the situations created by the game, adding to the engagement.

One minor area that might benefit from some future work would be to further develop the character faces. This was no big deal during action scenes in the game, but I noticed that it broke some of the engagement during some of the video ‘set-up’ scenes before a mission, where there was a lot of human interaction going on. During these times, I tended to more closely watch the characters, and it was obvious enough that they were not real. Interactions are rich in the game: talking and interacting with other characters in the game is great; but player engagement in the close-up scenes would benefit from more life-like faces.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Red Dead Redemption is great. Having played its predecessor, Red Dead Revolver, the controls were similar and easy to pick up. For new players, instructions on controlling particular game features, such as riding your horse, shooting your gun, changing weapons, etc. are given on the fly, which was great. Rockstar did an excellent job of utilizing ‘situated learning’ by presenting information on a need-to-know basis, integrated with gameplay. Rather than forcing game players through a boring tutorial where controls need to be memorized, a guide will help you through an item’s first use, teaching controls for just that item in an environment where the item can be immediately applied. This spreads the learning out so players can focus on learning a feature at a time in a context where it can be applied, and advanced users are allowed to skip the help if they already know what to do and just want to play. Excellent job, Rockstar.

Gun battles, one of the primary ‘Old West’ activities in the game, were a lot of fun, and exciting. Rockstar did a good job at balancing the difficulty of each battle: each battle can be won with the right amount of skill, but realistically, mistakes can cost your your life (requiring you to restart the mission). Typically you must get shot a couple of times before dying, each time with the warning becoming more obvious as the screen turns red and sound gets muffled. This teaches the player to hide behind barriers and slowly advance on enemies, and use strategy in clearing them out. Most missions were great, however I noticed that in several I was unable to shoot in the ‘crouched’ position, and had to stand up fully to shoot back at enemies (making myself an easy target). I think this was due to the barrier being just barely too high to aim the weapon over the top of it.

One small item that might be improved is the game mini-map. In the lower-left corner of the screen, a Rockstar-esque mini-map is available as players move around in the game, alerting them to nearby characters, shops and missions that can be played. The mini-map is a great idea, conceptually, but could use some improvement in the way it displays items. I frequently found myself chasing down a symbol on the map, having no clue how far away it was. While a larger map showing distance is available (by pressing the ‘Start’ and ‘Back’ buttons, players can use particular in-game items or look at a large map), I typically avoided doing so as gameplay is interrupted. Again, the mini-map is a great concept, as it tells game players where they can go without interrupting gameplay, but might benefit from some usability testing to improve the affordances presented to the player and increase its utility in the game.

Summary

Overall, the game is a lot of fun, and I will continue to play in my spare time. A high degree of personalization is available: players can customize their weapons, wardrobe, and personality, with choices to be good or bad (or ugly) resulting in different gameplay and interaction as a result. The game has a few quirks that could be worked out, but almost every other game does too. What matters most is that this game is fun to play. The game player is able to choose their own pace- while riding around between missions can get tiresome, the game offers small mini-missions in random locations, and the ability to travel between towns (in effect, a cut-scene) to the next mission. This helps game players move at their own pace in the game: some may want to quickly move from mission to mission, while others might enjoy the game’s beautiful western scenery and subplots from interacting with people and objects across the countryside.

Bottom line: if you want to have fun as a gunslinger in the Old West, grab this game. To help sway you, check out the screenshots of the game from Rockstar’s website.

Written by: Matthew Sharritt
Images by: Rockstar Games
Posted by: Situated Research

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In the place of books and lectures are videogames, a contraption that simulates walking on ice and an obstacle course around an artificial village.

Based on results so far, the world’s largest package-delivery company is convinced that 20-somethings — the bulk of UPS driver recruits — respond best to high-tech instruction and a chance to hone skills.

Driver training is crucial for Atlanta-based UPS, which employs 99,000 U.S. drivers and says it will need to hire 25,000 over the next five years to replace retiring Baby Boomers.

Candidates vying for a driver’s job, which pays an average of $74,000 annually, now spend one week at Integrad, an 11,500-square-foot, low-slung brick UPS training center 10 miles outside of Washington, D.C. There they move from one station to another practicing the company’s “340 Methods,” prescribed by UPS industrial engineers to save seconds and improve safety in every task from lifting and loading boxes to selecting a package from a shelf in the truck.

They play a videogame that places them in the driver’s seat and has them identify obstacles. They progress from computer simulations to “Clarksville,” a village of miniature houses and faux businesses on the property where they drive a real truck and must successfully execute five deliveries in 19 minutes.

So far, the new methods, designed by UPS and researchers from Virginia Tech, are proving successful, UPS says. Of the 1,629 trainees who have completed Integrad since it began as an experiment in 2007, only 10% have failed the training program, which takes a total of six weeks overall and includes 30 days driving a truck in the real world. UPS is known for promoting within, and many driver candidates began as UPS package handlers or other employees.

By getting out of the traditional classroom and using technology and hands-on learning, “we’ve enhanced the probability of success of these new drivers,” says Allen Hill, UPS’s senior vice president of human resources. A second Integrad will open in the Chicago area in the summer, and the training methods will eventually go company-wide, he says.

“Are you ready for this? Shake the nerves out! Take a deep breath,” cheers Chris Breslin, a graying Integrad instructor, rallying his fresh-faced recruits on a recent day.

As Nick Byrnes, a 23-year-old with a buzz cut and black Ray-Ban sunglasses, drove through Clarksville, a UPS instructor tossed a football in his path. Mr. Byrnes hit the brakes. But then, when he hopped out to deliver a package, instructor Mike Keys sneaked an orange traffic cone in front of the truck.

Mr. Byrnes hopped back in and started up. “Stop! Stop! Ugh!” yelled Mr. Keys. He picked up the cone. “This is a kid who was playing football around your vehicle and went to get his ball.”

Mr. Byrnes looked shaken and slapped his forehead. The lesson stuck: At the next stop, he checked for cones.

UPS isn’t the only company using new training tools. Food service company Sodexo Inc. has recruited chefs through “Second Life” virtual job fairs and Cisco Systems Inc. has taught programming techniques through videogames. FedEx Corp. says it, too, has moved toward more hands-on learning in the past five years, although it adds the change wasn’t prompted by a high failure rate among trainees.

On a recent day, UPS students at Integrad moved through “kinetic learning” modules. In one corner, they practiced loading and unloading packages from a UPS truck with clear sides, timed by instructors.

UPS allows 15.5 seconds to park a truck and retrieve one package from the cargo, which is arranged in order of delivery.

Over at the “slip and fall” machine, an instructor greased a tiled runway in preparation for a regular drill: Students must carry a 10-pound box down the surface — while wearing shoes with no real tread. Luckily they wear a safety harness, as most flail around like drunken ice skaters until they are taught to stand straight and take slow baby steps. (This is the one time UPS relents on its rule that drivers walk at a “brisk pace,” or 2.5 paces per second.)

In another corner, Rich Gossman, at 37 the oldest in the group, was slumped at a videogame that tests recruits’ ability to find sales leads for UPS, something today’s drivers are expected to do. The game puts his avatar in rooms where he has to identify competitors’ packages.

Mr. Gossman, a married father, works overnight at a UPS warehouse, unloading packages for $12.50 an hour. Being a UPS driver appeals to him because of the pay and job security.

“This has been the most stressful week of my life,” he said. But as he played the game Mr. Gossman got a pat on the back from UPS supervisor, Peggy Emmart. “I saw you identify that competitor package,” she said.

“I saw that FedEx package and went, click, let’s get ‘em,” said Mr. Gossman.

Trainees must pay attention to detail and appearance and work as a team. Students whose brown uniforms aren’t ironed properly — hanger creases are forbidden — lose points for their teams, as does any trainee caught without his keys. UPS requires drivers to wear keys on their ring fingers to avoid wasting time searching for them.

“Raise your hands,” Mr. Breslin ordered one group. Five jingling pairs of hands went up. “Good job,” he said, clapping. “See how easy it is to bond with your keys?”

Written by: The Wall Street Journal

Posted by: Situated Research

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