to explain, is that narratives are powerful vehicles for discovering or transferring critical information in a compelling way. If our goal is understanding, then knowing how and why stories work can help in this respect. We can use narrative with intention, to create empathy, or to bridge the unknown with known. We’ve seen this for years with inspiring speakers, leaders, teachers, and many other professions where stories are critical vehicles for passing on information. With incredibly difficult and contentious topics, we’ve seen great orators who— rather than argue about facts and details—seek only to change your overarching frame. Succeed at changing someone’s frame of reference—or at least get them to open up to another way of seeing things differently—and the individual is left to sort out the details. But it’s not just the literal stories.
SIMULATIONS
For our purposes, there’s another form of story, simulations, a form that falls at the intersection of everything we’re discussing. From the domain of learning and development, we know that simulations are arguably the most powerful way to convey understanding.
Through video games, immersive fiction, simulations, scenarios, and similar narrative or character-driven media, we have an incredibly effective way to educate, to figure things out. This effectiveness is due in part to the benefits of narrative, but also due to the cognitive benefits of interactions (a topic we’ll revisit in much more detail in Part 4, “How We Understand Through Interactions”). Of course, this approach does require more upfront design and construction, but if our goal is effective education and understanding, these kinds of narrative experiences tend to be ranked as most effective, just behind actual “hands-on” experience.
For examples of the power of a good narrative simulation, we only need to look at projects such as Spent or The Uber Game. With Spent, you’re given a straightforward challenge: make $1,000 last for one month. In attempting to do so, you experience what it’s like to live in poverty, complete with difficult choices and unexpected events that make getting to the next paycheck an ordeal.23 It’s a difficult “game” that creates empathy for people living in poverty (and aims to raise awareness and funds in the process).
Similar to Spent, The Uber Game, is a news game created by the Financial Times based on interviews with dozens of Uber drivers (see Figure 4.1). As a complement to the regular news article about life as an Uber driver, this game lets you experience being an Uber driver for a week.24
FIGURE 4.1 The Uber Game lets players experience what it’s like to be an Uber driver for a week, through a series of choices—and outcomes—all based on interviews with dozens of Uber drivers.
Through a series of scripted scenarios—all based upon actual data and investigative reporting—you gain empathy for ride-sharing drivers, while being given a safe way to explore the potential financial upsides, coupled with the oft-overlooked costs to health, social, and other areas of life. As with most video games, simulations let you learn through trial and error, learning from failed attempts. You can replay the game, again and again, until you start to see patterns and ways of being more successful.
What both of these games do is let you step into another person’s shoes. Depending on how the game is tweaked, you’ll certainly feel some amount of empathy, but also an understanding of the difficult decisions and the probable outcomes of those decisions.
Think about what these games represent as learning challenges. Assuming the facts built into these experiences are sound and somewhat unbiased, people get to experience—first-hand—a compelling, instructional narrative. If we’re the ones bearing the cost of understanding (the creators of this simulation), this is a powerful way to transfer understanding to another person. But let’s pause for a second. What if we’re the players in someone else’s game, or what if the research is flawed or biased? What we still end up with is a shared story around which we can discuss assumptions and errors. Rather than vague, ideological disagreements, or unchecked assumptions, we have a storyline complete with tactics and decisions, ready to be assessed and critiqued. As a cognitive artifact, shouldn’t this lead to more critical and constructive dialogue? Even with something like watching a movie, it’s not uncommon for people to use the fictional narrative as the vehicle by which to debate or discuss the choices and consequences made by a character.
What we’re circling here with simulations is an interesting space between stories and games, which most certainly fits with our theme of “getting from information to understanding.” As with the Polisis
With simulations and narrative games, we see a growing format for understanding that captivates players with an emotionally engaging narrative, but lets them also be in the story, learning directly from their actions. It’s like a supercharged version of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books—supercharged through technology, able to support more complicated, even nonlinear narratives. As with video games, by playing and replaying through a scenario, players discover what advances and doesn’t advance the game (at least according to the rules established by the game’s creators). The difference is, rather than focus on gathering loot or amassing kills, these games offer different kinds of rewards. Yes, it can be instructional on a topic, but with the rise of indie publishers, we’ve seen games that create empathy through experiential narratives (Gone Home), offer meta-stories that leave players changed (Spec Ops), or place them into difficult, moral situations (Papers, Please).
Note, these are different from games that offer facts about a topic, teach physics lessons, hand us clever puzzles to solve, or build in abstract lessons about economics or cooperation. Here, gameplay is wholly integrated with the content of the game. We learn through play. By turning complex issues into a game, complete with win (or end) conditions, players now have a feedback loop on decisions made.
All this sounds an awful lot like learning, as if we’re creating spaces in which to interact and play with information.
OTHER APPLICATIONS OF NARRATIVE
Of course, the application of narratives isn’t limited to simulations or speeches.
One thing that struck me (Stephen), from all the academic research into narrative, is just how much we focus on people. If the most compelling parts of a book or movie are character-driven, if according to the research it’s people— more than any other element of a story—that captivate our attention, then how might we add or introduce characters to our topic?
The software and design worlds have done this for years in the form of personas, a tool intended to foster empathy for users of products, especially where access to actual users is limited. But it need not be this literal. We’ve seen the periodic table of elements brought to life by making each and every element a character. Some of the bestselling business books—such as Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team—illustrate their lessons through a long, extended fable, with a brief bit of commentary at the end.
Moreover, if the content we are seeking to understand concerns the complexities of social life, shouldn’t
