Shanghai Tech WriterTechnical Writing, Technology, Web2.0, Google, Shanghai, China

I love to play board games! Over the years, I’ve accumulated a huge collection of board games, including old school games (like Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, Connect Four, Taboo, Pictionary, etc…) and new school games (like Settlers of Catan, Power Grid, Carcassone, El Grande, Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico, etc..). Unless you’re a big fan of board games, you’ve probably never heard of these newer games before. Most of these newer games are created by the Germans. I suppose the Germans love to play board games.

The thing with German games as well as the newer games is that they are super fun to play but also super hard to learn. Unless somebody already knew how to play the games, they’re difficult to learn because the setup is complicated, the rules are complicated, and there’s a bunch of different ways to play.

Fortunately, most of my early exposures to these fun German games have been introduced by friends. Some friend or friend of friend got a new game, taught someone or me how to play, then I went and bought one too. I’ve never had to learn a game by reading the instructions/game rules. I’d occasionally look at them to reference a specific rule or game play, but that’s about it.

Learn By Reading?

Every so often, I’d go to Board Game Geek to check out board game rankings, reviews, and awards. Then I’d order some of the popular games from CardHaus, which has one of the lowest prices for board games online.

Last year, I went overboard and bought 10-15 board games all at once. When the games arrived, I was excited to learn these new games. Unfortunately, nobody knew how to play any of them.

The instruction booklets that come with these games are like 30-50 pages with a million and one rules to remember. I’ve tried reading through some of them, but have had no luck deciphering the game play/rules. I wouldn’t exactly say that the instructions were poorly written. That may or may not be the case, but I am slowly coming to the realization that I can’t learn by reading!

Learn By Listening?

Last week, my husband and I went to a friend’s house. My friend wanted to play Risk 2210 A.D., which neither of us knew how to play. The game is very different from the original Risk. My friend spent a good half an hour explaining the game play/rules to us. I was completely lost and daydreaming about Nazis with their silly moustache, the crazy Kamikaze pilots, and that one time when I played a 6-hour long game of Risk several years ago. When my friend finally finished explaining the game, I came to another shocking realization that I am a TERRIBLE listener. I can’t learn by listening either! How tragic.

So we started the game, and I had no clue as to what I was supposed to do. I volunteered to be last, as always. I let everybody else go first, observing what they were doing, and asking a few questions here and there. It didn’t take very long to figure out the game play. By the time we made the first round, I got the gist of the game. Granted, I was still discovering a few rules and caveats throughout the game, but I had a lot of fun playing Risk 2210 for the first time. The game lasted 3+ hours! I was winning all the way up to Year 5, then I lost because I was first to play the round instead of last (which is what you need to do to win). Next time…

Learn By Watching and Doing?

Last night, some friends came over and brought new games over! One friend spent 15-20 minutes reading the instructions for this game called For Sale. She read the rules out loud while my husband listened attentively. He’s definitely an auditory learner. I just sat and twiddled my thumb played with the game pieces, waiting impatiently for the game to start. Once the game started, I caught on immediately and wouldn’t you believe it, I actually won the game by a huge margin! I am definitely a hands-on person!

My friend commented on the strangeness of how I can be a technical writer and not be able to learn by reading. I laughed and said jokingly, “I know. I hate to read what I write.”

I wish I could turn all instruction manuals into cartoons and videos. That’s how I would have liked to learn things.

Learning Styles

Last October, I went to Austin for our internal technical communication conference. I gave a presentation addressing this very issue regarding learning styles in technical writing. Since most manuals are in the written/text-based form, you’d think that people like to learn (or learn best) by reading. However, in my 6 years of experience teaching elementary and middle school students, that is far from the case. Most of my students preferred learning via hands-on activities and interactive projects that require minimal reading/writing.

Perhaps learning styles change over the years when students move on to adulthood? For me, I learn best using visual and hands-on (kinesthetic) methods. Am I the only one still stuck in my elementary ways of learning? That was what I wanted to find out during my presentation about learning styles.

Origami Mini-Activity

At the start of the presentation, I surveyed the room to see what people thought their main learning style was. There was an even distribution of different types of learners across the room, as expected. Then I divided the room into 3 groups for a “hands-on” activity—folding origami boxes.  The goal of the activity was to fold an origami box using the instructions assigned to each group.

• Group 1—This group received a text-only set of instructions.
• Group 2—This group received a picture-only set of instructions.
• Group 3—This group had an instructor that taught them how to fold the box.

I gave everyone 5 minutes to complete the activity without looking at anyone else’s box or asking for help. At the end of 5 minutes, I had everyone lift up their origami box (or what they were able to make of it). You can probably guess what happened!

• Group 1—A few people were able to finish making their origami box, but most didn’t because the instructions were “poorly written” (or so they thought), difficult to understand, or they just didn’t have enough time to finish the activity. Some had origami folds that did not even remotely resemble a box! The problem with the written instructions was that if they missed a step, it was hard to continue. One person screwed up on the first step, so the rest was disastrous.
• Group 2—This group did very well. Almost everyone finished their origami box in a short amount of time.
• Group 3—This group also did very well! EVERYONE finished their origami box, perfectly! This group took almost the entire 5 minutes to complete, slowly but surely.

When everyone saw the results of the 3 groups, there was a lot of chatter in the room. This “hands-on” activity confirmed my suspicion all along that people are more visual/kinesthetic/auditory learners than they are read/write learners. Some were quite surprised to find that they weren’t the read/write learner as they thought they were. The funny thing was that everyone in the room was either a technical writer or a translator, and we spend the bulk of our working hours writing mostly text-based documentation! And that was exactly the point I wanted to drive across in my presentation—that while most technical communicators are good with words, we need to look at technical “writing” in a new light and take into perspective that our end-users may or may not be read/write learners.

Learning Puerto Rico

So anyway, back to my love for playing board games. I have this game called Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico ranked #2 on the board game ranking, so I bought it. The game was SUPER HARD to learn! I couldn’t understand the manual because it was really long and wordy. My brother-in-law played it once with friends, so he tried to explain the game to me one time when I was jetlagged. We gave up playing after the first turn and never attempted to play it again.

Later, I found an online interactive tutorial that explained the game play/rules. I also found this Excel macro that somebody created. The macro allows you to play the entire Puerto Rico with bots. It took a while, but I was finally able to figure out how to play the game from watching the interactive tutorial and playing with bots. And yes, Puerto Rico is A LOT of fun!

If I had a dream job, it’d be working for a game company and coming up with interactive tutorials. Actually, that was the job I turned down to work at NI because the office was all the way in Xujiahui (Puxi). The commute would have been 3 hours roundtrip instead of my current 10 minutes bike ride to work!!

Next life…