The Human Factor: Serious Game, Strategic Partnership

A few weeks ago, Icame across a really interesting serious game called Foldit. The object of thegame is to fold three-dimensional models of proteins into the shapes that wouldtake the least amount of energy to sustain.

The purpose of the game is to find the best solutions for using proteinsin real world applications, such as understanding, treating, and curingdiseases. Researchers post challenges on the Folditsite, and they then analyze the highest-ranking solutions to see whether those couldbe used to solve the real-world challenge. In one particularly successfuloutcome last year, researchers used results from the game to discover thestructure of an important enzyme in the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, anAIDS-causing monkey virus.

Simple interface, many levels

After hearingabout the application, I downloaded and played with it for a few days. Ihaven’t solved any medical mysteries yet, but I did get a chance to look at howthe game works. The application is interesting on many levels:

• It’s an example of a well-executed task analysis.The game’s developers identified that spatial abilities, rather than anadvanced understanding of amino acids, are the crucial skills needed to fold aprotein. This allowed them to enlist the aid of non-scientists.
• It includes a well-constructed series of examplepuzzles with simple instructions to introduce users to the tools and rules theyneed to understand in order to fold a protein. None of the instructions islonger than a tweet (140 characters), but each one provides enough informationto add one more skill to the player’s repertoire.
• It offers a social learning component. Users canadd and track buddies, chat about strategies with one another on the board, andsee the scores of other players.
• Because users might need to solve the puzzle inseveral sittings, the interface offers tools to make it easy for them toremember where they were in their process. They can make notes, revert back tothe configuration that gave them the highest score for that puzzle, or revertback to a recent high score to help them build from a promising start.
• From a usability perspective, the interfacegives players a way to automate repetitive steps, so they can spend their timeworking on the strategies, rather than manually carrying out the individualsteps. Players can also use the View menu to change the appearance of the modelwithout changing the underlying structure. (Think of it as changing the model’sfont). Figure 1 will give you an idea of what the interface looks like.
• It’s an example of a serious game that has anumber of loyal players who choose to work towards solutions in their leisuretime.
• It’s a working example of how complex problemscan be crowdsourced to create successful outcomes.

Figure 1. TheFoldit interface

Strategic partnerships in game design

Any one of these pointscould support a column by itself. Ultimately, though, the most interesting partto me about the whole project is the strategic partnership it must have takento get the game off the ground. Foldit is the product of collaboration betweena biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and programmers at theUniversity of Washington.

Because themajority of the reporting on this project has come from journals or sciencereporters, there’s not a lot of published information on how that partnershipcame into being. The participants may simply have known one another socially orotherwise. The biologist, David Baker, thought of the concept. He wanted it tobe a game, and he had the subject matter expertise to explain the rules behindproteins. The programmers, it’s pretty reasonable to assume, brought projectmanagement, interface design, and game strategies to the mix in addition totheir programming skills.

Working backwardsfrom the final result, it’s also possible to make some guesses about what kindsof roles didn’t have a seat at the table on this project. Given that thesolutions to these puzzles could potentially help treat diseases, a fundraisermight have been able to offer some strategies to bring revenue to the project, andmaybe even increase players’ engagement. For instance, sponsors might offerdonations for every set number of points players earn on the site.

Conclusion (and more to come)

Unrecognizedopportunities for strategic partnerships often exist within our ownorganizations. In next month’s column, I’ll look at some ways to spot theopportunities, and methods to build strategic partnerships.

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