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What's Nicky Learning? + Design Doodles (Nov 2019)
🕑 Added 2019-11-21 15:15:21 +0000 UTC(total reading time: 18 minutes)
Welcome to the first-ever, Patreon-exclusive WNL?+DD post!
What's Nicky Learning: emotion in learning, the physics of sound, drawing from imagination, juggling
Design Doodles: adventures with anxiety inside-out design, voice gender trainer 5000
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π€ Emotion in Learning
So earlier this year, I learnt my whole career was based on a lie. As one does.
I make games to help folks learn by doing. People learn all kinds of complex mechanics entirely "by doing" in games like Portal, right? And it's fun! Of course beginners learn better from pure exploration, rather than being railroaded through step-by-step instructions.
Anyway, this idea's been experimentally tested, and it's replicatably false.
But here's where this goes from disappointing to bizarre: "active" learning-by-exploring is ineffective for beginner students, but very effective for advanced students! And "passive" learn-by-step-by-step-instruction is effective for beginners, but ineffective for the advanced.
This paradox is called The Expertise Reversal Effect.
(slide from a talk I'll post online soon!)
But maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Trying to bench-press 200lb would kill a beginner weightlifter, but it's good for an advanced weightlifter. Like physical load, there's cognitive load: step-by-step instructions are a "small" load, while pure exploration is a "heavy" load.
According to Cognitive Load Theory, good education is giving a learner a fitting "load": one that's slightly beyond their comfort zone. (See: Zone of Proximal Development, scaffolding)
Oh, as for "learning-by-doing" in games like Portal, it turns out the designers add tons of hand-holding guidance β they just keep it invisible so you can feel smart.
. . .
So if you're an educator or someone who "communicates through multimedia" like me, what should we do?
Richard Mayer has applied Cognitive Load Theory to create 10 empirically-based Principles for Multimedia Learning. These principles include: cut out the irrelevant "fun" fluff, organize things step-by-step, signal the important parts, etc. This doesn't mean being dry, just clear and minimalist.
But, still...
I like the fun fluff.
Leonard Susskind's The Theoretical Minimum is a technical introduction to physics by one of the world's top physicists, yet each chapter is sprinkled with silly dad jokes. Cognitive Load Theory predicts these to be "extraneous load" that would hurt learning, but I think the dad jokes are necessary.
Consider Yerkes-Dodson's Law. For complex tasks β like learning a new thing β too little or too much stress leads to poor task performance, but there's a "just right" amount of stress for the best task performance:
Back to Susskind's books: tensor products are pretty stressful, so dad jokes help bring the stress level back down to the optimum. Same technique is used in other technical-but-fun (fun-but-technical?) stuff like 3Blue1Brown, GΓΆdel Escher Bach, Mathematical Games, etc.
That's the big gap in the original version of Cognitive Load Theory: it says nothing about emotion... even though neuroscientists & psychologists have known for decades that the "cognition-emotion divide" is bull! (See: Lazarus 1991, Descartes' Error)
So this month, I found 4 helpful papers about emotion in learning!
Paper #1)
I'm very pleased Um et al 2012 provides empirical support for my approach to teaching: "slap a bunch of silly faces on it".
Obviously, making something more "fun" makes a learner more motivated to keep going. But this study found something stranger: making something more "fun" improved learning outcomes directly, not through motivation alone.
Three possibilities why:
- The Yerkes-Dodson thing I mentioned earlier.
- Memories stick better when they're emotional. (including painful memories)
- Being in a relaxed mood actually "opens your mind" more. (Imagine how close-minded people get when they're scared!)
But what about all the other research showing that interesting-but-irrelevant "seductive details" damage learning? And in the "educational games" practice, it's frowned upon to create "Chocolate-Covered Broccoli", coz kids can smell the bull from miles away.
The difference between the chocolate-covered broccoli and the Um et al paper is that the extra "fun stuff" is actually relevant. Thus, they don't misdirect attention β in fact they help focus it! The cute faces are only on the important biological agents, while the unimportant background & buttons stay relatively boring.
(Same with Susskind's The Theoretical Minimum β it's not filled with jokes, just sprinkled with them. There's only 1 pun per 10 pages, and each one is relevant to the learning material. More or less.)
But still, this technique somehow feels like... cheating? Lymphocytes aren't that cute in real life. Is there a way to get learners to feel positive emotions about the material without resorting to cute doodles?
Yes! Let's get curious, about an emotion called curiosity.
Papers #2 and #3)
Monkeys will solve puzzles for food. So far, so behaviourist.
But: Monkeys will solve puzzles even without a food reward. In fact, introducing food as a reward made the monkeys learn worse. Understanding the unknown is already a biologically fundamental reward in itself.
Same for us monkeys. Contrary to the "logical thinking means being dispassionate" myth, the world's top mathematicians and scientists are driven by a specific emotion: curiosity. (Also desperation over grant funding)
But what, then, causes curiosity?
Kang et al 2009 was a neuroscience study that found three things:
- being more curious led to more activation in reward & memory neural circuits,
- being more curious led to better recall, and
- we're most curious when we have a medium-level of confidence in our answer.
Like the Yerkes-Dodson curve, it's another upside-down U shape. When the answer's obvious, well duh we're not curious β it's "too comprehensible". But when we have no idea what the answer even could be, we also don't care β it's "too complex".
But in-between, when you balance complexity and comprehensibility, then monkeys get curious!
NOTE: Cognitive Load Theory can't predict a such thing as "too comprehensible"! This leads to different implications for science communication: instead of giving the information in a logical order bridging all the gaps ("blah blah blah here's the formula for orbits"), you should first reveal a medium-sized gap in the learner's knowledge ("if gravity keeps the moon near us, why doesn't the moon fall down?"), to stimulate the learner's curiosity! Show the gap, then build the bridge.
Silvia 2008 reports the same thing. I just want to include this πΆ spicy πΆ paragraph of his:
College textbooks are an intriguing example. The typical textbook wants to engage studentsβ interest, so it sprinkles each chapter with irrelevant quotes, cartoons, contrived stock photos, and random stories from the authorsβ distant childhoods. But diverting attention from the textβs main points isnβt the same thing as making the textβs main points interesting.
[...]
If interest comes from seeing something as new and comprehensible, then people who want to evoke interest should try to enhance both complexity and comprehension.
That is: don't coat the broccoli in chocolate.
Paper #4)
When I started writing this post, I intended to include just the 3 papers above. But as I hunted down my citations, I found this extra gem.
You remember above, when I said:
That's the big gap in the original version of Cognitive Load Theory: it says nothing about emotion
Turns out people have recently added emotion and motivation to Cognitive Load Theory. Moreno 2010 recaps the problems with the old theory, and summarizes a new theory: Cognitive-Affective Theory of Learning.
It proposes a loop: (Bad drawing by me)
You'll learn poorly if you're not motivated, and you'll be demotivated if you're learning poorly. But, from vicious to virtuous cycle: you'll learn well if you're motivated, and you'll be more motivated if you're learning well!
So, if you make "multimedia learning", the trick is to boost both sides of the loop:
(π₯π₯π₯ THIS IS THE SUMMARY SECTION π₯π₯π₯)
- 1) Improve Cognition with:
- Cognitive Load Theory β remove distractions, organize info, signal what's important, etc
- Zone of Proximal Development β keep the cognitive load difficulty just above the learner's comfort zone.
- Cognitive Load Theory β remove distractions, organize info, signal what's important, etc
- 2) Improve Motivation with:
- Relevant fun β add "fun" stuff only if it highlights the important parts.
- Curiosity first β show a (medium-sized) gap, then build the bridge.
- Relevant fun β add "fun" stuff only if it highlights the important parts.
(π₯π₯π₯ / END SUMMARY SECTION π₯π₯π₯)
I've made lots of chocolate-coated broccoli before. A science piece with irrelevant stories, a math explainer with strained pop-culture references, a simulation with unnecessary "ooh solve the puzzle!" game-y bits.
The original Cognitive Load Theory taught me to strip the chocolate off my broccoli. But finding out that emotion directly improves learning? That taught me I need to season & roast those veggies, to bring out the natural tastiness that's already in the broccoli. As the monkeys showed us, there's a natural motivation already in understanding the unknown.
There's the junk food of bad edu-tainment, and the Nutra-Loaf of dry academic papers. The trick to sticking to a healthy diet is to cook stuff that's both delicious and nutritious.
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(I'm planning to publish the above as a standalone essay β what parts were clear, or not? Any other links/papers I should read? If you're an educator, are the summary tips useful? Thank you!)
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π The Physics of Sound
While doing research for Voice Gender Trainer 5000, I realized I don't understand how voice works.
Thankfully, upon further study, I realized I don't understand how sound works.
Problem #1: When you hear your roommate's dubstep through the wall, you hear low-frequency bass better the high-frequency wubs. Why? The explanation "because longer wavelengths can wiggle through the wall better" may make sense for electromagnetic waves, but not for physical air waves. And "because higher frequencies have higher energy" makes anti-sense. If I punched a wall, a higher-energy punch would go through better than a lower-energy punch!
Problem #2: Why does a paper megaphone amplify sound? I thought: "because it directs the sound better". But if that's true, why are megaphones cones, not tubes? Tubes direct sound better! And wait, if a small-to-big cone (megaphone) amplifies sound, why does a big-to-small cone (ear, stethoscope) also amplify sound?!
Problem #3: While trying to find the answer to #2, I learnt that a tube wouldn't work because the sound wave would reflect off the small open end. In fact, if you time the reflections just right, you can get a "standing wave" inside an open tube. Ok. So. How the heck can a sound wave, travelling through air, bounce off... the exact same air?!
After a week of research and/or screaming, I found all these brain-breaking questions have the same answer:
"Acoustic Impedance."
...
Buggered if I know what that actually means. Let alone why "acoustic impedance" should be different for different frequencies, or different for the same air just outside an open tube. (This website suggests an analogy to electrical impedance, which I also don't understand. Also, Z = p/U β z = p/u? Wow physics notation sucks.)
These What's Nicky Learning? posts aren't always going to have answers.
Sometimes, they're just going to reveal a medium-sized gap in my current state of knowledge. And as explained earlier: medium-sized gap β curiosity β learning.
So if any of you can help me understand acoustic impedance, my broken brain would be eternally grateful!
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βοΈ Drawing From Imagination
As you saw in Adventures With Anxiety, my drawing skill is currently between "enhanced stick figure" and "a red wolf that 50% of players think is a fox".
I've read Drawing on The Right Side of the Brain before, and β sketchy pop-neuroscience aside β it's one of the best how-to books I've ever read! Look at how one student of the author's improved over five days:
The typical beginner's problem is that you draw what you know, rather than what you see. For example, you "know" that a chair has a straight back, a square seat, and four legs that all touch the ground. So you draw that...
...and it looks like crap. But if you force yourself to "forget what you know" β and the book offers tips like focusing on just the edges, or just the shapes, or just the negative space between the shapes, or even drawing upside down β you get...
...something decent! So if you want to draw from real life, I highly recommend this book. π
However...
It's not that helpful if you want to draw from imagination β where you don't have a real-life reference to see, and you must draw what you "know".
So that's what I've been trying to learn: how to draw human bodies, semi-realistically*, from imagination, without reference.
(* I'm specifically inspired by Emily Carroll and Rob Guillory!)
Q: Why learn that?
A: Because the human form is a fascinating subject, and learning how to draw it forces you to appreciate the intricate beauty that's always present in the everyday
A #2: So I can draw porn
Here's my better drawing attempts:
And some worse attempts:
If you want to draw from imagination, here's The Trick, as far as I can tell:
π₯ Draw from the inside-out. π₯
Remember, the problem with drawing from imagination is you have to draw what you know. So if want to not suck, you have to know a lot. So, I'm using Spaced Repetition flashcards to help me remember body part proportions & connections! (Did you know your foot is as long as your forearm?)
I'm learning from tutorials all over the web, but one resource that's helping me a lot is Proko.
Proko makes great tutorials for artists at all skill levels, but there's one tutorial of his I want to share today... because it's got the piece of advice I know I should've been taking from the start, but have been avoiding:
You may know "deliberate practice" as "that academic paper that was misinterpreted by Malcolm Gladwell into the you-need-10000-hours-of-practice-to-become-good bestseller myth".
"Regular practice" is what I've been doing β drawing random stuff, and either 1) not noticing my mistakes, or 2) noticing loads of mistakes but not focusing on any one specific mistake.
Deliberate practice is the art of lingering on your mistakes.
For example, in the above tutorial, Proko identified one specific mistake of his β a stiff gesture β and re-drew his drawings, fixing just that one mistake. He identified a medium-sized gap in his skill, and set to bridge it.
That's how to best improve at any skill, and what I need to do next: focus on medium-sized gaps. If I ignore my mistakes I'll never improve, but if try to fix all my mistakes at once, I'll get overwhelmed, throw my hands up, and declare "I am not good at it."
π± Juggling
I am not good at it.
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Are you also trying to learn how to draw? What tutorials have helped you? Which artists do you look up to?
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[/end: What's Nicky Learning?]
[start: Design Doodles!]
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πΊ Adventures With Anxiety: Inside-Out Design
Stop me if this sounds familiar:
You want to create a character for a story. So you start with a bunch of traits: pink hair, leather jacket, fluent in 17 languages, parents died in a tragic laundry accident, etc...
...and you get a character that feels hollow. All surface, no core.
That's because your character was designed from the outside-in. Consider the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016). The character had all the right surface traits β insane, violent, clown makeup β but in the end, not that memorable.
Contrast that to the Jokers from The Dark Knight (2008) or Joker (2019), who were designed from the inside-out. (Hey, like drawing from imagination!) Both these Jokers had very clear values & life philosophies β heck, they even say them out loud:
The Dark Knight: βWhen the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.β
Joker: βFor my whole life, I didn't know if I even really existed. But I do. And people are starting to notice.β
Everything else β their actions, their dialogue, even the style of clown makeup β follows directly from these cores. That's what makes these characters feel much more real... and terrifying.
(For all the controversy around Joker, the criticism isn't that the character lacks motivation β it's that his motivations are too real)
I learnt the "inside-out" approach from Robert McKee's Story, and it's the SECOND-most valuable storytelling principle I know! And I do mean principle, as in "F=ma" or "Energy is conserved", not just a nifty trick.
So, when I wrote Adventures With Anxiety, I started with the characters' core values & beliefs first! From my sketchbook (plz forgive messy handwriting):
And the conflict between their values & beliefs drives the whole story.
(I'll admit a mistake: the Party Host character wasn't "organic", because I never gave them a coherent motivation. I wrote them from the outside-in: "I need a sexy human antagonist so here we go")
Oh, and the FIRST-most important principle of storytelling I know?
π₯ Therefore & But π₯ (5 min video)
Bad story: "this happens and then that happens and then this happens"
Good story: "this happens therefore that happens but this happens".
For a character-driven story, the Therefores and Buts should all be caused by the characters' core values. Example from Adventures With Anxiety: (I outlined Act II by writing & re-arranging story beats on cut-up index cards. Black ink is human's point of view, red ink is anxiety wolf's. My shorthand is β΄ = therefore, ! = but)
(This principle is so strong, I even use it in my non-fiction, as Tony Zhou does in the above video! "Therefore & But" is the difference between a listicle and an essay with actual flow.)
But Adventures With Anxiety is an interactive story. Therefore I have to connect multiple possible story-paths with Therefores and Buts! Here's how I diagrammed them:
(A fan made a much better flowchart of the game's story-paths here)
. . .
Y'know, I keep hearing authors say "my characters write themselves," and I think, "what controlled substance are you on?"
But apparently, this is common! According to a 2003 academic survey, 92% of the interviewed writers experience "their characters writing themselves", with published authors having stronger & more frequent experiences like that.
I never understood this until writing my game! I know this sounds weird, but sometimes I'd write dialogue, and the wolf in my head would tell me, "no I'd say it like this instead." I'm not being metaphorical. My anxiety-wolf honestly felt like a co-writer.
If you're not a fiction writer, maybe another way to understand this:
Physics simulations. (Like in a videogame!)
There's the misconception that "computers can't surprise you, they can only do what you program them to". You don't need to look at AI or procedural generation to debunk this β even a physics simulation can shock its own creator. (Famous example: Edward Lorenz tried simulating the weather, and it shocked him so much, he founded a new field called Chaos Theory)
For a physics sim, you just need to define:
- Forces: gravity, magnetism, etc
- Causality: how each step of the sim affects the next
- An unstable starting state
And the simulation will "animate itself". Likewise, for a story, you just need to define:
- Forces: your characters' core values + beliefs
- Causality: therefores and buts
- An unstable starting state
And the characters will "write themselves". They'll surprise you. They'll shock you.
They may even teach you something new.
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(I might also publish the above as a standalone essay! What's clear or not? Any extra resources I should look at? If you're a writer, how helpful do you find the Inside-Out and Therefore/But principles?)
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π£ Voice Gender Trainer 5000
"Eat your own dogfood." I personally want to train my voice, so I'm going to use my own tool as I design it!
Here's my messy "design doc", which looks like horror movie wall-scribblings:
Two principles I'm trying to apply in my design:
- Cognitive Load (explained in the Emotion in Learning section)
- Deliberate Practice (explained in the Drawing from Imagination section)
β Cognitive Load β
Bad design: Just dump all the controls on the user at the start. This is standard software interface design, and it overwhelms beginners.
What I want to try: Designing the interface like a videogame. Starts with just a few controls, then gradually "unlocks" as you progress! (With option to skip & unlock all) Honestly, I don't know why more software doesn't already do this.
β Deliberate Practice β
Bad design: Just give people a bunch of tips, and hope they actually do them and improve their skills.
What I want to try: Giving people loads of feedback, so they can identify their own specific mistakes, their medium-sized gaps, and bridge them. There'd be feedback through audio (your voice vs recordings), through visuals (your formant frequencies vs target frequencies), and over time (voice recording from Day 0 vs Day N).
This tool will also ship simultaneously with a (video?) explainer of sounds, spectrograms, and voice. I have a rough outline β I just need to tie it altogether with Therefore & But, for a nice logical flow.
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π WHEW π
Okay wow that was a lot. And yet, all these different things had common themes:
- Cognitive Load
- Medium-sized gaps
- Curiosity
- Designing from the Inside-Out
- Deliberate Practice
- Therefore & But
And so on.
I hope this post was valuable to you β especially if you teach stuff through multimedia, are learning to draw, or want to write stories. Let me know what you found helpful, what concepts were still confusing, and what other resources you recommend I check out next!
Let's get curious together.
π,
~ Nicky
[/ END: THE INAUGURAL WHAT'S NICKY LEARNING? POST]
Comments
Oleh Shyshkin
When I saw "(total reading time: 18 minutes)" I thought: "oh, man, really?". But it worth it) It was extremely helpful... or at least excited :) The "therefore & but" and "characters write itself" part is probably the most interesting for me. I will even try to do something like this in the nearest future. And of course the "Emotion in learning" part is priceless! P.S. Maybe someone has the same issues but I couldn't open some links: - Cognitive Load Theory - 10 empirically-based Principles for Multimedia Learning anyone?
Ridima Ramesh
This was my first Patreon reward, I'm absolutely blown away! So much useful stuff in there. I will be ruminating on this for days to come ~ I wonder if there is any research on what a "medium-sized gap" looks like for different people? I feel like for me, it's probably smaller than a lot of other people - often I find myself able to put down a puzzle or problem without getting so drawn into it that I can't stop trying to solve it (which... is problematic sometimes because like you said, curiosity really is the best motivator and many times external goals just don't cut it) Slightly tangential reference / something I was reminded of as I read this - Martina Rau has done some amazing research on visual representations and how they are best suited to support learning (with a focus on molecular structures). The cognitive load theory principles reminded me of her work, some of which addresses which visual representations of molecules are easier for students to grasp early on in the learning process vs later. Looking forward to this being a public post, good luck!
Nicky Case
Thank you! I'll take peoples' feedback, use them to polish up the AwA essay, then publish it "sometime next month"(???)
Nicky Case
Thanks for your feedback, I'll try to make the essay clearer with more examples! > And the but would be going against the "flow" to add more twists? Yup, you got it! "Therefore" is what's expected, "but" is a surprise > What counts as a value/belief? "Value" means more or less the same thing as "goal" or "desire", except bigger. (I think?)
Nicky Case
Thanks! I have read that response (and Sweller+Kirschner's response to various responses https://www.ntnu.no/wiki/download/attachments/8324914/sweller_kirschner_clark_reply_ep07.pdf ). As far as I can tell they all actually agree on the need for managing cognitive load with scaffolding, it's just that Sweller et al argue for starting with *more* scaffolding: specifically, a fully worked-out step-by-step example Another paper I'm excited by, though, is one studying how to get students to transition FROM just learning-by-example TO learning-by-problem-solving! http://mrbartonmaths.com/resourcesnew/8.%20Research/Making%20the%20most%20of%20examples/Fading%20out%20and%20Prompts.pdf I'm pretty excited about this study because they only added two simple changes: "backwards fading" and "self-explanation prompts", and "this combination produced medium to large effects on near and far[!!] transfer without requiring additional time on task" (Backwards fading is when they start with a full worked-out example, then a worked example with last step missing, then an example with last 2 missing, etc etc, until student is doing a whole problem by themself) (Self-explanation prompt is a question at each step asking "What was the principle/rule used at this step?")
Nicky Case
Thank you, I will continue with the series! Your kind words are mighty encouraging :)
Nicky Case
> (The 18 minutes reading time only holds if you don't follow any links though. And they're all interesting! So there goes an hour.) [evil laughter]
Nicky Case
Sweet, thanks for the recommendation, I'll try to check it out! :)
Nicky Case
D'aw shucks thanks!
Nicky Case
Thank you Sean! :) I hope (though, of course, my planning "ability" is scattershot) that the talk + the Emotion in Learning essay go public in December, more or less)
Nicky Case
> I'll become pretty obnoxious in spreading it around friends of mine interested in education. It's one of the most concise, effective analyses I've seen That's a mighty kind compliment, thank you! <3 I'll post it publicly sometime start of December β you can be "pretty obnoxious" then :P > I'm reminded of this chapter by Bjork & Bjork on desirable difficulty in learning: I haven't read that paper/chapter yet, thank you for the link! I've seen the Rohrer interleaving paper before, but that's a good reminder β and I just made a note β that my voice trainer app should incorporate interleaved practice!
Nicky Case
Thank you for this very in-depth & specific feedback! :D I'll try to improve the flow & concrete-ness of the AwA: Inside Out Design essay. Also that story about learning how to draw a pitcher's mound is charming & a fantastic example~ > I'm interested in how "space", literal or metaphorical, impacts how systems evolve. I can't think of a specific paper off the top of my head, but I do know that there *is* work showing how the same agent rules, played on different spaces (e.g: random mixing vs cellular-automata lattice vs small-world network) get you qualitatively different phenomena. For example, take disease spread. Given a pure "people randomly mix together" model, like the SIR equations, the simulation will reach a stable equilibrium. However, if you have the simulation on, say, a 2D lattice grid, NOW you can get diseases that fade away & come back over and over in waves, like the common cold. Space is weird
userpunk
definitely enjoyed " Adventures With Anxiety: Inside-Out Design" ;) looking forward to read more as standalone essay :) I really appreciate your hard work! It's very helpful.
PEW
Hello, I found this article/essay very interesting. If I may: the therefore/but, Inside-out principles for writer very useful, however (probably because English isn't my native tongue) I would need more explanations (therefore is a causality, right? And the but would be going against the "flow" to add more twists? What counts as a value/belief? How do you link them? etc)... Thank you very much for your hard work!
Sam
I found a rebuttal/critique of the Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark article that pushes back pretty firmly on the idea that "learn by doing" is ineffective. Basically, if there's scaffolding, guidance, and signposting (which sure sounds like what you do and have done), there's a lot of support for learn by doing: https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520701263368
Aram Albarzngi
I just became a Patron and I really feel blessed that this is the first patron only post I read! PLEASE DO continue with WNL?+DD!! Edit: it's incredibly fascinating that the way you structure and explain stuff is always in the "just right" spot. At least for me. :)
Ziad WAKIM
This post was incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.
Xavier Lambein
"It proposes a loop: (Bad drawing by me)" NICKY YOU LITERALLY MADE A TOOL FOR DRAWING FEEDBACK LOOPS
Matt Hughes
Pretty epic update.
Aeryn Light
Your post inspired me to try drawing again. :)
Lince
Amazing job. :)
Tim S (Banana Juice Tech)
Steve Huston calls the soul "gesture" and deliberately waits to introduce it in his book until after you've learned form from drawing "skeletons". The canonical gesture to learn is Contrapposto, which is one of the more dynamic gestures you can get. It really is about communicating an inner state or intention.
Tim S (Banana Juice Tech)
This was a great read! I'm also learning to draw better, and I've found Figure Drawing for Artists by Steve Huston to have a great mix of theory and exercises.
Sean Riley
I'm looking very much forward to that presentation going live. In my library work I do a lot of online learning development and this stuff is all super useful to know.
Fahrstuhl
I found the party host character believable tbh. It made sense for me they maneuvered themselves into this coping system of drowning their anxiety in alcohol, parties and extremes. So even though you designed them outside-in, they came across as an organic, albeit over-the-top character to me. Also thank you for this WNL post! I think it's a great idea! (The 18 minutes reading time only holds if you don't follow any links though. And they're all interesting! So there goes an hour.)
TracingWoodgrains
This was absolutely fantastic, and would be worth subscribing to your Patreon all by itself. I'll echo Eric in saying that it's great to hear "Emotion in Learning" will be public. As soon as it is, I'll become pretty obnoxious in spreading it around friends of mine interested in education. It's one of the most concise, effective analyses I've seen of the interplay between making learning minimalistic, guided, and straightforward and making it fun and engaging. The careful distinction you draw between chocolate-covered brocolli and emphasizing the intrinsic fun/value of the subject is excellent. I'm reminded of this chapter by Bjork & Bjork on desirable difficulty in learning: https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/04/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf and this one on the value of interleaving concepts while learning instead of learning each one in a block: http://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~drohrer/pdfs/Rohrer_et_al_InPressJEdPsych.pdf You may have already run across both papers, but they tie in beautifully with spaced repetition, cognitive load, Yerkes-Dodson, and Kang et. al., providing immediately implementable advice on reaching and staying in that useful zone of proximal development. I also found it useful to see your descriptions of putting those principles in practice in your learning (describing your own process of learning to draw) and designing (outlining sensible design decisions in your voice trainer). I'm interested in continuing to hear how your deliberate practice in drawing goes. The main obstacle I've faced when trying to implement it in my learning is simply how draining it gets, since it's so much harder to consistently notice and pick at the specific errors than it is to get into the flow of repeating basically the same actions. As for designing your voice control interface like a video game, I share your bafflement with why this isn't more widespread. It's an idea that deserves implementation in many more places. Excited to see how the trainer develops.
Eric Willisson
This was incredible! Much longer and more detailed than I expected from "What's Nicky Learning?" I loved it! I hope you keep doing them, but also that this format doesn't turn out to be too much work. I'm really glad to hear that "Emotion in Learning" is going to be a public essay. I was sad when I started reading it that I wouldn't be able to show it to many friends, and am wondering how many I could get to subscribe to your Patreon just to read it (which I'll encourage anyway but I recognize I likely won't have a high success rate since people like to read free things online). It was all very clear to me, both by being informative (I didn't know that "learn by doing" had been debunked!) and fitting things I already knew together (emotion is important for memories, but, duh, of course I should have made the connection that that is relevant for learning, too). I can't wait to see what else you do with this new understanding, too! I very vividly remember first learning about how you have to draw what you actually see, in a way similar to your chair example: I was young, probably 6 or 7, and trying to draw a baseball diamond, as seen from standing on the field, in an MS Paint-like drawing program. I was really confused why when I drew a perfect circle using the tool, in the place where the pitcher's mound went, it looked deeply wrong. One of my parents explained that even though I knew it was a circle, I had to draw an oval instead. This, clearly, stuck with me very deeply. Unfortunately it has not yet translated into advanced artistry. Deliberate practice also seems like the thing I know I'd need to do but have been avoiding. Oddly, even though the Trick as you show it with the leg is a little draw-the-rest-of-the-***-owl, I think the part that seems the most questionable to me is the "soul". It seems easy for that to have some hidden assumptions about how something is shaped versus what it would actually look like when you see it. Do you have a sense of whether that is just something to practice, or if, maybe, there's a good way to keep the "soul" sufficiently under-specified that it doesn't lead the "skeleton" astray? I love connecting character design to physics simulations for emergent phenomena. I notice that this also comes up in even more interactive settings, like RPGs. Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker suggests giving an NPC just one key, driving motivation, and seeing how everything else spins out from there. In a lot of cases, that seems to be all you need, and it's definitely more fruitful than "Uh, I need a hot human party host". That section, the "Adventures in Anxiety: Inside-Out Design" one, felt a little jumpier and harder to follow. I felt like I understood it because I already had all the pieces (I've done both physics simulations and character design, for example), and if I didn't, it might not have been clear? I'm not sure I have exact suggestions, though, unfortunately. You surely are familiar with this, but to restate it: the biggest problem I've seen with software interfaces that try to have some level of "tutorial" or introduction is when you've seen them before and the helpful notes get in the way. Like how Discord "helpfully" pops up dialog boxes with instructions if it thinks you're new, whether you are or not. And what's worse is when you want to do something you know, but a tutorial note pops up for something you might want to do later and don't know now, but so then you have to choose between interrupting yourself to look at it now, or dismiss it and hope you can find the way later. If you're designing your software like this, it's worth figuring out some tools for the helper. Maybe a way to "replay the tutorial", and a way to skip it? As for recommendations, I don't have a resource to suggest for this, because it's something that I'm actively looking for: I'm interested in how "space", literal or metaphorical, impacts how systems evolve. I'm thinking about how, for example, the Parable of the Polygons looks, on the surface, very different from LOOPY, but in reality, you could probably implement the Parable of the Polygons in Loopy if you spend long enough at it. I know that this is essentially Graph Theory, but I don't know, yet, if there are insights to be gained like "Oh yeah, this simulation is embedded in a physical space, but you can look at it as a graph, and if you do that, you can make these predictions, or realize that your simulation needs to be changed in these ways." Maybe this is a useful direction for some of your work, too? I look forwards to seeing more of these posts!
