Cutting Through the Bias: Using Games and Interactive Experiences to Transform Bias Against Women in Stem.
Tiltfactor develops games that explore challenging and complex social issues to understand how and when games can have impact. We design, build, and study novel games drawing on what psychologists have discovered about biases such as implicit bias, stereotype threat, prejudice, and confirmation bias in order to reduce poor decision making, limitations in education and careers, and more. One particular strand is our work on stereotype threat and implicit bias toward women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
We compiled our research on these subjects into a book called Cutting Through the Bias: Using Games and Interactive Experiences to Transform Bias Against Women in Stem. You can buy a copy here or download a pdf of the book here. The games that we have created as a part of this research include:
- Awkward Moment, a party card game for middle school age kids and older; preliminary findings suggest that Awkward Moment strengthens associations between women and STEM and inspires greater assertiveness in confronting social bias.
- Buffalo, a fast-paced party card game for adults and families; initial data suggests that buffalo reduces prejudice and encourages greater inclusiveness in players' representations of social identity groups.
These games are part of the National Science Foundation-funded project, "Transforming STEM For Women and Girls: Reworking Stereotypes & Bias", with additional assistance from the
National Girls Collaborative Project. Publications include:
METADATA GAMES
We seek to understand the ways in which games, play, and social computing can work together to solve pressing societal needs.
Metadata Games (MG) is a free and open source online game system for gathering useful data for digital archives. Our aims are to create fun and engaging online experiences for players while contributing to vital archival records, and offer opportunities for cultural heritage institutions and players to connect with one another in ways they may not have otherwise. With Metadata Games, we are investigating how player motivation, game design, crowdsourcing, and natural language techniques can produce more –and higher quality– metadata for more accurate search and improve community engagement. We are working with partners at the
Boston Public Library, the
Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth, and the
Digital Public Library of America, among others. One Up, a two-player asynchronous image tagging game for mobile devices. This is a multi-round game where you score points for submitting single-word tags and try to get more points than your opponent. One Up is designed to foster higher quality tag submissions; a more detailed explanation of the methodology and preliminary test results was published as part of the
2013 Digital Games Research Associations (DiGRA) Proceedings.
- Zen Tag, a single player game where one inputs, at their own pace, words and phrases that describe the image before them.
- Pyramid Tag, a timed single player mobile game where players try to describe an image and match as many words as possible with a group of experts.
- NexTag, a minimalized version of Zen Tag, Nex Tag offers players the ability to tag audio and moving image media.
These games are designed to be played online and also on mobile devices.
HEALTH
Our health games advance better understanding of community health issues. We investigate how design, quality, psychology, and innovation in games can result in better health communities and health outcomes. Our games aim to promote self-care, immunization and disease prevention, HIV/AIDS education, health care systems understanding, mental health, and more. We have worked with
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, the Minister of Health of Rwanda, and the
Rippel Foundation. A sample of our games for health work includes:
- POX: SAVE THE PEOPLE, a board game and iPad app that helps players understand the concept of herd immunity through vaccination.
- Microbes, a card game developed for the Minister of Health of Rwanda to improve rates of handwashing among youth both at home and abroad.
- RePlay Health, a freely-downloadable role-playing sport that models the American health care system and allows players to change the system (developed with The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science and the Rippel Foundation).
- In The Village, a card game that teaches self sacrificial sharing in the prevention of malaria.
- Pathways for Quality, a card game to help communities organize as part of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Aligning Forces for Quality effort.
Publications include:
- Potter, S.J., Flanagan, M., Seidman, S., Hodges, H., & Stapleton, J.G. (2018). Developing and Piloting Videogames to Increase College and University Students' Awareness and Efficacy of the Bystander Role in Incidents of Sexual Violence. Games for Health Journal. doi: 10.1089/g4h.2017.0172
- Kaufman, Geoff and Flanagan, M. "Lost in Translation: Comparing the Impact of an Analog and Digital Version of a Public Health Game on Players' Perceptions, Attitudes, and Cognitions." International Journal of Games and Computer Mediated Simulations 5(3) 2013, 1-9.
- Flanagan, M., Seidman, M., Belman, J., Punjasthitkul, S., Downs, Z., Ayoob, M., Driscoll, A., and Downs, M. Preventing a POX Among the People? A Design Case Study of a Public Health Game. Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play, Hilversum, Netherlands.
- Belman, J., Nissenbaum, H., Flanagan, M., and Diamond, J. Grow-A-Game: A Tool for Values Conscious Design and Analysis of Digital Games. Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play, Hilversum, Netherlands.
- Belman, J. and Flanagan, M. Exploring the Creative Potential of Values Conscious Design: Students' Experiences with the VAP Curriculum. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
- Kaufman, G., Flanagan, M., & Freedman, G. (2019). Not Just for Girls: Encouraging Cross-Gender Role Play and Reducing Gender Stereotypes with a Strategy Game. CHI PLAY '19 Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play doi: 10.1145/3311350.3347177
