In this episode, you're going to learn how game design can help you to deliver better services. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Andy and this is the service design show episode 122. Hi, I'm Marc and welcome to the service design show. This show is all about exploring what's beneath the surface of service design. What are the things that you don't see, but that make a huge difference between success and failure, all to help you design services that make a positive impact on people and business. The guest in this episode is Andrea Morales Cotto. She's the lead product designer at MongoDB and she has a deep passion for game design. And that's the topic we'll be exploring in this conversation. Somehow game design hasn't been addressed on the show all that often. And that's really curious because when you dig a little bit deeper, there are a lot of similarities between games and services. Think about it. You have actors, you have rules, you have a context and there's much, much more. So I really encourage you to listen to this episode with a learning mindset because there's a lot you can take away from this. And when you do, I'm sure you'll walk away inspired and thinking how you can apply game dynamics in your work. If you're new to this channel, welcome and I'd love to have you to subscribe. So click that subscribe button and that bell icon to be notified when new videos come out that help you to level up your service design skills. So now it's time to sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Andrea Morales Cotto. Welcome to the show, Andy. Hey, Mark. How's it going? It's going awesome. I'm really excited for this chat because we're going to touch upon a topic that hasn't been on the service design show that often. I don't know why, but I'm really excited to have a conversation with you about this.  Yeah, sure. My name is Andy. It's sure for Andrea. My pronouns are she, her. I currently work at MongoDB as a lead designer. But in general, I would say I'm a designer with a strong emphasis on systems thinking and game design. I've been working for the past 11 years. I started off as a director and now I am working in product design. A director as in movie director or? Yes. Yes. I was making short films. Oh, wow. I was making short films and ads in Costa Rica. Oh, how cool. We'll also know more about that in a later episode. Yeah, of course. Andy, we have a 60-second question rapid-fire round. So I'm going to ask you five questions and just reply as quickly as possible. Okay? Okay. Oh my God. Okay. There we go. What's always in your fridge? I was going to say peanut butter, but that's not true. Why was I going to say that? I don't refrigerate my peanut butter. Okay. Peanut butter ice cream. Anyway, which book are you reading at this moment? If any fall by Neil Stephenson, which it's too long. It's taken me like three months. Maybe you need the audio book version. Yeah, maybe I do. What superpower would you like to have? I want to be like Goku from Dragon Ball T. Awesome. What did you want to become as a kid? Or is that the same as the previous one? I definitely wanted to become Goku or have Pokemon, but what did I want to become as a kid? So many things. My first thing though was an inventor, which I wasn't even sure what I meant by that, but I was like drawing like little contraptions. I was like, here's a car. Here's a cool toilet. Like I was always making up stuff that couldn't be done. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. Oh, that. And the final question, because we have one left and that is I'm curious if you remember the very first time you heard about service design. Oh, man. Yeah. Interesting. I don't remember the exact first time, but I know for a fact that I read. Oh my God, what's the name? It's a service design book. It's really famous. The black one. Yes. This is service design thinking. This is service design thinking. Thank you. Yes, I read that when I was 24. No, before that would be when I was 23. I was working in Costa Rica with a person that had come from MIT and knew a lot about interaction design and that's the first time I read it. And I was like, oh, this is brilliant. I didn't know designers were allowed to go into particularly health care, which I was really excited about.  And I was like, oh, they're being given the opportunity to do that. Maybe I should do that. And yeah, that was the first time. And the book inspired many current service designers. So that's awesome. You're in a super interesting position because you have a different background than most people who have been on the show. You work in a different kind of context than most people who have been on the show. And we'll be talking about the design discipline that not a lot of people have discussed here on the show. So we're going to sort of investigate and explore how game design and service design overlap, how they could benefit from each other. Can you tell us a little bit about how you became interested and passionate about game design? How did you end up in that scene? Oh, wow. Okay, if I'm being super honest, I would start with them like seven or six years old. So that's a lot. But I would just say games have always been a part of my life. I had, I was going to say the blessing, but I would say the advantage that I was surrounded by parents and friends, particularly male friends that were really open to me playing games with them, which is not the case for a lot of women. And so games, particularly video games, but of course, board games and, you know, even tag or soccer, right? Football is we would call it. We're all a part of my life, right? But I think video games in particular were something that stuck with me. It was something that I thought I wanted to study for a long time, but that wasn't a possibility in Costa Rica. So I was always kind of nurturing that on the side, right? I was always playing games with my friends. I was creating mods for games. I remember I created some mods for Halo a long time on my computer. I was playing, it's so interesting because I don't play those kind of games anymore, but I was playing a lot of like Counter-Strike and Halo and, you know, point-and-truders. I think a lot of people listening right now will be like, what? Games where you shoot things. Games where you shoot things. But I was also very passionate about narrative games that were more like, some people in this audience might have played it. The ones where you would just like solve a mystery. You would, you know, like click on something and then it would show you whether you could see it or take it or smell it or eat it. You've probably played those point-and-click games they were called and those were always a part of my life. And so as I was growing up, I was trying to get as close as I could to designing them. And that meant that I was very involved with reading about the creators with buying game design books. I have a bunch of game design books in my bookshelves that you probably can't see right now, but I'm happy to get at some point. And I was just like very passionate about it, even before I was passionate about any other type of design, right? I guess you could say that I was also very fascinated by industrial design, but game design seemed like something that I could do really easily, right? There were, and even growing up, there were already ways like the Crayola games had like ways of creating mini games in them, which were something that was used a lot in Costa Rica to teach how to, you know, use a computer to children. So, so yeah, they've been there my whole life, but I think I started getting more serious about them when I became like 23, 24, which coincidentally was at the same time that I started getting serious about service design. And that's when I started creating my own games and thinking, okay, how can I use all these things that I've learned and this community that I'm a part of, I have so many game designer friends and applied in my work. What I also find interesting and that's awesome to hear that this has been a passion for you, basically your entire life, even probably before you knew a thing like game design existed. You're still apparently passionate about this and when we were sort of preparing this chat, there was also like a deeper message in what game design means for you right now, what it can do, what role it plays in society, right? Can you tell a little bit about that? Well, I think there's two things. One, like I said before, games are really a hard to access to everyone in society. And I think because of that, a lot of the techniques that exist in game design for creating friendships, avoiding toxicity in communities, creating a community period, which are things that game design, particularly now that there's a lot of like online multiplayer games, game design has had to learn how to do that and how to do that effectively, both from a business point of view and a community point of view. But a lot of those like learnings are very sheltered. They're very sheltered from the rest of design for many reasons. I think one, because not a lot of women are in game design or if they are, it's not a very like welcoming space. And I also think that for that reason, there's more that game design can do for design in general, but also for society in general. I think games more and more are representing the future of the products and the services that we're all creating, right, things that are going to have to be online and offline, particularly with the pandemic. And so I wish we could take more of what we learned there and applied in our other design experiences because they've kind of already figured it out. Yeah. I was thinking sort of trying to make some assumptions why we see so little of game design mindset in the service design space. And one of my assumptions is that a lot of the service design methodologies and literature and heritage stems from more of the industrial design heritage and game design feels like a different branch of the design discipline, which is, I don't know. Do you experience something similar or do you think there's something else going on here that we haven't found so much overlap yet? I mean, there's so much, right? Games are still not taken seriously as an art form, right? Whereas, well, slowly, but surely, even at MoMA now, now they have the Museum of Modern Arts in New York City. Now they have games exhibition, which is really cool because it's starting to say props to Paul Antonelli, who's the curator there, where she sees this as an important part of the design practice. But that's new, right? Before that, MoMA had, first of all, classic art and modern art, mostly modern art. But also, they had Eames chairs, right? There was already a perception of, oh, this is a heightened sensibility of the world, right? This is what design can bring. Not only can it bring usefulness, but it can bring beauty and there's something interesting in that. Whereas, first of all, games are for children, right? And so because of that, why would you put something for children at the same level as any other type of design? So I think there's the other problem of it's hard for certain designers that are in service design or in industrial design, which is kind of like the mother ship of all design. It's kind of graphic design as well. It's kind of hard for people to feel like game designers at the same level because it implies recognizing something that's made for children. And I think in general society does not encourage that. Yeah, that's the notion. Maybe it's not even games, but it's a notion of play, which isn't. Play is not serious. Play is not an industry. Even though right now it's a bigger industry than Hollywood, right? But in the same way, right? You see things like the art departments in film, which I think Harkins back to what I do in film. There's a lot of designers in film. There's production design, right? And you don't see people saying, here's what I learned from production design and I'm applying in service design, which we probably should, but you know. So I can imagine that the people who are listening right now might be curious So what is the potential? What is the potential of bringing more game design techniques into the space of service design? What do you see as interesting venues? Yeah, well, I think there's two things that are really huge about games. One, and this was brought on by gamification for a while. I don't know if you remember there was, I would say like 10 years ago, everyone was going wild over gamification. Badges everywhere. Yeah, badges everywhere, which I despise. But everyone was going wild over gamification because of the promise of these young people that are living their lives online that are finding new ways of relating to each other online. How can we bring that power and all the things they're doing, like creating whole worlds in Minecraft or in Roblox or whatever, right? How can we bring that and put it in the real world and in a way entice these people to create things that humanity has never seen before? So I think, you know, that was the original promise. I think in general, something that I see more as a promise coming from game design is this possibility of having virtual worlds where we can kind of like test and play with what society can be, but more or less from a, oh, imagine all the amazing things we could do and more, hey, play is a successful space for people to feel more like themselves, to be social in different ways, to create relationships. And I think in that sense, game design gives us the space and the learnings, because a lot of that has already been learned in some way by those designers, that we can then apply in our design lives. And in some way, I think both the playfulness and these are the techniques that already exist would allow design thinking, service design, any sort of design to go beyond the constraints of what we think design is now, right? Because you're creating for a world that doesn't exist, right? You're creating whatever you want basically. Yes, there are constraints that have to do with how you code things, but I think it's just fascinating that we can do that. So instead of doing the opposite, which gamification was like, let's bring that world into reality. I actually think there's a lot that we can learn about how you're creating for the unknown in game design. And young people are used to that now. So how can we harness that creating for the unknown and make something better? I would be curious to explore some examples to maybe make this a little bit more tangible. Also, for me, like trying to grasp where the overlap is and where we should be seeking more synergy. So do you have an example or a story where you've seen game design techniques applied in a service kind of context? Yeah, so I have a couple. The first one is I was working at Consensus before I started working on MongoDB and in there, by the way, Consensus is a blockchain startup. It's kind of like a blockchain studio where you have a bunch of little startups inside of it. And let's not go into the complexities of blockchain because that's already difficult and there's a lot of hype right now. But I think the most important thing was that my role there as a designer was to think about not only the UX of X digital product, but also when you create a product in blockchain, you're actually creating a little economy, right? You're creating a little community of people that are exchanging goods with each other or making decisions through economic actions. So that's huge, right? That means that you have to make sure that this place is hospitable and exciting for everyone that's involved and that the heap coming back because the moment there's no exchanges between people, the product dies. So in that sense, it's really a service in a way, right? What you have to do is you have to make sure that people keep coming back and most interestingly, the people themselves are making the wheels turn, right? So in the same way that if you are designing for a restaurant, you're designing not only for the final person that's eating, you're also designing for, you know, the person that's cooking, right? So the same thing was happening at consensus, but we had the issue of how do you start creating an experience that's exciting and playful so that people keep coming back while kind of like predicting what could be the moments where people would get into conflict with each other, right? Because, again, because it's not just about the food that you're putting on the table, but rather if there's no one actually taking care of the restaurant, there's not going to be a restaurant period, right? So in this case, it was if there's no one contributing to the economy, there's not going to be an economy. So for me, as you know, putting on my game design hat, the first thing I did, just to give you a very simple example, was what we need to prototype this as if it was a game, giving people different kinds of roles and reasons to come into the game. So there are four different types of players. This is actually very well-known research. There are more than four different types of players because sometimes people in game design don't, like the research that I'm talking about. So there's a lot of polemic, but there's four types of game players. There's the people that like to explore, the people that like to socialize, the people that like to achieve things and like earn badges. That's the gamification part of it that people think usually of. And there's the people that just like to see things burn. The people that like to push the boundaries of your game, the people that like to modify your game, the people that like to troll other people in the game. And so when I was thinking about this community that we were creating, my response was, okay, we're going to prototype it. And we're going to prototype it from the point of view of giving people roles and seeing, okay, what's going to happen with a person that breaks the game? And we realized pretty quickly that the game was badly designed, that the community was badly designed, the community that we were designing because it was generating this space where if you came in first, like basically like a pyramid scheme and that's why we changed the design of the community.  And when you became a whale, the little shrimp, the people that will come in later, which are, by the way, the people that make it fun because they're the ones that bring like novelty to the game, they would just get bored. They'd be like, I don't have a reason to be here. I'm not going to make money. I'm not interacting with interesting people. Anything I do doesn't mean anything. And so then they would leave and that would just leave the whales and the whales would get bored. And we saw this in a half an hour session, mind you, before we even coded anything. And the whales were like, I don't have a reason to be here. This is boring. I don't want to, why would I be here? This makes no sense. There's no community. I don't want to discuss with anyone. I'm not meeting anyone new. And so to me, it was so easy because I made it into a game to already see this is not going to work. Lo and behold, that was a failed experiment where unfortunately, we kept going and we coded and lo and behold, what happened was just that, right? The whales were just like, this is not fun. And then the community died. So that's one really clear case of game design coming in. I knew this is a game designer. I was like, this is not going to work. This is not going to work. I'm going to try to prove it to you. And unfortunately, in that moment, I couldn't. But you know, I think it was a really interesting example of how game design already to me made it so clear what was going to happen here. Yeah, wow. And I like how you made the parallels with a restaurant. I'm also thinking, my mind these days is a lot in online education and I can totally see how community and designing for community there plays a big part. I'm curious like, what is your take on services feeling more goal oriented than games? And do these two things line up? And I'm not even sure if that's really the case. Like a service feels more functional, transactional, goal oriented while a game maybe feels more open, playful, entertaining. Like how do you see those two concepts lining up? Yeah, that's getting a little bit into polemic that exists in game design, which is what is a game. So you'll get very different ways of interpreting this. There's people that are kind of more utilitarian about it, which is the objective of a game is to win. And so in this case, by winning, it would be solving a challenge or surpassing a challenge in a set of constraints.   So in that case, it's pretty much the same as service design. But then there's the more open one with sorry, you can go on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now go on that there's the more open and yeah. And the more open one, I think is where I've seen a lot of game designers come in, particularly more experimental game designers, right? More indie game designers where it's more about how do you create a suspension of disbelief? How do you create a moment of emotion? And so I still remember this designer that I meant from Rare, the company, the video game company, where he was saying to me, the first thing I think of when I start designing a game is how do I want people to feel? He doesn't even start with what do we have? He doesn't start with, you know, what's the business objective? He starts with what is the core emotion that I want people to feel at all times, which by the way, fits really well with the idea of genres, right? That they have, like if you're starting a horror movie, you're like, okay, what type of horror do I want to generate in people, right? Sorry, and I think, excuse me, and I think that's in that way very different, right? But I think a lot can be taken away even in service assigned for that, right? Like one, people are expecting more and more of their lives to be experiences, right? We've talked about this. I know millennials and Gen C, et cetera, like experiences more than products, right? But two young people are playing so many games, right? I think there's a spectrum, of course, in services, like when you need to get your train ticket, it should be like clear, consistent. There should be very little noise in there and an openness. But on the other hand, there are, of course, services that are more experiential, and I can imagine that having a more open space in there is interesting. I was writing and making notes here like in service design like the element that everybody focuses on is the customer journey where you sort of try to plan the entire narrative if we go back to movies and theater. Well, what I find interesting and would love to explore more is in games, you have games where there's an open world where there is sort of a direction, but it's up to the player to come out at the other end in the way that they want to experience this. I'm not sure if this would work for a bank or an insurance company, but I can imagine that for some services a less strict journey, a planned journey would be better. Well, you'll notice pretty quickly that open world games, usually the transactional part, the business part is at the beginning, right? You're buying the open world game at the beginning unless, and to be honest, I haven't played that many open world games that are massively multiplayer, just because honestly, I don't have the time, but I know there's a lot of games like Red Dead Redemption online that I think are all about how do we keep people online paying for the monthly subscription? And there might even be micro transactions, which is the moment when you pay for something small in the game, right? I know Fortnite certainly does that. Their whole thing is how do I get you to pay for a new skin? How do I get you to pay for new like, and by skin they mean like dresses or hats or new pants, right? Costumes in general. So they certainly have that issue too, but I think the issue is different in the sense that they are already, when you come in, there's in film, actually in script writing, there's this thing called the intangible contract. At least I learned that in Spanish. I don't quite know how you say it in English, but the intangible contract is a thing that you ask a audience member and in games they call the magic circle. When you come in, you say, I agree with you creator that I'm going to suspend my disbelief. I agree based on the description that you gave me of what we're going to do. And that's magical, no pun intended, because that's not something that you do with services. It's something that you do with entertainment. You say, I'm going to go watch a movie. I'm going to agree that what's happening in the movie is entertaining, unless it's not, right? And the moment you don't like a movie is when the intangible contract is broken. So say, if you're going to see a horror movie and the movie's funny and you didn't expect it to be funny, no one told you it was going to be funny. You say, this is a terrible horror movie and you leave, right? And I think in that sense, games and entertainment in general have an upper hand over services. But there's no particular reason, being super honest, that a service shouldn't have that intangible contract, right? Disney does that a lot. Disney is like, the intangible contract is when you go to Disney, you're going to have a magical time with magical beings, blah, blah, blah. So you expect anything done by Disney to be that, right? I think the intangible contract in services has a lot to do with the messaging a company puts out and the brand values. The branding, right. Exactly. And that's what you tend to expect when you engage with a service provider. And unfortunately too often they aren't able to live up to that and there's a lot of frustration and anger and painful moments there. Well, yes. And I would say there is one thing that games also have that services could perhaps do, although of course, like I said, because they're such different, you know, like beasts, there have to be like a process of testing this. But I think there's something interesting about how in games the going into the circle is the magic circle is slower, right? So you have, yes, you have like the branding of like the trailer or the box, right, where the board game comes in. But the first thing you do in games is you read the instructions. You choose which role you want to choose. You get to choose a little like if it's a board game you choose the little figurine that you're going to be, right?  And I think that is a part of the magic circle that you don't have as much in services or it becomes more of the physical space, right? So when you first walk into the bank, how much space is there? How welcome do you feel, right? So there are some parallels but I think games have the added like umph of the fact that people come in expecting to be entertained, right? So, yeah. You mentioned also something that in your current role at a company that creates a database basically you're using a method around loops and cyclical design, right? Yes, cyclical progression, cyclical design, yeah. Sounds complicated. What is that about? Yeah, and I would recommend anyone that wants to read more about it. You can go to a thing called Project Horseshoe which is a group of game designers that get together every day, excuse me, every year, I wish every day, every year to create these amazing reports on what they think are the biggest problems in game design. One of them is how do you create loops? So loops are a very basic concept in game design, particularly in open world design where the idea is not so much, how do you get people to go from level 0 to level 100 but rather how do you keep people coming back by doing an action that creates some sort of side effect that is satisfactory, right, to them and then they want to keep coming back and they want to find something new in the loop. So what, can you give an example? Yes, of course. So I'll give you a very simple one. In games, when you go and buy things in a store because there are stores in the games, say for example, this is, I don't necessarily like games, I have weapons but I think this is the easiest way.  So you go to the stall where the weapons maker is because there's always one and this becomes a loop that you do again and again and again but each time you come in, there might be different weapons depending on what you did or the stall person might talk to you differently according to what you buy. So there's not a lot that's really changing there but it's enough for you to say, that's interesting. I wonder what I'm gonna come up with this time. I wonder if I'm gonna get better weapons. I'm gonna wonder if he's gonna say different things. I wonder, there's this element of expectation. Sounds like a slot machine. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit but it always has to be driven by what you do.  So how do you make that loop interesting? And they made it so that every time you play according to what happened in play the characters that can talk to you when you're reborn, you're a god, when you're reborn, they have different things to say to you according to how you played and according to how you've talked to other people. So there's this loop where yes, you're getting better because you are, there's mastery and there's different types of loops, right? You can have loops around mastery, you can have loops around exploration, you can have different types of loops but what they do is they mix the basic core loop which is a mastery one and they add hey, you're gonna learn different things about people and so if you're a player that just wants to have the achievements, you're gonna do the achievement loop, right? You're just gonna get better and better and better, you're not gonna talk to anyone, you finished the game, great, you did it. If you're the kind of player that wants to learn about other people and about what's happening in the story, the loops are airning you that. So you're gonna keep coming because you wanna know how this ends. You wanna know what happens to these players and into these characters. And how does, yeah, and how does this translate into a service context? Yeah, so I think many times, well, first of all, if your user or the person that's gonna be coming to your service again and again and again, is gonna be coming again and again and again, you have to generate a way for them to feel like that loop is satisfying, right? So for example, in the case of MongoDB, yes, we have a product which I see more as a service where the user is coming in, the user is a developer, an app developer, they come in, they're gonna try it for the first time, they might have what we call the aha moment, right, the magic moment where they figure out, oh, this is what this product does, but then they're gonna keep coming because they're gonna use us to develop their app again and again and again. So how do I make sure that I offer them in each loop a way to become better masters of what's in the service, what's in the product, right? So I'm giving them ways for novices to do things and heating kind of like Easter eggs for experts, right? So I've been giving them that delight by saying like, hey, guess what? You can use these hotkeys to do the thing that you did when you were a novice five times as faster or hey, guess what?  So it's this idea of can we give you these loops in a way that's a little bit more delightful. And I'm thinking like what kind of services are there where you are coming back over and over, where you actually want to learn stuff, maybe it's not with the company providing the electricity at your house, but for instance, a restaurant, we've had a conversation here on the show with somebody from Japan and he said there are restaurants in Japan who make the menu so difficult that as a first time user, you're intimidated and they actually don't want you to be asking questions like the menu and the restaurant experience is actually in a way challenging you to become a better user of that restaurants. Like the chef is at that level and he only wants people who are at the same level. Yeah, so making that experience actually challenging of ordering the food, like you get a menu that you don't understand and then you have to build that mastery. I can see those dynamics at play in different service environments as well. Yeah, for sure. I also think it reminds me of In-N-Out Burger where they have a hidden menu that you can only know if friends have told you. So you can ask for things that they don't have on the menu, but only if someone has told you or you've looked it up online at this point. But yeah. And now I sort of get the sense that, okay, this might be a moment where people say, ah, but that's just silly. That's the playfulness thing. This is like, this isn't serious. What's your response to that? That's okay. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. I mean, to me, if it's not playful, what are we here for? A lot of creation comes from play. And I think a lot of designers don't consider what they do play, but what they do is play. They're put... It's like when you're given a blank piece of paper and you're not given any constraints, people go, oh, this is really hard. I can't do it. I need constraints. Literally, that's the definition of a game. You're surpassing an obstacle with a set of constraints. So you're playing. So whether you like it or not, you are playing. And I think the less play you do, the more you're going to be broken away from the way society is evolving, which is towards embracing play, not only escapism, but as a way of creation. And I think it's just good for business, even. Like, if those are your business objectives, like having a hidden menu creates loyalty, it probably attracts more customers in a certain way. It provides more pleasure for your customers. So I can totally see how it's just a very practical way of doing business and a smart way of doing business. It's also an earnest way of doing business. And by this, I mean embracing playfulness implies that you accept that not everything you do is that serious. And I think there's something really powerful in that because it leads to people seeing that in your brand and accepting your brand more earnestly. You know, I noticed this like even within and out, it's so funny to me. But for them to say like we have a hidden menu, it's completely useless at this point. It's on the internet. You know what I mean? If you really wanted to, you'll just go online. But there's something about having their users tell the new person and this was actually the person that brought me to in and out was a game designer and they were like, we're going to in and out. And I was like, okay, I've never been because I had been to California, but I'd never had it. And he was like, we're going to in and out and you're having the secret menu. And I was like, the what? And he was like, the secret menu. We're ordering something from the secret menu, which by the way is more expensive, I believe. Good for business, yeah. Good for business. And so there was something about it that I immediately, I don't think I would eat a lot in an out burger because I'm usually vegan. I'm not very strict about it, but I'm usually vegan. But it was just like the fun of it. I can't forget about it. You know, and I'll probably tell my friends have the in and out secret menu because it will make me feel like I'm in on the secret. Right? So it's doing the job of getting people to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. And there are, I really feel that we're scratching the surface of what's possible in this overlap and how these two game design fields could sort of strengthen each other. What would you say to people who want to take the first step into applying more game design techniques in a service context? Yeah. I'd say go play games. That would be the first one. Start with the thing that is the least embarrassing because you will feel embarrassed at the beginning. That's what games are about, about like you feeling like you're not yourself and that can be embarrassing. Right? So the first thing I would do is if you haven't played games in a while, go play games. You'll find something for you. It doesn't have to be the shooter game. It can be something else. It can be board games. It can be live action role playing games, which I love. That's really if you feel no shame at all. But it can be live action role playing games. Start with playing games and then slowly but surely you'll start meeting people that design games. It's really hard to find people that play games that don't also design them. Immediately people want to be a part of it. So as you start meeting people that design games, you'll get to know how to do it yourself. And there's a lot of ways to do that. There's a lot of books that I could tell you about that relate to the design of games. But I think the most interesting part is using tools online that allow you to make games. So you can make board games through board game simulator. If you don't want to make them physically, I would say if you're more like me, the kind of person that wants to make physical games, make physical games. You know, you don't even need to modify tag and play with people and see how it goes. Is there a course that you know of called game design for services? No, I wish. I wish there is not. I know there's a space there. I think I know someone doing game design thinking. But I don't remember. I remember seeing it on LinkedIn. But no, no one has done that. There's usually not that much of an overlap. If somebody is interested in exploring this topic, game design for services, reach out to me on LinkedIn or something like that. I'd be really curious to see where that goes. So heading towards the end of our chat, I'm really curious if you look back on your very long game design career, what are some of the big lessons that you learned along the way that you'd like to share with us? Yeah, you know, I think the first one is that when you're starting to apply these things in other design spaces in services or in products, people will have a hard time accepting game design techniques at the beginning and you kind of have to shelter those people and perhaps not even tell them that they're game design. Again, because I think game design is not taken seriously, right, or what is this game for? We don't want people to play things, right? So the first step is just saying, you know what, I'm just going to do prototyping. Paper prototyping, and in reality, what you're doing is making the service into a game and playing it out with people just to give you an example. Or the opposite can happen where they're super hyped about gamification and they just want to put like badges and points and everything and I'm like, no, no, no, that's not what game design is. A lot of games don't even have points. This is not what it's about. So I think in that case, I've had the issue of kind of like bringing people back and saying like, no, not everything needs to be a game, but you can still use game design techniques in it, like the loop design idea, right? And I think the last thing for me would be that the best way, like I said before, to start knowing when to use game design techniques or when to intervene with game design is to make games. I know that's really stressful at times for people that are new, but you can start with, I'm going to make a new version of football. This time, the person that wins is not the person that gets the ball in the net, but the person that hits the goal post the most amount of times. And it sounds like the smallest thing, but with that, you'll start getting a feel for what are rules, what are roles, what are mechanics, and so once you get that feel, you'll start applying that elsewhere. We didn't even touch upon that, like the overlap between having rules, a context in which things happen in a service. You have a service context and games. You have the game context. There's so much to explore there. How would you summarize our last 45 minutes? Oh my God, I think game design is a rich design area that has dealt with many of the hairiest design problems that we deal with in services and products. And it would be really beneficial to us, to all of us designers, if we took a look into what they're doing and adapted into our practice. Yeah, I think that would be it. There's a lot, if anything, it'll give you words for what you're designing, like the concept of cyclical progression and loops or the concept of mechanics and rules or asking yourself, who wins here? What is winning in my service? Which is another way of saying, what is the user here for? But it's slightly different, right? It's not positioned in as a job to be done. It's positioned in the context of other people as well, right? Yeah, super interesting. A few episodes ago, we had Ryan Runsey on the show and we talked about business design and one of the concepts that came up there was just digging into the business world and learn the vocabulary so you'll know what to Google the next time. And I think it's similar to this. Like, just start exploring game design so you'll know what to Google the next time. And that's already a very good step. That's already way more than you would currently have, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, go on. Well, I can imagine that some people would be interested to sort of follow your work or reach out and ask some questions. What are the best ways to do that? Yeah, sure. So for those that speak Spanish, this will be easy to follow but my Twitter is mentapurpura, which is M-E-N-T-A-P-U-R-P-U-R-A. The links are in the show notes. But yeah, you can follow me on Twitter or thank you for the links. You can also just look me up on my website, AndréMeralesCoto.com and you'll see everything that you need to see there. Awesome. Thank you so much, Andy. Again, I sort of feel that we scratch the surface but I hope we got people curious and excited to sort of do their own research and see where this goes. Yeah, hopefully. The more people want this, please come to me. Please reach out. I'm super happy to talk about game design or put you in touch with game designers that have dealt with the same problems that you're dealing with. So what's your biggest takeaway from this conversation with Andy? Leave a comment down below.  So if you haven't done so already, click that subscribe button because we bring a new episode like this every two weeks. Thanks so much for watching and I look forward to see you in the next video.


For the first time in its history, Azerbaijan's football club Karabagh reached the one-eighth finals of the European Cup. The champion of Azerbaijan win over the Portuguese club Braga in the playoff stage of the UEFA European League of the representative of Azerbaijan, who won 4-2 on the trip, lost 2-3 in the return match at Tafik Baramov Republican Stadium, but managed to win the stage.No goals were scored in the first half. In the 57th minute, Karabagh was in the minority on the field. Roger Elvin Jafargiliyev received a red card. Taking advantage of the numerical advantage, the guests opened the score in the 70th minute. Roger Fernandez accurately aimed the frame from close range. Braga scored the second goal in the 83rd minute. Alvaro Calo has distinguished himself this time. The Portuguese finished 90 minutes ahead with a score of 2 o'clock. As the total score was 4-4, extra 30 minutes were played. In the 102nd minute, Mateus Silva scored and put Karabagh in the lead. However, in the 115th minute, Simon Banzai executed the penalty and changed the score in favor of his team, 3-1. However, the champion of Azerbaijan, who did not give up, scored the goal that brought the next stage in the 120th plus-second minute. Nari Manakunze did not miss the opportunity to face the goalkeeper one-on-one. As a result, representative of Azerbaijan lost 2-3, but won 6-5 overall of thus, Karabagh became the first club in the history of Azerbaijani football to reach the 1-8th finals of the European Cup. The games of this stage will be held on March 7 and 14.UFA European League shared the occasion of Karabagh qualifying for the 1-8 finals of the tournament and called this achievement of the Azerbaijan representative historic. The social network account of the Europa League stated, for the history books, Karabagh will face German Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the UEFA Europa League round of 16 clash, following the draw held on Friday in Nijen, Switzerland. The first leg between the clubs will be held at the Tafig Baramov Stadium in Baku on March 7, while the second leg will take place in Germany on March 14.


This 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 is stock number 11749Z. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used sports car and Dodge Challenger headquarters. This 2011 Dodge Challenger has the 6.1 liter V8 Hemi motor, which pumps out 425 horsepower. This car has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off, and this car is 100% ready to go. Toxic orange pearl is the color we shoot all of our videos in 1080p, 60 frames per second, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone, or television, turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the quality and condition of the car before seeing it in person. And if you like the video and want to subscribe to our YouTube channel, the lower right hand part of the screen is a gold subscribe button. Click that, and then click the bell notifications to get updates on videos we do each and every day here at Summit Auto. 20 inch painted and polished aluminum SRT8 rims. Excellent shape on there, and it has Goodyear Eagle 24545R20 tires, and these tires have, I'd say, 80 to 90% of the tread left on them, so really new tires on here. The fender is an excellent shape. I didn't see any dents or dings on there. Front bumper is in pretty nice condition. It does have the HID headlamps. No major dents or cracks on there. The hood is in very nice shape as well. Passenger side front fender. No dents or dings on there. And the passenger side rim. No major scuffs or scrapes. If you go down this side of the car, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. We take these HD videos, so if you are far away, or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down, but you're still interested in purchasing the car, you can see the car, hear the car, and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises. And you can make a smart buying decision from the comfort of your own home. Very nice down that side. No dents, no dings. And for full disclosure here, this back rim is in excellent shape as well. Get the Brembo brakes back here. And the back tires have just about as much tread as the front tires. Just a little bit less, which you'd expect, because it's a rear-wheel-drive car. It does have the Mopar exhaust. The rear bumper is in excellent shape, as are the stripes on there. Decklid is in nice shape as well. This one does have the Sound Group 2, which gives you the kicker subwoofer as the tire inflator kit. And the battery is located back here as well. Very nice and clean. Those seats do fold down for extra storage. That trunk lid shuts nice and solidly. And as you go down the driver's side, just as clean as that passenger's side. No major dents or dings on there. And this back rim is in excellent shape as well. Driver's side door looks really good. And it does come with heated power mirrors. Enter and go system. Inside the SRT8 package gives you the black leather and suede interior. You get the orange stripes in the backrest. The SRT is stitched into the backrest as well. No rips, no tears, no major wear. Power driver seat. Factory formats. These front seats are heated as well. And it does have auto headlamps. Tilt and telescopic steering wheel. Get these suede insert on the doors. Power windows, power locks, power mirrors. Back seats are in really nice clean condition as well. You do get the latch child safety system for any child car seats you may want to put back there. And we'll hop inside and take a look at the miles. And the radio. And everything this car has to offer. As you can see this car has 20,580 miles.  That's in very nice clean condition. Compass outside temperature display. You get the leather wrapped steering wheel. No major wear or tear on there. Cruise controls on the right. Distance and information center controls on the left. This one comes with the 430N radio which gives you AMFM and SiriusXM radio capabilities as well as the factory navigation system. You also have a hard drive on here where you can store music and pictures and it stores up to 11 gigabytes worth of space.  Does have your keyless entry with the remote start on there. Passenger side format and seat are in excellent condition. No rips or tears on there. I don't think this car has ever been smoked in. Headliner is in nice shape. No rips or tears on there. Map lights and home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems. And your auto dimming mirror. We will start it up and take a quick look under the hood. Starts right up. No check engine lights or anything like that. Sounds really good. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video. You have been able to tell just how clean this car is all the way around inside and out. Under the hood we have the 6.1 liter V8 Hemi motor. 425 horsepower engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth. Once again this car has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop. Has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. And this car is 100% ready to go.  Engine bay is super clean. And this car is 100% ready to go. There are those HID headlamps. Fog lights work good. I would highly recommend this car from a quality and condition standpoint. And to see more pictures of this car, one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SCVs, minivans, Wranglers, sports cars, Challengers, Chargers, Mustangs, GT500s, Corvettes, Camaros, you name it, we got to go to our website right there, www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, any second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel in the upper left. A link to more Challenger videos like this one in the upper right, a link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left, and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right. Click those, check us out. Remember to like, subscribe, and share. Click the bell notifications and we really look forward to helping you with this ultra clean 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 in Toxic Orange Pearl. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and click the bell notifications.


My fellow Americans, I want to talk to you today about our young people and what we can do to provide them an all-important opportunity, a summer job. This is a crucial time for young job seekers, May being the month many firms make their summer hiring decisions. Why are summer jobs so important for teenagers? Because when young people are exposed to the world of work, they can reap a wealth of benefits that often remain with them for a lifetime. Values of personal initiative, self-reliance and hard work, practical experience which teaches skills and imparts confidence in the ability to compete in the permanent job market, the beginning of work history and references which are vital to successful careers, and of course earnings, which can make the difference between going on to college and greater educational achievements or not. I'll always remember my first job. I was 14 at the time and I wound up finding work with a construction company that was remodeling homes. By summer's end I was laying hardwood floors, shingling roofs and painting houses. I recognize that a lot of rules and regulations have changed since then. 14-year-olds can't receive those kinds of opportunities today. But one of those who receive no opportunity to work at all. That is a crushing disappointment not just for these individuals who may lose motivation and eventually self-respect, but also for our economy, because we are literally throwing away America's most precious resource, our next generation. The problem of teenage unemployment is most severe among our black and other minority youth. For some time now the unemployment rate among black youth has been more than twice as high as that for all youth. And while the current economic expansion has brought the overall unemployment rate down with record speed, the drop in black teenage unemployment has been far less dramatic. As of April, the unemployment rate for all youth, 16 through 19 years of age, was 19.4 percent. Among black teenagers, that rate was 44.8 percent. If a 19.4 percentage unemployment rate is unacceptable, and it is, then a 44.8 percent unemployment rate is a national tragedy and neither must be allowed to persist. Our administration has been working hard in this problem and we're beginning to make headway. But we want and intend to do much more. Clearly if the dream of America is to be preserved, we must not waste the genius of one mind, the strength of one body, or the spirit of one soul. We must use every asset we have and our greatest progress will come by mobilizing the power of private enterprise. We're supporting an extension of the Targeted Jobs tax credit program, providing major incentives for employers to hire more disadvantaged youth. Employers can receive tax credits of as much as 85 percent on the first $3,000 in wages they pay. Last year, almost 300,000 young Americans were hired under this program. The Job Training Partnership Act is another important initiative. The Act grants $1.9 billion to states, of which 40 percent must be earmarked for training youth for private sector jobs. Many private firms are cooperating in this program and I hope many more will do so in coming weeks. But one of the barriers to more jobs for youth is the single minimum wage system. Because the cruel truth is, while everyone must be assured of fair wage, there's no compassion in mandating $3.35 an hour for startup jobs that simply aren't worth that much in the marketplace. All that does is guarantee that fewer jobs for teenagers will be created and fewer young people will be hired. So we're proposing youth employment opportunity wage legislation that can create more than 400,000 new summer jobs for youth. Our bill would allow employers to hire young people at a lower minimum wage during the summer months. And our legislation would do this without displacing adults. The bill explicitly prohibits employers from displacing adults in order to hire youth at the summer wage. I'm delighted this concept has been endorsed by the National Conference of Black Mayors. Thanks to the strength of the economy, some 8.5 million young people are likely to be employed this summer, an increase over last year. But America can do better and must do better if we're to bring those teenage unemployment rates down further. I'm asking the Congress to pass our youth employment opportunity wage legislation. But I also want to request that all employers review their operations with the aim of creating more summer jobs. You, the business leaders of America, can make a great difference and the time to act is now. Until next week, thanks for listening and God bless you.


So Huawei is launching with Intel partnership Windows, what do you start this product? I'm sorry, you mean? Can you do an Android version? Just Windows. We have Android and Japanese, but this one is only running on Windows. How big do you think it's going to be this market? Oh, this market is growing very rapidly, so in future, I do video with small consumer. They will switch from the traditional PC laptop to this 2-in-1 MacBook. This year, do you think you're going to overtake Apple and Samsung to sell more smartphones? We need more time, so I think that within two years, we have a chance to be number two. So if we're number three, in five years, maybe we can become number one.  Yeah, that's possible.


I'm very excited to be here today. My name is Sarah Miller. I'm with the Florida Public Archaeology Network. Do I need to be closer? All right, go sit down. All right, I'm now sitting. I spent a lot of time during the first year of Heritage Modern Scouts telling people the who, what, when, where, why, and mechanics. And then the last year or two talking a little bit about our preliminary outcomes, kind of annual reporting. What I wanted to do for today was really drill down into one case study to familiarize you with Heritage Modern Scouts and also talk about what impacts the program has had on policy and procedures in Florida, knowing we have no state plan or procedure for dealing with climate change. So it's been an obstacle. And we're continuing to work around it, I think very successfully with our partners. Do come tomorrow. We are presenting in the Just Add Water session. And Sarah Ayers-Riggs made my colleague in the audience. And she'll be talking also about submerged resources, some of the case studies from South Florida, which are very different than the one I'll be presenting here. And I'm part of that paper, too. And we'll give you some of those preliminary annual impacts on that talk. So that is not this talk. I want to tell you we're with the Florida Public Archaeology Network, our mission in a nutshell is to help protect the state's buried path through education and outreach. I think when FPAN was first envisioned, the main threat was development. And that is the threat they were more specifically talking to. So in the last five, six years, it's been a transition in working with local governments, assisting the state, that our threats are defined differently now, and this has become a big part of what we do that reaches to all our major work areas. And I put this map up here just to show the bathtub model of some of the predictions of 4,000 sites that will be impacted with the 2-meter rise. And then one of my favorite photos there is from the Canaveral Air Station National Register site where they spray-painted on it abandonment and place. And I appreciate that honesty of a management strategy, because that really is the reality for most sites in Florida. You can read between the lines of this 2004 report that the state put together and from discussions with other state employees and representatives. I think they had an idea of the threat that was coming, and they just didn't know what to do, what resources they could possibly put together, and how to prioritize. So they published this archaeological stabilization guide and an effort to give that information to local governments, to counties, to partners that might have the ability to do some stabilization. However, if you read it now, if you read it then, it kind of reads as maybe what not to do for site stabilization. And the case study that I'm going to talk about was included. And it was included all the failures to stabilization that contribute greatly to what we see today. And while I have this slide up, I wanted to show you where my site area is. It's Shelf Bluff Landing. It's in the northeast corner of Florida where that arrow is swinging. Shelf Bluff Landing is a site on the inner coastal along the total Talamata River. It's not a direct coastal site, but it's greatly inundated and impacted from the tidal zone there. But I wanted to point out that whole green area you see is the Guana Preserve that we've been working in. It's a very large area, lots of sites, lots of other places we've been working, but I'm going to just drill down at this one site. You can see there's a view of it today. And you've got the inner coastal there and deep dive into the site. The site goes back to 6,000 years ago. Emily Jane Murray, my co-author for this paper, she's the Sheldminton nerd, and I am the well nerd. So in the abstract, you'll notice I highlighted the well. That's just my own story preference, knowing of course I never get to talk about this site when I'm 150 miles from my north. That's, I have to say, that opportunity. But the site does date back to 6,000-year-old arcade and other prehistoric cultures represented as well during the first Spanish period. There's a mission, 16th century mission that's located out of the site. Also plantations during the British period. We have both Indigo and rice. And then getting into the second Spanish period, we have these New Yorkans that come up to St. Augustine. They're indentured servants that came to New Sermon of each petition for the freedom in March the 60 miles on foot up to St. Augustine. So they're an important descendant community to us. And this site is attributed to them. This is the public face of this site. We go and do bike tours there and hikes. And it's a destination where people walk out to on the trail with signage and interpretation. So that I identify strongly with the well. I think most the public does who are walking around on the site. Erojan has always been a part of this site's history. It was in fact documented first time in 1952, John Griffin reported the site. He based his whole interpretation of the site on the artifacts that were eroding out and later subsequent tests found his interpretation to be accurate to what he found just based on what was eroding out. There are two lines on that map. In the 80s the state acquired the property started doing some aerial photography analysis trying to see how much had actually scaled back. And I wrote the numbers down. I wanna make sure I read them correctly because in a 44 year period based on these aerial photos they lost 12 meters. And what we're gonna be leading up to by the end of the talk is the loss of 30 to 60 meters of the site at current day. The Corps of Engineers, they have impacted the navigation for the site. So that's a big issue with the channels eroding and motorized boat wave action. So just a lot of pressure build up on this one point. In the late 80s the state put in this bulkhead and this is part of that stabilization guide. So I was trying to tell you about best practices. Only the bulkhead only survived a short time. You can guess what happened. They put the bulkhead up and all the energy started to deplete other areas of the site with these splits. So they took it down, they did some sloping and some fill and that washed away entirely within three months. Then in 1992 they added riprap geo webbing filter cloth and that storm came almost immediately. It takes 75% of the material off the site. So what did they do? They put it all out there again and they kept restoring it but it's not been revisited in 10 years. So there's a picture of the site as it stood in 2006, 16, which is an important year for us too because that's when we initiated the Heritage Monitoring Scout program. We were really impressed and inspired by programs that were happening here in Europe with state and citizen. We wanted to capture some of that community engagement as we are at PAN and we do education and outreach. So we designed the program to be a citizen science initiative to be community engagement and to go out and record sites at risk and report back to us. We pitched to the preserve, can we do a pilot study here and do some intense training and see how that goes? And they said, sure, so we conducted four. We planned to do four that had rotating topics in the classroom that would increase the monitor skills and identifying artifacts on the surface and go out into the field and practice monitoring activities with photography, mapping, and the other idea we had built into this pilot was that we'd rotate around different sites and also help the preserve because they have a mandate that they have to go and monitor the site.  So we went back out to the site as soon as it was safe and found that I would estimate about five feet of the site had just gone. And then Irma, not even a year later, comes up and takes another four feet of the site off. This time, a lot of the shell been washed up and over onto the eastern edge of the site. So that was a question, we had a lot of questions at this point of what was happening and then we went a couple of days, about a week later because the northeasters in the area, the water levels stayed very high for a couple months and we started to wonder like, is this the new normal and it's just gonna be water like this everywhere? Is this for some perspective? This is our site on the left as it was just a few years ago and here it is now with that this beautiful Kokina stone that's now exposed but that's, and you can see tilting over on the right is the stationary photo place where you can take monitoring photos and it's now like pitched into the side. We found scallop shells, I see Ryan Harkin shells that gave us a new perspective on the prehistoric environment that we didn't know before, we hadn't seen these shells, we hadn't been noted in this area before and also some of the construction features of the well became visible during Matthew, they disappeared during Irma. After Irma, we requested, I'm sorry, so we've got photo documentation of the site but we also have remark that was installed in the 80s that we've been looking for the whole time and we finally found it after Irma. So we've kind of impacted policy and procedure in five ways and one of my favorite photos to me because it's been difficult sometimes our Bureau of Archaeological Research has never got there very encouraging but they're not always able to get out and help us on the site. This is a national registered site. So here the bar staff have come, we requested, we have specific things we wanted them to look at so they were cannot look. It's set up kind of a protocol now that we have. So even before this hurricane season started I got a call from same staff members you see here talking about other sites, okay? So if this happens again, here's a protocol that we can do and follow up other sites. So I think that's been very positive. We wanna do more 3D scanning, more photogrammetry of the site but it's really given us a model. Let's go back to the site that we're in that stabilization guide, do a checkup, how are they doing? Get better baselines based on the technology that we have now and see what's so stable that is in the sky. When it gets, we'll find a lot more stories and we'll wait for this one. We have noticed a change in the management plan for the Guana Preserve which is another great way that we've impacted policy and procedure and in talking to the staff personal communication they said that is a direct reflection of our monitoring out there. The public workshops are in their work plan and also some discussion of prioritization. So that's been very positive for a state and federal managed area. And then we have operated on a shoestring trying to do similar things to what state and since then we're doing with the monitoring recording but we wanted to give our monitor something a little easier and collect the app but we weren't quite there yet. So we looked into ARCH's database open source from getting it to a whole monument foundation. We got that built and then low and behold our division of historic resources said we like it. Can we put our logo on it? Can you make a portal for the state land managers? So we meant to make this for our community engagement but it's now become the official monitoring program for the whole state and it's given access to us, to these land managers and state park who could never go to a workshop on climate change but they can come and learn about ARCH's. We come here with James Davidson looking at an inundated site slave quarters up on the east coast. It was flooded more days and it wasn't when he was out there. So we all know what we're looking at and we all know what we're seeing but it's very important to us that now we have this sustained partnership with the state. And then you know, you never know every hurricane season is an opportunity to learn. We really developed our FN protocol response that we hadn't really had a place before and now twice. I'm looking victorious here because the first time around with Matthew flooded not one, not two, three FN cars because I didn't get them high and dry enough. So this is me right before Irma sandbagging and wearing my climate change is real t-shirt and going out and helping the community sandbag. But we helped with FEMA preliminary assessments, helped with state side assessments and now we're tuned in with the Heritage Emergency National Task Force to help out our questions managers as well. So thank you very much for your time. I brought you some prezzies. So I've got some cards for upcoming conference keeping history above water next year. Some stickers, some scale cards and I'll put my card on the back table. And don't forget come tomorrow also to the just add water session.


Welcome back to happiness isn't brain surgery with Doc Snipes practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life This is module four that we're working on today on self-assessment in This module we're going to define what happiness and recovery looks like for you in the prior modules We looked at what your primary defining symptom was any compulsive or addictive behaviors The benefits and drawbacks to those and what makes them worse and what makes them better And then we broke it down a little bit more and started looking at the symptoms of all those which actually are pretty much the same In variation for each of the different Diagnoses if you will and I encourage people to think of They're presenting issue, which I don't want to think of as a disorder. I want to think of as an issue or a presenting condition as a tapestry and each symptom is a Thread in that tapestry. So every time and all those symptoms are woven together And every time you start pulling on one of those threads, you're going to start unraveling the tapestry So you're going to start unraveling the problem a More positive way to look at it if you will if you don't like unraveling things Is the fact that when you make any small positive change in one area You're going to have positive changes in other areas Emotionally mentally physically socially spiritually and environmentally So we're going to also in this section explore sources of motivation for happiness and change because change is hard and It's important that when you start kind of hitting that wall going. Yeah, I thought I wanted to do this, but No, this is exhausting You have something to look back at or something to keep you going and moving forward So what does recovery or happiness look like to you? Completing the statements will help you figure out exactly what you want this to look like what you're working toward So when you get there you can say yes, I've achieved my goal and one of the challenges that I always had when I was working in Community mental health is people would come in and they'd want their treatment plan and they'd be like, okay I'm depressed and I'm like, okay. That's not your goal. Your goal is to get rid of your depression and they're like, yeah What does that look like how am I going to know when your depression is gone? So we can terminate treatment and then we would start getting into defining. What does that look like? Emotionally, I will be and obviously happy comes to mind. We're not going to be happy all the time. That's life Life is not a hundred percent Giddiness. So emotionally, I will be happy 85% of the time or 95% of the time and look for other emotions too. You'll be more compassionate. You'll be Maybe more loving more. What is it that what emotions do you want to feel more of and if you need some help? Find an emotion worksheet online or even go to something like Facebook where they have all the little emoticons and Go through what they have identified for different feelings and identify the ones you want to feel more of Excited. That's another one curious. I like that one too. Anyway Mentally, I will be and for me is more focused and more creative mentally means Really about the way you think about things and the way you interpret things and whether you can remember what you walk into a room for when you get there Physically, what's going to be different when you are happy and Remember that for a lot of people and we talked about this in the first couple of modules When you are anxious or depressed, you feel it physically. You're exhausted. You may have tummy troubles You may have headaches. You may have muscle tension So when you're physically happy and healthy, what is that going to feel like? What is that going to look like? I Will feel good about myself because you know, that's pretty easy I'm not looking for anything super Abstract here, but when you're happy What are you going to be able to bring to a relationship? I feel good about myself because I'm happy I am energetic. I'm able to help other people. I'm You know fill in the blank and My relationships will improve when I am happy In what ways, you know, maybe you'll spend more time with your kids. Maybe you'll be more patient What is that going to look like for you? So what is this goal out here that you're working towards again? You're not going to achieve it overnight. You're probably not going to achieve it in a month or two months Three months. Maybe you want to give yourself time and pace it If you are clinically depressed right now It's going to take you a little bit longer because you need to start getting your energy back start getting that mojo back a little bit But that's okay progress not perfection. So you want to be a little bit better tomorrow than you were today And Recognize like I said, life is not a hundred percent Giddy stuff. You're going to have bad days Even when you're happy, you're going to have bad days So if you're making steady progress and you have a bad day one day Just accept it as well. This is gonna be that bad day for you know, this period of time Don't dwell on it. Just figure out what you can do to improve the next moment and get back on track So like I said, that's easier said than done once you put all that out there You may look at what you where you're starting and where you want to go and go. Oh my gosh. I got a lot of work to do It can seem overwhelming It doesn't have to we want to break it down into small steps. Don't look at six months from now Don't look at three months from now, you know, we set that goal out there So we knew kind of where we were going But think about it like a trip And we're going to imagine that you're going to hike across the country So you're not going to get from Virginia to California in a week But you need to know that you're going to California. So you kind of know which way to start heading Now we want to figure out today How far am I going to walk and what is my path for today? That keeps me heading toward california And how much can I get get accomplished today? Considering all the factors like if it's supposed to rain Um, whether you're going to have to walk on back roads to avoid Interstates or you know, whatever the case may be But every day is going to have its unique path and its unique challenges You want to keep in mind your ultimate goal of getting to california But remember that each day is going to be a little bit different So to keep your motivation because some days you're going to wake up and you're going to think california's are really long way away Happiness may seem almost out of reach at some point But it's important for you to go back to your motivation and go. Okay. Emotionally How can I stay motivated? How can I stay excited and happy and curious? um about What today holds and about what I can accomplish for today make it a game if That does it for you. I'm really competitive So emotionally I keep myself going and this is part emotional part mental but I keep myself going by Making a game out of it making sure I do a little bit more today than I did yesterday or a little bit better today than I did yesterday If I'm doing something with someone else we may have competitions What is it that makes you happy? How can you stay excited about your goals? Um, if one of if one of the things you're doing is trying to improve your nutrition You may not always be happy about that So what are some ways you can get happy about it? For example, learn new recipes I learned a great recipe the other day for um noodleless lasagna and basically you dehydrate Slices of zucchini to use for noodles instead of noodles So that it increased my creativity and my excitement to try it and Figure out if I can get my kids to eat it Whatever works for you Mentally, what are your sources of motivation? What is it that makes you want to do this? What are all the logical reasons? You want to do this. What are all the logical reasons you need to do this? Physically, what are your sources of motivation? Is it going to help you feel better? Is it going to help you look better? Is it going to help you live longer? Is it going to help you have more energy? What do you expect to get out of this and How can you keep your motivation going physically? Um getting enough sleep is one of them But what else keeps you going? Let's stick with the nutrition Example if you're trying to improve your nutrition as part of your recovery program Physically, you may still want to occasionally have that taste of chocolate or Chocolate's my thing So I work in brownies. I make a great black black bean brownie by the way, but anyhow I digress You don't necessarily even have to make it a healthy treat You can indulge every once in a while So making sure that you have those treats and those rewards out there for you That are going to help you feel better physically not deprived and keep your motivation going because if you feel deprived You're probably not going to stay motivated for very long Socially now this is one of the greatest sources of motivation tell somebody If you tell someone then you're a little bit more accountable to them Try to buddy up with someone so you share the same goal Then you're going to keep yourself keep each other on track a little bit more Find cheerleaders Be your own best cheerleader.  Be your own best cheerleader And it feels a little weird sometimes But remember to just kind of coach yourself be your own best coach if you will Sometimes people do better Um, and I'll kind of put this in social motivation I can kind of go in financial motivation If they hire a coach or a trainer or a therapist because if they are paying somebody Then that keeps their motivation going because they don't want to feel like they're throwing money away Environmentally and this is another thing area that's ripe For motivation. What can you put in your environment to keep you motivated? To working towards happiness number one Create an environment that's relaxing and happy, you know, that's the first step get rid of all the depressing stuff And try to have things on your walls and around that make you smile whatever that is for you Open the windows get plenty of daylight Put things in your environment to remind you to do the tasks That are on your recovery plan. So create reminders in your cell phone keep a list Of reasons that you want to keep doing this change on your mobile device so you can refer to it occasionally Put things in your environment that remind you Why it's important To keep doing this even when the going gets tough Other places you can put reminders are on your bathroom mirror A lot of times we do something called habituation and you get used to it being there So you need to change where your sticky notes are But put sticky notes out occasionally and change Where they are to remind you of all the reasons that living happier is a priority for you If one of the reasons for example is to Be more emotionally available for your kids You can have a little album of pictures of your children on your mobile device that you can look at Every day or maybe have it as your screensaver. So it reminds you every time you open your phone that this is why I'm doing this Happiness is your end goal Change is difficult and your motivation is going to sometimes get low Think about all those people who make new year's resolutions January 1st, they are in the gym. January 2nd, they're in the gym January 3rd, about half of them are in the gym By the end of January, most people have dropped off Because it got painful and life got in the way Happiness has to be a priority and you have to stay motivated to do those things that are going to make you happy Which means keeping your motivation up and when you start Not wanting to do it figure out why you don't want to do it and address that Identifying and reviewing your reasons or motivations for change will keep you heading in a positive direction So all the stuff that we just talked about write it down. Let's go back to that for a second So your sources of motivation all the things that the reasons that you want to change Keep that on a sheet of paper or six. Maybe you have lots of reasons you want to change That way you can review it when you start feeling like, you know Now it's not worth the effort And also keep a journal or a log if you're not a journal type of person of the progress that you make Just like if you go on a diet or start trying to change your nutrition You keep a food journal or a weight journal Keep a journal of your happiness. So you see that you're making progress You may like may not be deliriously happy in three weeks But are you a little bit happier a little bit more often The goal in recovery and in happiness is progress not perfection You're never going to be deliriously happy a hundred percent of the time So figuring out how to deal with those unhappy moments is part of the recovery process But right now what I want you to focus on is identifying what you do That makes you feel better now even if just for an hour and start doing that more often So you can start getting the energy to make the changes you need To be happier more often If you like the podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app Join our facebook group at docsnipes.com slash facebook or join our community at docsnipes.com And welcome back to happiness isn't brain surgery This is module number five of the self-assessment podcast In this segment, we're going to talk about pick a symptom any symptom. Where do you start? We've identified a bunch of different symptoms their benefits their drawbacks your main problems your motivations Okay, we have a lot of stuff out there. Now. What do we do with it? We're going to talk about how to identify where to start Identify your expectations for addressing that symptom and how to develop a plan for change Which includes learning about the symptom Learning about the causes and consequences of that symptom for you, which you've already kind of started to do Exploring ways you've addressed it in the past that have worked because you're going to keep doing those Identifying new ways to address it to see if we can add a few new tools to your toolbox We'll review increasing motivation for those strategies And clearly identifying what the resolution of the symptom looks like so we're putting everything that we've been talking about together in a nice neat little package So for example, I talked earlier about the fact that sleep is one of my big vulnerabilities if I don't get enough quality sleep I'm a big old cranky pants and I can be more vulnerable to depression and anxiety and irritability and all kinds of stuff So what are my motivations? I am happier when I'm not exhausted I can concentrate more. I'm more creative. I'm more efficient. My memory improves. I enjoy learning new things Which and all of those things make me happy. So The mental benefits Add to the emotional benefits Physically, I'm not as exhausted and living off caffeine, which does make your fatigue worse. She says as she drinks her coffee I'll get better quality sleep And I'll have more energy to do things that are important to me including exercise gardening and spending time with my kids And again exercise gardening and spending time with my kids Make me happier. So not only does getting more sleep just generally help me have more access to energy and serotonin, but The things the fallout if you will from improved sleep makes me happier Socially, I'm nicer and of better service to other people when I'm not tired partly because I'm patient and a lot more tolerant And I enjoy being around other people and making plans when I'm exhausted when I'm not getting enough sleep I don't want to be around anybody except for the sandman Environmentally, I have energy and the desire to clean And I'm more creative and enjoy doing my crafts. I love being in a clean house I love being able to look at the floor and not see streaks or dirt. I'm a freak about floors but So those things make me happier when my environment's a mess I don't want to have other people come over which add to the social withdrawal When I'm not around other people I don't have as much energy because I really get energized and draw energy from other people So you can see how not getting enough sleep all those things can add negatively to each other But getting enough sleep has a lot of positive and additive benefits to helping me just be happier So for you pick a symptom any symptom and identify your expectations What do you expect is going to happen when you start working on this symptom? So, you know, a lot of people start with sleep because that's kind of one of the easy ones Um, but you may start with changing The way you think so you're not feeling as helpless and hopeless all the time Um, you may change you may start addressing feeling anxious All the time and nervous Whatever symptom that we talked about in the first couple of modules that you identify What do you think the benefits are to you? For working on that and go through and Do something similar like I did right here To writing out all the benefits so you have that available for you Now the next thing you're gonna do is learn about the symptom We kind of put the cart before the horse in this presentation because I had you start looking at The causes and effects of the symptom on you already. You've already looked at the benefits the drawbacks and the impacts of these symptoms But you also want to go back and learn in general Staying with sleep for example What does good sleep look like? Why is it important and how can I improve my sleep? What is good sleep hygiene? There are modules on docsnipes.com. There are modules on the all ce use education video channel um, and there are also Articles on web md and other places for how to improve your sleep And you're gonna look at some of them and go no, that's not gonna work for me or I can't do that And that's that's okay What's important is you start learning about What causes that symptom so you can figure out what causes it for you? remember I said that feeling of depression and apathy that some people get That can be caused by um drinking too much alcohol That can be caused by hypothyroid that can be caused by not getting enough sleep that can be caused by um A serotonin imbalance caused by something completely different So it's important to understand what is causing your sleep disturbance Then gather baseline data and what does that mean that means Whatever it is that you're trying to change if it's Sleep you want to track how many hours you sleep? How many times you woke up and how rested you feel in the morning? for a week So when you start instituting changes you can tell if they're making a difference Obviously if you're doing nutrition you can keep a nutrition app on your mobile device Chart your nutrition see what you're eating, but I also encourage you to Keep a log if you don't want to do a journal keep a log about every time you eat. Why are you eating?  Are you eating? Good things nutritious foods or are you craving carbohydrates and fats and you're just going to indulge in in self soothing foods if you will This will help you understand a little bit more about why you eat and the effects it may or may not be having If you have anxiety or depression you're going to chart that, you know At least once a day on a scale of one to four One being I have virtually no depression at all. You know, I'm doing really good today Two, I'm a little bit moody Three, I'm feeling kind of depressed and four. I can't get out of it Those are the you know arbitrary anchor points that I I put down When I look at when I look at depression yours may be a little bit different But you want to assess that and then you know, if you can Check in with yourself two or three times during the day and see if your depression changes That way you can see on a daily basis Whether your depression is starting to improve Maybe the mornings start getting a little bit better, but then you start getting really depressed towards the evenings Well, the good news is the mornings are getting better focus on the improvements While you're gathering baseline data Review the causes and effects of the symptom for you and identify what's worked in the past to make it better and start doing that Start with your strengths start with what you already know works And then we can start tweaking that a little bit to see if we can make it work better A lot easier to start with something you already do and you already know as opposed to reinventing the wheel Identify current strategies to address the problem based on what's worked in the past and new knowledge So you learned about the symptom and ways to address the symptom from webmd or docsknives.com or wherever You found some things in there that you said, you know what? Maybe I want to try this Maybe I'm trying to improve my sleep and I want to try sleeping with a sleep mask on to see if that helps me get better sleep So you can try it if it works great if it doesn't you can say well that was irrelevant for me and Start going through those strategies Increase motivation for those strategies by looking and focusing on improvements And focusing on the things that you're willing to do because you have hope That they're going to make things better And again small changes Don't upset the apple cart all at once because you're not going to sustain that change I encourage people if they start to change their nutrition Change one thing at a time Don't start just wake up one morning and go okay. It's monday. I'm going to be a healthy eater henceforth and forever more For a lot of people the change is more lasting if they ease into it So make it so it is exciting But it is also not punishing or painful in any sort of way And remember whatever the resolution to your problem looks like and when you're identifying strategies always go back and ask yourself, you know Is this helping me achieve Whatever happiness looks like to me Remember we use the analogy before of walking from virginia to california In order to get there it's going to take many many many many days And many many many many different plans in order to get through it and you're going to have to adapt to changing weather conditions and You know road construction and whatever else That's the way recovery is you're going to have to adapt But you every time you choose a strategy to improve the present moment You also want to consider is that continuing to help me reach my ultimate goal Many people mistakenly try to address depression anxiety or addiction as if it's a broken leg and the same treatment works for each person You know generally with a broken leg the doctor goes in sets it puts a cast on it by the bank Now I know there are different types of fractures and everything but let's not get too technical on me With depression anxiety And and um addiction There are a lot of different things that can cause these symptoms So it's important to identify what your symptoms of the bigger problem are And what's causing them for you I always Strongly encourage people to go go get a physical with a full blood work up To make sure that the levels of their thyroid hormones and everything else are normal Because a lot of times there are some very easy physical interventions that people can do that can help them start feeling better right now for example if they're Deficient in vitamin d That's linked to depression, especially seasonal depression So getting your vitamin d levels Balanced out can help a lot of people start getting the energy to do the work they need to do to be happier For now Focus on what has worked in the past for you to address Your symptoms or whatever symptom you choose and start there Start trying to improve the moment make today a little bit better than yesterday The next modules that we're going to go through next week Are going to help you learn about potential causes and fixes for each symptom Remember, I said that you know for something as simple as what we call depression or apathy or even fatigue It can be caused by A variety of different things including thyroid imbalances overtraining not getting enough sleep and poor nutrition So we'll start looking at all the different possibilities So you can kind of listen and think about Yeah, you know that Might be something that recently changed for me that may be making this a little bit worse And you can look at altering Whatever you're doing to try to improve Life so you can feel happier Connect with us by subscribing to the podcast happiness isn't brain surgery on your favorite podcast app Join our facebook group at doc snipes.com slash facebook or join our community at doc snipes.com