The Open University, who partnered with the BBC on its production, commissioned Six to Start to produce a game to complement the show.

I was kindly asked to be producer for the project, and this is the result:

Seven Ages of Britain: The Quest - Click to play!

How it works

Each week after the show we pose seven questions about the objects behind the show. Unlike a straightforward quiz, the questions are very tough – but you’re allowed to use any site on the web to answer the questions.

We even got David himself to do the links..

I’m really pleased with the results and our testers seem to have been having great fun trying to crack the answers.

A few specific things I like about the project:

It’s hard

None of the questions on this should take more than 3-10 minutes to solve – but each is a challenge and requires really reading into the subjects and in some cases clever web searches.

I always think difficult games are much more fun than easy ones. Even so, games and quizzes are often far too easy so they’ll be more inclusive. Cryptic crosswords aren’t inclusive. Nor is chess.

It gets people looking in new places on the web

To answer the questions, you have to look through (amongst other sources) the Domesday Book, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary and old copies of the Guardian. It’s been great seeing people’s excitement at finding these sources for the first time.

I’ve found that while people play they tend to get distracted by the things they find and occasionally have to remember to come back and carry on playing – in this context, this is a good thing!

It’s about searching, not knowledge

I think there’s a really serious point about new forms of education in all this. So much information is now available to us that knowing how to search for it, work out its validity and process it are going to be essential skills for the future.

I think games like this are a really fun way of teaching digital literacy.

So, have a play and let me know what you think.

PS thanks to Adrian Hon, exec producer for the project who asked me to be involved, and everyone else who worked on the project. More on the credits page.

(Pic by Uwe Hermann)

Danah Boyd:

In a harsh, competitive media landscape, people will often consume content that is most stimulating, and that triggers a strong reaction, rather than that which is best or most informative.

In a food context, this is a bit like eating sugary and fatty food. When these were limited resources, we learned to eat them as much as we could. Now they’re ubiquitous, we start to see problems.

If we’re not careful we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity.

Definitely one of the down-sides of all this choice I think.

I sometimes feel like writing a series of posts dispelling some of myths which surrounding the endless utopian talk about social media and how it’s going to save us all – this might be a good starting point.

The quote’s from this video BTW (I’m paraphrasing):

Recently I’ve been working with the mighty Six to Start on the digital content for E4’s upcoming drama Misfits.

Here’s the shizzle on the show:

When five young outsiders on Community Service get caught in a strange storm they quickly discover that they have developed superpowers, but unlike their more conventional superhero counterparts, they don’t trade in their Reebok classics and ankle tags for capes and tights.

More on the E4 Site.

I’m helping the team to deliver a bunch of sponsored content for Nokia, most of which will be in-character social media content – all very exciting. We’re doing some stuff that hasn’t been done before – the Guardian wrote about it last week if you want to know more.

I’m really excited about working with Six to Start – they’re doing loads of good stuff at the moment.

And watch the drama, I think it’s going to be a good one..

We’re very pleased to announce the opening of the Frankenlab.

This is the home of Dr. Victor Emelius Frankenstory, eponymous inventor of the world famous writing game, and a place where he will be regularly displaying and dissecting his favourite stories.

The Dr. is ably played by Nick Lockey – do check it out, it’s bloody hilarious. And the usual big up to Mike n Suzie on pencils and syntax.

Or, like all good mad scientists, you can follow him on Twitter.

I’m really pleased to announce a new project for 2010, codenamed Retooled.

The project will work with ex-manufacturing employees from the West Midlands, skilling them up in social media and working together on a challenge which mixes old and new skills.

I will be leading on the project on behalf of Maverick TV, and it’s been commissioned as part of the Public Participation Projects for this year’s Hello Digital.

We’ll post more details closer to the time.

The project’s still in concept stage at the moment – if you’re interested in getting involved or inputting in some way, please do get in touch.

Pic by Hvargas

The project itself hasn’t be announced yet but it’s a great idea which is right up my street.

I’m also working on:

• Some more web strategy work with Impactt (world leading labour standards consultancy – check out their blog, it’s brilliant)
• A project run by ERA helping cultural organisations in the North East to develop digital strategies
• A bunch of multiplatform pitches to various commissioners in partnership with various people- whenever I have a spare 10 minutes..

So, looks like over the next year I’m going to be continuing to work between Birmingham and London, focussing on ideas and production for digital and multiplatform projects. As usual, there’s a public service / educational slant but in the end if it’s innovative then I’m interested.

Check out the about page for an updated description of what I’m doing & get in touch if you want to talk ideas.

We still tend to class new media / social media / web projects as being about “technology”, and I’m starting to get fed up of it. It’s especially bad at conferences – people are always talking about the tools as if they’re the only thing that’s important.

Our industry is no more about technology than filmmaking is about cameras or editing software.

Just like in filmmaking, digital projects need a whole raft of creative people to make them happen.

We need people to guard the direction of a project (just like a film director), producers, people to write content, people to facilitate communities (if it’s that kind of site). Of course we need technical to people build our websites, but they’re only a part of the solution.

I used to be a techie, and when you’re thinking about the nuts and bolts, it’s practically impossible to also be thinking about the “big idea”.

All of the commissioners I’ve been speaking to recently are despairing about the fact that digital agencies aren’t pitching them ideas, concepts or formats - they’re pitching tools and technology.

The best digital ideas I’ve heard recently I’ve heard have been coming out of TV companies – probably because they’re used to thinking about audiences and what will actually engage people. The most talented digital ideas people I know have never touched a line of code in their lives.

So, please can we stop this lazy association?

And please, if you’re not a techie, but you’re massively talented, will you come and join us? We promise, our industry is actually growing at the moment and you’ll have much more fun over here..

Pic by Lomokev

When it comes to changing the world, I believe that scaring the shit out of people only works up to a point.

I really love this quote:

“Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech is famous because it put forward an inspiring, positive vision that carried a critique of the current moment within it. Imagine how history would have turned out had King given an ‘I have a nightmare’ speech instead.”

From the book Breakthrough by Nordhaus and Shellenberger

Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that the environmental movement needs to reframe its message to use more positive language. Instead of relying on a narrative focused on apocalyptic imagery, death and destruction, we must start to use messages which help us to feel good about creating a more sustainable world.

I think this is true for many other types of public service media.

Anti-bullying campaigns, Anti-knife crime, anti-social behaviour – they’re all based on a very suspect premise that you can wage war on something that in itself is a negative (remember the War on Terror? We all know how successful that turned out to be).

How could we start to re-frame these issues using a more positive language that gives people the feeling that they can move forwards and make things better? If we don’t, I worry that those who we are targetting will simply switch off and not listen to us anymore.

Or am I just being a typical sandal-wearing muesli-eating liberal?  Don’t hold back..

(Pic by Only Alice)

I’ve seen some shocking cases of Stakeholderitis this year, but last week I saw an inspiring example of how to avoid it.

Nick Torday from Breast Cancer Care gave a wonderful talk at Aquent’s Third Sector Forum event about the 2 year redesign of their website.

What really impressed was me how the charity put user experience at the heart of the redesign process from start to finish. The first thing they did was to hire a user experience design and research company (Flow Interactive) to work with users to find out what they needed. This ended up being centred primarily around the cancer sufferers themselves, and specifically around each person’s position on the cancer “journey” (a fascinating concept which warrants a post in itself).

This was a huge change from the previous website, whose homepage was dominated by fundraising messages. The research suggested putting these messages to the background.  There was restistance from the fundraising and marketing departments, but by having solid research and making these into firm business cases the user experience won through.

To help things along, they involved people from different departments in the design, including a nurse with no previous new media skills who came on to the design team full-time.

The result? Huge increase in traffic and quality of experience, no decrease in funds raised, Impressive stuff.

We’ve just built a new toy called Frankenstory.

It’s an electronic version of the old game consequences where one player writes the first part of a story on an A4 piece of paper, then folds it over leaving only the last line visible – you know the one.

Do have a play and let me know what you think. I can honestly say that some of the results from testing have been side-splittingly funny.

It’s been developed by Mike Stenhouse (UX and developer extraordinaire) on development, Suzie Webb (scarily talented creative director) and myself – we’ve made a pretty good team I think and are going to do more stuff like this. Let us know if you’re up for a collaboration.

Oh yeah, and there’s the obligatory blog and twitter feed.: