Starting Learning App Projects With Building a Toy?

Applying Gordon Brander's Mental Model to Educational Software

Gordon Brander recommends to start with a toy.

Toys are, in his definition:

• fun

• inviting

• free of (directed) goals

• non-threatening to the existing players

Say we want to build a learning tool — how would we apply this mental model?

First, I think we have to admin that we are inherently stretching the mental model, because declaring that we want to build a "learning tool" is declaring a goal. But that's also the interesting conflict, given how central explicit goals are in common paradigms of educational software design. Thou shalt communicate the goal structure, and all that.

That said, I can think of two ways:

• Build the main mechanic (core game loop) of the learning tool and leave out any grading or feedback. For example, build a fancy cloze deletion setup, but don't show any kind of feedback, progress or evaluation, simply let the user play around with it.

• Offer up the learning material to explore, without any kind of exercise. For example, instead of building an interaction where the user has to find a country on the world map, build an interactive map allowing the user to explore.