Cristina Luminea

Learning from kids about innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Asking "Why?" 3 times in a row.

For those of you who don't have kids... just sit back, relax and prepare. For those of you who have kids I am sure you run into this situation very often:

Mom, Dad, WHY does this happen? (Why is the sky blue? Why are the clouds moving? Why are ants so small? Why do pretzels have holes?... you get the picture).

Now you, as a parent, are very keen in teaching your child everything that has to do with the world and are getting excited about sharing your knowledge. So you usually have a pretty good explanation for this. And then they ask... but, WHY that?... at this stage things are getting a bit more complicated but you can still give a reasonable explanation. And then they ask WHY? again... at which point you have only one alternative, which is to buy them a toy.

Asking WHY? 3 times in a row usually gets us into trouble, but it also challenges us and our understanding of the world around us... and this is how kids learn.

Kids are naturally curious about the world around them. They ask a lot of questions and they challenge the common sense. And I believe that challenging the common sense is very important because it allows us to progress, to look at things differently and ask WHY? And this is when innovation happens.

As adults I believe we find it much more difficult to innovate. WHY? Because it is harder for us the challenge the things we take for granted. WHY? Because we find it really hard to find things that we take for granted. And WHY? Because we take them for granted.

As kids we are natural innovators, but something happens between early childhood an adulthood that changes that.

Picasso once said: "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up."

Designing Numerosity for Kids With Kids.

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 11:30:00 +0000

I started ThoughtBox 2 years ago with a passion for education. I wanted to build tools for kids, that they understand and enjoy learning with. I was always passionate about education and was very lucky to work for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt when I finished college. This fuelled my passion and encouraged me to start my own business building educational software for kids.

Within the workplace I always remember going into meetings about new projects and the first question I asked was: Who is this for? Unfortunately most of the time the answer was: for everybody or anybody could use it. I have to say I’ve met a lot of people building projects for “everybody”. If you are one of them, STOP! You will never be able to make everyone happy. You will never be able to meet everybody's expectations. So ask yourself who will benefit the most from this project? That will be your target user/audience. And then the next question comes easy: "How can I create value for this person?" my answer is... go and ask them.

I started building Numerosity, our first product in September 2011. I had an idea and knew exactly how to execute it. But I stopped myself from just jumping in. I did a lot of research around my target audience: Kids and more specifically 7 to 12 year olds. What they like, what they don’t like, what they engage with, what type of music they listen to, what type of cartoons they like, what type of movies they are watching, what is their relationship with their parents (have they started rebelling yet?) how long do they spend playing on computers, what type of educational games are they already playing?

After I understood the market I started looking at my competition and at the best educational games on the market. I made a list of the most popular ones and started playing them. I analysed each one and wrote down the plusses and minuses I thought they had. The next step was to put the top 3 in front of kids and ask them for their opinion: What they like, what they don’t like, what they find confusing, what they find funny, which of the games appeal to them visually?

Armed with all this information I built a quick and dirty first prototype of three possible game plays and tested it with kids. I have to admit I thought they would destroy me because it didn’t look at all like a game and it had a really ugly interface. I was surprised to see how mature kids were and how they were willing to see past the look and feel and concentrate on the game play. I had 3 scenarios/levels: the first one I thought was very simple (and I have to admit that was the one I would have gone with if I didn’t test the product), a medium one and a complicated one. The results of the testing were very surprising: kids got absolutely stuck at the first level and had no idea what was going on or what they were required to do. However they enjoyed the medium level and they flue through the hard one.

Now that I had the game play I started looking at the general interaction within the game. I wanted kids to discover the rules of math by themselves by playing with the numbers and observing the results of their actions on the screen. I built a second prototype and put it in front of kids and got their feedback. I decided not to give them any hints or clues to what they had to do just to see what happens. I loved seeing the frustration on their faces when they got stuck and had no idea what to do… and then the joy and excitement when they figured it out. They couldn’t wait to share it with their friends and teachers showing them what they discovered. That’s when I knew I had a winner. I collected their feedback and incorporated it into a 3rd and final prototype. At this stage I was working with some designers as well who designed 4 versions of the background and 4 characters. Next time I went into a classroom to test the prototype I also asked kids to score the backgrounds and pick their favourite character and colour it in, give it a name and a personality.

At this point I had all the information I needed to build a game that engages kids and encourages them to progress at their own pace, learn from their mistakes and gain the satisfaction of figuring things out on their own.

Because of this approach our user retention rate in Numerosity is 42.5% after 1 month when the industry leaders average at 38% and the average session length of kids playing Numerosity is 19 minutes. We have parents emailing us with their kids’ improvements and kids emailing Skruff telling him how much they like playing Numerosity.

Some general learnings and tips:

Make sure you know who your end user is: who will benefit from your software and how you will create value for them.
Try and find out as much as possible about them (in a non-stalking way) and talk to them from the beginning, before you even start writing the first line of code. Understand what they struggle with; how they fix their problem now and how can you make it easier for them.
It’s important to understand your competition and what your users think about their products. This will allow you to build something better or different.
Build quick and dirty prototypes to test your assumptions.
When talking to your users try acting like a third party: explain to them that you didn’t build this and they won’t hurt your feelings if they say anything bad about it. Tell them what you want to achieve with the testing and explain that you are testing the product and not their ability to use it.
Initially it’s enough to test your prototypes with 5-6 users. It will prevent you from wasting time and they will find 90% of the “confusions” in your product.
One of the advantages of this approach is that the users that you are testing with and that are involved from the very beginning will become your product’s first evangelists.

The best time to plant a tree

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:39:00 +0000

The other day a friend of mine told me this Chinese proverb and I got inspired:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Did you ever think of starting something, working on something, quitting something and years later you haven't done anything about it? I know it happened to me a few times. I am not usually the type to look back and regret things but quite often I tend to analyse actions and conversations I've had in the near past.

A wise man once asked me: What are you waiting for? and that got me thinking for a while. We are always waiting for something: to earn more money, to learn more, to have more experience, for things to change, for summer to come because it is depressing to start something in winter, for our last campaign to work and for the customers to come... And until then we keep talking about it, we keep dreaming about it and we keep getting used to the present. This applies to personal life and it applies to business as well. As a start-up we need to be flexible and be able to change quickly. We know that our resources are limited and we can't afford to wait. And lately this is starting to become true for bigger businesses as well. A lot of the industries out there are continuously changing: health care, education, print, publishing, media... and these are some of the very few.

In the past years we have learned that content is starting to become a challenge. The way our customers are interacting with content is changing. Kids are not consuming content linearly any more. They like to dig deep into the content if they read something interesting (Wikipedia style). Teenagers and young adults don't have the patience to read a newspaper from top to bottom anymore. They are getting their bite size news from Twitter and a lot faster than they would be published in a newspaper.

So how do we react to such a change? How do we meet our customer's expectations to use technology and provide them real time content regardless of where they are or what platform they are using? I have to admit things are getting more and more complicated every day. Until recently we could find our users mainly on Facebook and Twitter. Now there are tens of social platforms that appear every day and we have to create original content for each and every one of them: Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, Instagram and many more. The options become overwhelming.

So when is the best time to start thinking digital? The answer is 5 years ago... but the second best time is now!

Gamification in the workplace

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 08:43:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I spoke with Cliff Saran from Computer Weekly about Gamification in Education and Gamification in the workplace. Since then he published a great article: "A business case for games play at work" and I got the chance to consider the subject some more. So I decided to expand on the points I made especially when it comes to gamification in the workplace.

A lot of people believe that gamification is about adding points and rewards to an existing activity, to encourage people to participate. This used to work with store coupons and travel miles but when it comes to gamification in the workplace it is all about the experience: challenging people to achieve their potential.

I believe that gamification can be used to reinforce the relationship between managers and employees. Managers should learn from games and use gamification to:

Give Purpose: games are hard work: they give you the opportunity to win each level at a time however this requires a lot of commitment. We can learn from games and within the workplace make people feel like they have to raise to the opportunity and show them how they can grow with the company.
Provide constant/immediate Feedback: games are really good at providing real time feedback. Immediate feedback in the workplace reinforces the good behaviour and makes employees immediately aware of the mistakes they make.
Empower: Show your employees the impact of their work on the world. This can come as feedback from the customers or even user engagement and user testing. Show them how the products they build make your customer's life easier.
Provide Meaning: Show the people you work with how they are part of a cause that is bigger than themselves, like rescuing the princes (in a game) or in our case, at ThoughtBox, collaborating with charities to provide our apps for free to schools in Africa.

When people think of incorporating games in their work environment or for engaging their customers, they usually think of competitions. I believe that externally competitions are good however, within an organisation we want people to work together in teams rather than compete for the manager's attention. From this point of view I believe rewards need to be really well thought through. We also need to make sure that rewards are not there to secure a process, unless you are in the manufacturing industry, where the production chain is crucial. Otherwise, remember that we live in a world that is continuously changing. We need to trust people to do their jobs and reward them for their results not for the process they took to get there. This is how innovation happens.

How do you implement game principles in your organisation? Do you have any other good tips and ideas? Let me now what worked or didn't work for you in the comments below.

The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed. (William Gibson)

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:28:00 +0000

It’s been a year since I took the time to write on this blog and I have to admit at times I felt guilty about it. I spent most of my time at work and the little time I had left, with my boyfriend who I have to admit has been very understanding.

So here I am, taking a short break in a coffee shop and thinking of the past year. The good, the bad, the happy, the sad… I have to say a lot has happened and I’ve learned so much.

Because of this I’ve decided to start writing again. I can’t promise I will keep it up but I can promise that I’ll try. So here are my first thoughts:

Being in the education business I have been talking to a lot of kids lately and I have to say that their expectations are pretty scary. Kids today are increasingly digital savvy. They grow up playing with tablets and computers, searching for information on YouTube rather than Google and engaging with more and more technology in their day-to-day lives. However at school they still learn the way we used to. Teachers and parents are trying to engage children and compete for their attention with the same multiplication tables and printed books.

Something needs to change, and fast. We need to start meeting kids where they are and raise up to their expectations. We need to learn how to compete with Wikipedia and we need to decide: how important is it for kids to remember facts and data when they have access to it every day?

Kids are not linear thinkers or linear learners anymore. They grew up with the Internet and Wikipedia where they can dig deeper into a subject that interests them by following a link rather than having to read the full article to get to the next interesting piece of information. From this point of view printed books are restrictive and don’t encourage kids to follow their interests and their passion. Because of this they can easily loose focus and become bored.

We used to live in a world where information=power. Nowadays everybody has access to information through books and Internet. Because of this the balance is changing in favour of people that know how to use that information. We need to start teaching kids where to find information rather than how to memorise it, we need to teach them how to make the difference between true and false information rather than trust and repeat everything that the teacher (the first source) tells them. We need to teach them how to question and how to use the information they gathered.

So tell me, how do you prepare your kids for the speed at which technology is advancing and information / content is being created? How do you teach them to question and make the difference between true and false information? And if you are a teacher, how do you engage kids with or without technology, how do you give them the best chance they deserve in life?

ThoughtBox wins Blueface Business Elevator Final

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:10:00 +0000

This is a cross post from the ThoughtBox Blog.

I have some more great news to share with you: last Saturday ThoughtBox won the Blueface Elevator Competition! We are delighted with this achievement which will give us a great boost as soon as we launch our first product Numerosity, in September.

We would like to take this opportunity and thank all the people that helped us along the way starting with Dr. Christian Luedtke, The NDRC LaunchPad team: Gary Leyden, Sarah O'Farrell, Emma Wilson, Harry Largey, Paul Heyse, Nicola Riordan, Barry O'Neill and the list can go on. Thank you so much everyone!

For the people that are curious about our win, please find below a newspaper clipping and some links to articles from today's newspapers.

The Irish Times

Silicon Republic: Educational software start-up ThoughtBox wins Blueface competition

Inside Ireland: ThoughtBox wins Blueface Business Elevator Final

Digital Times: ThoughtBox wins Blueface Business Elevator Final

That's Math!

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:06:00 +0000

For a while now I have been chatting with my friend Bon Crowder about Math. We both see math as a fun activity and look for it in our daily lives... (yes, I admit... we are both math geeks) We believe that children need to be encouraged to question and discover the math around them rather than being told how difficult math is. Lets be honest here: how many things worth doing are very easy to achieve? Any way, this is a different topic for a different time.

Today I would like to tell you more about That's Math!. Bon has taken the challenge of helping parents show their kids that math can be loved. With this in mind she has built a brilliant resource for parents to help their kids become more confident and engaged in maths.

That’s Math! contains guided steps to SEE MATH and SAY MATH out loud to your kids. This includes instructions, printable quick reference cards and lots of opportunity to develop your positive math influence! In addition, That’s Math! includes printable sets of DO MATH worksheets, activities and coloring pages that your children can do with you or by themselves.

In other words Bon has managed to create an amazing resource that helps parents identify educational activities to engage their kids around the house, outdoors and grocery store.

Why don't you check it out by yourself and let me know what you think in the comments below. Both Bon and I would love to get your feedback on this.

Launch of ThoughtBox Blog, Twitter & Facebook Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:48:00 +0000

As you already know, it's almost a year since I've started my own business: ThoughtBox, which is based on the very simple notion of letting your imagination run wild with a cardboard box. Something as boring as a cardboard box, in the hands of a child could be a playhouse, a defendable fort, an evil robot or a ship sailing the seven seas.

ThoughtBox is about creativity, imagination and gameful learning. With this in mind we build learning experiences by making subjects such as maths and science into games.

We are still at the very beginning but soon we are planning to launch our first product: Numerosity, an iPad app that makes Maths into a Game. Until then we will be sharing what we learn along the way, our best practices and latest news on our Blog. You can also keep in touch with us on Twitter and like our page in Facebook for the byte size news.

We believe that learning is fun and we love to hear from people that share our passion. So don't be shy!

It’s all about the story

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:36:00 +0000

With my last post in mind I would like to share a Ted video of Simon Sinek talking about the way great leaders inspire action. According to him it’s all about the WHY, not the HOW or WHAT. He explains how the reason your are doing something is more important than what you are doing or how you are doing it. People buy into your beliefs and not in your logic.

Bill Liao gave a talk for the LaunchPad businesses a couple of days ago, inspiring us to tell the story. He made a similar point to Simon Sinek: people respond to and invest in the story. This is why Aristotle's book The Poetics is the most important book you could read when starting a business. It teaches you that every story has 3 components:

a crisis – which in our case means solving a customer problem
the protagonist – which shows why you are qualified to solve the problem.
the resolution – which is equivalent to the emotional value of the product: how you leave your customers feeling

Bill Liao also gave us the secret to an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and an MSP (Minimum Successful Product):

MVP = any action you can get a user to repeat.
MSP = any action you can get a user to repeat and feel good about it.

So what’s your story? Why do you do what you do?

Do it for the right reasons

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:11:00 +0000

I have always been attracted to education. I guess a pretty good clue to that is the fact that I’ve been studying all my life… but my first love of education started with math. I was always a math geek. I loved math in primary and secondary school and never understood why other kids wouldn't enjoy it as much.

I believe that maths is very important in our day to day lives as it fosters strategic and critical thinking. Maths is at the base of our economy and allows us to compete, innovate and evolve.

Unfortunately the current way of teaching maths has been proven to fail. In 2011 over 10% of students failed ordinary level maths within the Leaving Cert: this number has been growing every year.

My main reason of starting this business is to try and find a new way to teach maths in order to show kids that maths can be loved. To be honest… this is the only thing that kept me going so far and I am hoping it will keep me going in the future as well.

Rule no. 9:

Make sure you do it for the right reasons.

I believe that once you do it for the right reasons you will try to build the best product that would solve the problem you are addressing. Doing it for the right reasons will ensure you will always have your user in mind. In order to solve their problem you will need to understand who they are, what they like, what they don’t like, what they do in their spare time and where does the product fit in their life? These are the questions we started with and we tried to find answers to in order to ensure we understand our users and their needs.

Rule no.10:

Always start with the user in mind.

We also took some time to think about the personality of what we are trying to build: what do we want to inspire, what do we stand for, what do we like, what we don’t like, what would we like people to say behind our back in 5 years time. This allowed us to create a set of values that will constitute the core of our products from now on.

So what defines you? What do you stand for? Why are you doing it? What are your thoughts?

Don’t engage in more than one stressful activity at a time

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:47:00 +0000

Picture by topgold

Still out of work, realising that I might not be entitled to social welfare, knowing that I wanted to start a business but having no idea what I wanted to do I decided to apply for the NDRC LaunchPad programme. The only thing I knew was that I needed to get on this programme in order to move forward. It seemed like the next logical step. So I took a week to do a lot of research, come up with an idea and completed the registration forms. I had no partner and no clue if I stood a chance. The luck was on my side and a few days before I was called to present my idea, I met Claire Burge, an entrepreneur that just sold her own business and offered to help me out. We have done the pitch together and fortunately won a place in the LaunchPad programme.

The programme started on the 5^th of September for 3 months and at the same time… I decided to move in with my boyfriend.

Rule no.7:

Don’t engage in more than one stressful activity at a time.

I guess I was a bit naive thinking that moving in with my boyfriend was going to help me a lot. Don’t get me wrong, it did help to have someone that believed in me when I was coming home wrecked and stressed and having no idea how I was going to pull things through. At the same time I didn’t account for the accommodation period when each of us had our own patterns and habits and we were driving each other crazy trying to change or find a way to work together (I have to say it takes a while when each of us is really stubborn).

Going back to Launchpad I started the program with a specific path in mind, having milestones and a plan of how to deliver the minimum viable product by the end of the 3 months… You can already guess that this wasn’t going to be the case. I didn’t account for all the time we were going to spend in workshops and meetings... I didn’t account for the pivots and business plans or for the product – market fit.

Rule no.8:

Always add 1/3 more time for development and 2 times more time for defining the concept and product – market fit.

What are the rules and life lessons you have learned the hard way? I’m really interested in your wisdom… so please drop a line below.
C.

We made it to Galway!

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:43:00 +0000

As promised I would like to give you an update to the Galway Cycle and the weekend we spent on the road. So here are some Galway Cycle facts for 2012 some of which are pretty impressive and some of which you might know already:

this was the 25th anniversary of the Galway Cycle
214 cyclists took part this year – which is a record so far.
22 support vehicles were on the road with us to get us to Galway safely.
1km – the length of the cycling “snake” at it’s best and 1.5km at it’s worst.
11.5 hours – the time it took us to get from Maynooth to Galway with 2 short 15min stops and 2 longer 40min stops
25km/h – the average speed we cycled at
and finally we broke the record with a running total of over €122000 raised for Down Syndrome Ireland.

Thank you all so much for supporting me and helping raise this incredible sum!

Take Some Time Off

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:09:00 +0000

So here I was on the 1^st of August without a job and with no idea of what to do next. I still had a lot of things to sort out so I didn’t really get the chance to get bored or to realise the reality of my unemployment. I also decided to take a week off and go home, to Romania. This always recharges my batteries and gives me strengths to move forward. However, later on I came to realise that one week was not enough.

Rule no.5:

When you turn your life upside down take ALL the time you need to acknowledge you made the right decision and think of a future plan.

I learned this the tough way. Unfortunately I didn’t allow myself enough time to reflect on what I’ve done so far and the opportunities that I might have in the future as well as recharge my batteries for what was to come.

The moment I quit my job I was torn between two sentiments: it felt good to be in charge and realise the endless possibilities that lay in front of me but at the same time it was really scary. The rules of our society (and some of my friends) were telling me that I was crazy to quit my job during recession without a thorough backup plan. Luckily I had my parents, my boyfriend and a couple of friends to support me. (Christian, if you read this, thanks for being there for me every time it’s getting tough and scary and for helping me make the right decisions! I really appreciate it!)

Rule no.6:

Make sure you are surrounded by people that support you. You will need them more than you realise.

So who do you have in your corner? Who is there for you no matter what, and ready to take a call in the middle of the night if necessary? Would love to hear about them in the comments. Make sure you hold on to them and remember to say thank you from time to time.

The Galway Cycle Journey

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 16:01:00 +0000

I just finished the last big training for the Galway Cycle: 92km from Maynooth to Knocksimon and back. It felt great and i have to admit that just a few months ago, when I had my first ever encounter with a bike I didn’t think I will be able to make it this far. I have to say it’s been a great journey with it’s ups and downs and I’m also the proud owner of only 2 scars from the early cycles… unfortunately both at the same knee.

To tell you a little bit more about the Galway Cycle: it al started in 1987 with 10 ambitious students from NUI Maynooth that put the basis of Maynooth Students for Charity Galway Cycle. Since then every year on the last Friday of March at NUIM Student’s Union, more and more cyclists mount their bikes heading for Eyre Square Galway with 100 volunteers following them. So far they raised over €726,000 for a number of charities.

Last year, they raised over €83,500 for Pieta House, which was the highest amount ever raised. This year is the 25th anniversary of the Galway Cycle and we are trying to break the record with a goal of raising €100,000 for the Down Syndrome Ireland.

If you are at all impressed with my cycle or if you just want to support the cause please donate a few cents below. I promise I will make the full 200km cycle to Galway and keep you updated. (I might even attempt the cycle back… Let’s hope for the best.)

Create Your Own Opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:02:00 +0000

Looking back at my experience so far (I have to mention: not necessarily a business experience as I have too little/none of it) I dare say that sometimes we need to create our own opportunities and what better motivation for this than being stuck?

Rule no.3:

Create your own opportunities; don’t just wait for them to arrive.

Some of the Lean Start-up adopters encourage you not to quit your job before you have a working prototype of what you want your business to be or at least the market validation. For me this doesn’t work because I never think the prototype is good enough or my research of the market is ever complete so I run the risk of never reaching the point of quitting and running with my own idea. I have to cut the cord. From my experience so far I found that the saying: “good things come to those who wait” should actually be: “good things come to those who dare”. Unfortunately I also need to learn how to “dare” more.

Rule no.4:

Take calculated risks.

Reading this you’ll probably think I’m contradicting myself. A minute ago I said take action, rather than getting stuck in a loop and convincing yourself that you are just not ready yet… and now I am saying take a step back and think about it for a minute.

In my point of view calculated risks include realising what you have to loose and deciding that you are ok with it. Look at the pros and cons and decide that it’s worth it. You’ll have to live with this decision for a pretty long time.

How do you create your opportunities? How do you decide what it’s worth pursuing and what is not? Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

My Experience of Starting a Business

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:28:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I came across this picture on Facebook and it made me think of my experience of starting a business.

I believe that most of it is true and it definitely shows the right progression. I kept thinking of the idea of starting a business and trying to decide if I should do it or not… If I should quit my job and just go for it… or not. It took me about a year to make this decision so I kept oscillating between the first 3 steps: I won’t do it…, I can’t do it… but I want to do it...

I finally decided to quit my job… I had no idea what I was going to do but I was looking for a change and the only way I knew how to make it happen was to give myself a kick in the behind and then figure out the next steps. So here are the first things I learned (the hard way):

Rule no.1:

Don’t wait for something to happen in order to take the next step forward.

The moment I took the decision there was no turning back, there was no waiting around. I realise that if I will keep waiting I will never do it, I will be stuck in an infinite loop, being afraid of failure.

Rule no.2:

Don’t be afraid of failure.

Ever since we start school we are taught that there is only one right answer to everything and if you don’t provide the right answer it means you failed. Ever since we are kids we are taught how to avoid failure and even be afraid of it. Unfortunately the real world doesn’t work like that. There’s no formula to apply to all the problems to ensure your success. Most of the time a problem seems to have different solutions with different outcomes. A lot of the times failing and succeeding is not up to us. We need to learn how to embrace failure and learn from it rather than being afraid of it.

Please have the courage to believe in yourselves!

Paul Sloane

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:22:00 +0000

Last week I attended a presentation by Paul Sloane on becoming a more innovative leader.
I have been a big fan of his work and I really enjoy reading his articles. If you haven’t heard of him before you can find him on Twitter @PaulSloane. When I heard he is coming to Ireland I had to go and see him speak in person. He had a great impact and he reinforced a lot of the concepts I read about in his articles. It was nice to see how they all fit together though.
Here are the main points he touched on:

Have a vision
Fight the fear of change
Think like a VC
Generate many ideas
Break the rules
Empower your people
Look outside
Manage risk and welcome failure
Build prototypes
Be passionate

One of my favourite quotes from the presentation?

“I succeed or I learn but I never fail.”

The last month…

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:51:00 +0000

After quitting my job I imagined I will have more time to dedicate to this blog. As you probably have noticed it doesn't seem to be the case. So here is my excuse for not coming back for a month:

I decided to start a business and I heard from a few friends that the best program in the country to help you launch your idea is the NDRC LaunchPad. So I decided to write a proposal around one of my ideas. I guess luck was on my side this time because after writing the proposal I also found a partner: the amazing Claire Burge. We went on and did a pitch for our idea and we got accepted. (Wohoo :-) Happy days!) However now we have to do something about it. We get 3 months of funding, support and mentoring to research the idea further and build a prototype... so the work has just begun.

Today the first articles on the LaunchPad program have started to appear in the local newspapers. Here is a quote from The Irish Times:

This is the fourth time that NDRC has run LaunchPad and this is the largest programme to date with 15 start-ups taking part. To date 30 companies have completed the programme and 30 per cent of those have gone on to secure further private investment.

Mr Leyden said there had been over 100 applicants for the course and 80 start-ups pitched their ideas to the NDRC. He said international interest was strong with five overseas applicants.

The programme concludes with the LiftOff competition where participating companies pitch to an audience of potential investors and advisors to win a share of an investment pool raised by the NDRC.

At the last LiftOff event the investment fund came to €60,000 and Mr Leyden said there was event more interest from investors in the current programme.

“Angel investors in particular are interested as they see it as us having done some of the due diligence,” said Mr Leyden.

Here are the links to the two articles if you want to read some more: The Irish Times, Silicon Republic. And by the way, the sexy girl in both photos is my business partner.

New beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:50:00 +0000

I have been blogging less and less within the last few months and I have to say a lot has happened.

In April I have been on holidays to Portugal which was amazing. We visited Faro, Vilamoura, Albufeira, Silves (see picture above), Lagos, Lisbon and Sintra; we ate great food and even been surfing. It was a brilliant experience which I definitely recommend and if you are not convinced you can find all my pictures on Flickr.

Coming back from holidays I decided it was time to finish my Master thesis (and I have to say I am pretty proud of myself for this as most of the time it felt like I will never see the end of it). All I have to do now is hard bind it and attend my graduation ceremony in November. Looking forward to it!

However this is not the biggest news I have: I decided to move on / start over. I left my job for… a “feeling”. I can’t explain it but I just felt that this is “my time”. I don’t know what’s next yet, I don’t have a plan, but it feels like the right thing to do. Sometimes you just have to go with what your heart tells you. So if you have any exciting project ideas and need a hand or just want to say hello don’t hesitate to contact me. You can find all my contact information in the Contact area.

In the spirit of the new beginning I also decided to redesign my blog. I chose the idea of a blank canvas. I think it best describes my life… starting now.

Wish me luck and also let me know what you would like to read about on this blog from now on… I’m really interested in your opinions.

Is a broken down car parked?

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:57:00 +0000

I love this video by Ian Gilbert. He is the founder of Independent Thinking which is one of the most inspirational and effective educational organisations in the UK and beyond.

In this TEDxDubai video he is talking about teaching children to think for themselves and he is achieving this through Thunks. He defines a Thunk as the noise the brain makes when it's thinking. Thunks are supposed to be deceptively tricky little questions that 'make your brain go ouch!' and here are a few examples:

Is a broken down car parked?
Is there more future than past?
If goldfish forget every 3 seconds but never remember they forget then did they really forget?
If you were to kill an evil person to prevent them from committing evil acts would that make you evil?
If you read a newspaper in the newsagents without paying for it, is it stealing?

You can find a lot more examples of Thunks on the http://www.thunks.co.uk website.

I believe the most insightful moment of the talk for me, is the definition of education. Currently teaching is about students leaving with the lecturer's thoughts and reproducing them while there is a greater power in them thinking for themselves.

Let me know what you think. Did you have that 'Aha!' moment while watching this? Did it get you thinking?

The Future of Work

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:35:00 +0000

Today I came across this interesting SlideShare presentation on The Future of Work. I decided to share it with you because it contains a lot of ideas I was contemplating during the last few years. One of them is: "College is the new high school".

Looking back at my parents generation there were very few people that were accepted into a university. Having an University degree was seen as something admirable. People holding an University degree were respected and valued by society. This has changed a lot in the last few years. Now anyone can obtain an University degree. If you have money and some idea of what you might like to do in the future you can easily become one of the most educated people in society. Even Masters degrees have become very common and it feels like their value is being diminished day by day.

I'm not saying this is either good or bad. I guess there are pros and cons on either side. My question is how do you stand out in a society where everyone has an University and Masters degree? Or better yet how do you recognize the value? What will employers look for in a CV? Are we slowly moving towards a society of over achievers?

The Future Of Work

View more presentations from Jeff Brenman

Making it Gameful

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:15:00 +0000

A few days ago I wanted to answer the two comments that were posted on my SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Cards blog post and realised that what I had to say could make more sense in another blog post.

First of all I would like to thank Stephen and Justin for taking the time to share their thoughts on the subject of gamification. I believe they are both right as I am also a big fan of Jane McGonigal’s theory of Making it Gameful rather then gamifying it.

I recently watched her talk in the Gamification Summit on “How Games Can Change the World” and this made me buy her book (which I can’t let go of at the moment): “Reality is Broken – Why games make us better and how they can change the world.”

In both the video and the book she makes a case for trying to make it feel like a game rather than just adding points, badges and leader boards to something that is not working already.

The most interesting point she makes is that “The opposite of play is not work, is depression”. Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle and we usually work a lot harder to accomplish something in a game than we do in real life. This usually happens because of 4 quintessential gamer feelings that players get when they engage in a game:

Urgent Optimism – feels like there is some heroic purpose and that we have to rise to the opportunity.
Social Fabric – when we play games with people we get a better understanding of what they are good at, we start to trust them and like them more.
Blissful Productivity – we are happy with what we accomplish and we see the impact of our efforts on the world.
Epic Meaning – we are serving a cause that is bigger than ourselves.

When adding all these feelings together we get Super Empowered Hopeful Individuals and this is what we should aim for when we are making activities gameful.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:46:00 +0000

A really good talk from a UX Designer and Researcher that is specializing in Persuasive Design. Sebastian Deterding believes that there are 3 missing ingredients in current gamification:

Meaning
- Connect to personal goals and passions
- Connect to a meaningful community of interest
- Wrap in a visually supported story
- Beware of social context meanings
Mastery
- Provide interesting challenges
- Provide clear goals, scaffolded, paced, varied
- Provide juicy feedback
- Beware of gaming the system
Autonomy
- Play is voluntary
- Beware of curbing autonomy
- Beware of devaluing your product

Enjoy the video and let me know what you think.

SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:06:00 +0000

I’ve been talking about Gamification and game dynamics a lot lately and it seems like most of the companies that decided to add that extra layer of gamification to their business have actually created lists of Game Mechanics that have proven to be successful for them.

The guys from SCVNGR don’t want to settle for only adding the gamification layer to their product, they aim to add it to the world. Their “Chief Ninja”: Seth Priebatsch is talking about this in his TED talk: The game layer on top of the world.

In the video above Seth is mentioning four game dynamics that can be used to influence behaviour:Appointment Dynamic, Influence and Status, Progression Dynamic and Communal Discovery.

Apparently these are not the only game dynamics they work with at SCVNGER. They actually have the longest list I cam across so far. This contains almost 50 game mechanics which apparently every new employ has to memorize. Among these you can find Virtual Items, Ownership, Loyalty, Pride, Achievement, Avoidance, Behavioural Momentum, Envy, Free Lunch and even Jane McGonigal’s Blissful Productivity, Social Fabric, Urgent Optimism and Epic Meaning. If you want to read more about each of these you can find them here.

My questions are: Will we end up living in a society that won’t do anything without an incentive? Will we end up surrendering our privacy to any company that gives us points? How will this impact on our daily lives?

Let me know what you think.

The World’s Most Typical Person

noreply@blogger.com (Cristina Luminea) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:18:00 +0000

Before you watch this take a moment and see if you can guess what the world’s most typical person looks like…