A crash course in changing the world.
DRAGON Slaying on Text at a Time
Slaying the Dragon: My Quick Take
ISSUE: How could we get significantly more engagement and real insight from the people who actually have to
deal with the problems EVOKE is targeting?
In a word- cellphones. Cellphone use is on the rise in many countries, faster than computers if I'm not mistaken. It's currently being used to do banking in India, seeing a rise in Africa. When William Kamkwamba set up his windmills, a major usage was the recharging of cell phones. It's likely that if we can put more cell friendly challenges, missions, and interface in, more people will be able to play.
SCOPE & CONSTRAINTS: Keep it simple. It must be something which can interface with EVOKE in some way. It could be low
tech. It must be quick to implement (days or weeks at the most – EVOKE
does not have months). It must be easy to implement. It should be cheap
to implement.
I think we need some challenges that are simpler to pull off, but still vital educational resources/development. For instance, bite sized micro-learns that could be texted and Tweeted in if need be, possibly in the style of polls or displayed messages.
Another route would be phone recordings, but harder to pull off. A recorded mission could be phoned and players could then phone a mission complete line to record mp3s, but it's a lot more technology heavy and more work.
(It might also be an idea to simplify the rewards for this, making perhaps three categories rather than 10. 10 is a lot to try and show off or explain on a cell phone, but three would be easy- probably just Learn, Act, and Imagine.)
OUTPUT: Ideas for how we can address the issue above. Try to make these more than just one-liners. An idea needs to be
something someone can actually DO, otherwise it’s just a thought (“I’m
hungry” is a thought but “lets order in some pizza from that new place
down the road right now” is an idea)
Breakdown the missions into smaller chunks. Don't have "Which rule do you like and why?". Give a single rule or two and ask which they like better and single sentence answer why. It doesn't kill them bill wise to try texting something small.
Micro-evoke missions would allow more participation for those with less technology.
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Comment by Alex Stovell on April 1, 2010 at 5:38am -
Hi Shane :) Thanks for getting stuck in and posting a specific idea - be good to see more of these. I definitely agree that tapping into mobile use rather than computer use could increase participation and engagement with missions etc. As a build, I wonder if anyone with good local insight were prepared to leave / post their mobile number, then anyone wanting direct feedback on an idea could call them up (assuming this didn't result in any call charges on the person being called)?
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Comment by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 1, 2010 at 6:00pm -
Shane and Alex-- I definitely agree that cell-phones are the way to go. (When I was in Mongolia recently we were told that the nomads were now choosing the locations for their gers (yurts) by how good the cell-phone reception was.
I think I mentioned this somewhere else, but how about using Twitter as an interface? Set up an Evoke Twitter account-- perhaps with people agreeing to act as relays and posting tweets here.
The only thing is, I don't know anything about the details of costs and so on. I know cell-phone charges here in the Czech Republic are substantially less than for landlines, but still not super cheap.
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Comment by Nathaniel Fruchter on April 3, 2010 at 4:40am -
I agree, a cell-based interface to EVOKE would be great. The site actually has a mobile interface, but the mobile internet isn't as prevalent in most parts of the world; we'd have to figure something out that's SMS based. I know the network has SMS blasts for those in South Africa, but that's rather limited if I may say so.
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Comment by Shane M. Wheeler on April 5, 2010 at 2:01am -
Thanks for some knowledge share on that Nathaniel. I get the feeling this is a problem that needed more forethought than afterthought as far as the basic Evoke design- short answer Evoke missions, possibly communicated via Agents near those communities or fliers. Phone number set up ahead of time, text in responses. Still, even if this can't be done now, if there is ever another EVOKE project, the problem has been discussed and some solutions outlined.
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