explore the possible …
Those who engage in self-generative play have the creative/adaptive advantage over those governed by rote, stereotyped and scripted thinking or behaviors. Mother Nature hard-wired play as a survival drive into all animals as the means for deep engagement and the exploration of the possible. The more we play, the more resilient and adaptable we become to meet ever-changing conditions. Humans are the most playful of all species!
“Similar to how we identify sleep states (REM, Delta, etc), play states can now be biometrically detected. This opens up new personalized engagement design possibilities!”
– Kristen Cozad and Stuart Brown, co-founders of PlayNovation
Play Science today is where Sleep Science was 60 years ago. Sixty years ago, sleep was not linked to health and well-being. We now know better. Sleep deprivation is linked to many diseases, including diabetes and obesity.
Like sleep deprivation, play deprivation has linkages to negative compensatory behaviors. These negative consequences of play deprivation may include depression, obsessive compulsive disorders, addiction disorders, rigid thinking and behaviors, bullying and violence, and more. So when we begin to look at health and well-being through the lens of Play Science, new engagement design applications begin to emerge. Learn more about PlayNovation >
Importance of Play
Similar to how we become unhealthy from a diet of sugar and empty calories, when authentic nutritious play is hijacked by “junk” play we can eventually become ill. Knowing what authentic play is (and is not) is fundamentally important. How do we know what inspires and engages a person? Furthermore, how can we design for authentic engagement opportunities when each unique person innately plays differently?
Biologically-Inspired Personalized Engagement Design
PlayNovation uses play as the matrix for personalized engagement design. We identify and build upon each unique person’s intrinsic motivators, play patterns and “play states” to inspire and spark self-motivating and self-sustaining engagement.
Inspired by Mother Nature’s wisdom and grounded by science, PlayNovation’s personalized engagement design methodologies have myriad cross-sector applications. These include ecommerce, the Internet of Things, health care, intuitive marketing, education and parenting, gaming/gamification, augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, relationships and team building, corporate innovation, Human Resources, talent identification and development, travel and leisure, and more. Learn More >
While many others are experts in game mechanics, PlayNovation owns the only portfolio of biomimetic personalized engagement design patents based on Play Science ™.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it!”
– Abraham Lincoln
Creator Economy
Creativity, focus and joyful grit naturally developed through play are paramount in the transformation from a mass industrial-based economy into a more artisanal, creator economy. The only thing that will limit our deep engagement and exploration of the possible will be stereotyped and scripted thinking.
Unfortunately today too many people and organizations are seemingly stuck in industrial-era group-think. Many of us over-value measurement and standardized performance objectives, while the individual’s subjective experience is discounted.
Motivational research shows that enticing people through extrinsic reward systems can capture human attention and change behaviors over brief periods of time, but then engagement quickly drops off. Extrinsic enticements and carrot-stick approaches are not proven solutions for producing and sustaining creative and healthy long-term behaviors. That is why addictive design components are often added to compensate for these design deficits.
It is the innate power within intrinsic motivation which sustains engagement and inspires task-mastery, creativity and long-term behavioral change. This vitality and intrinsic motivation are identified and developed through authentic play!
“Sleep is how we self-organize the psyche when we are unconscious. Free, authentic play is how we self-organize when we are awake. Play is the ticket to developing into our own unique, authentic selves.”
– Kristen Cozad, co-founder, PlayNovation
Emergence & Self-Organization
For too long play has been maligned as “unproductive”, or dismissed as “trivial”. That is changing. We now know that play is how humans self-organize into our unique selves. In chaos and systems theory, the more complex a system becomes, the more it self-organizes into patterns. Play is the means, the innate force for human self-organization and creative emergence. We can identify engagement patterns soon after birth.
If not hindered, each person freely plays and meaningfully engages in life attuned in ways unique to their own natures. However, fixed exogenous platforms and scripted experiences frequently limit or control our naturally playful and individually motivated explorations of the possible. Quantified and valued for our abilities to meet performance standards, we suppress our play, atrophy our imaginations and slowly weaken our creative power.
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