Playful Inquiry: An Interview with Ross Kukulinski

What Is Playful Inquiry?

Inquiry
Inquiry is the science, art and spirit of imagination. We naturally associate Inquiry with the logical mind’s intent to satisfy curiosity, solve problems, and explore ideas. Inquiry helps us connect our prior understanding to new experiences, modify and accommodate our previously held beliefs and conceptual models, and construct new knowledge.

Antonyms found in the dictionary: Answer, reply

Playful

Playful describes a state of surrender. It involves being open, letting go, and embracing unexpected direction or results. Being playful has positive effects on the body and the brain. Problem solving ability increases after a person has spent some time laughing. This works because laughter turns off the posterior hypothalamus and allows the cerebral cortex to focus on a given task.

Antonyms found in the dictionary: Earnest, serious-minded, sober, humorless, serious, working

8/20/12

An Interview with Ross Kukulinski

Taking Play Seriously with Truly Amazing People:

An Interview with Ross Kukulinski

This week Ross will be presenting at the Serious Play Conference near Seattle, Washington, with a talk titled “Serious Communication for Serious Games”

Interview Team: Lori Sortino and Emily Swift

This is one in a series of interviews being conducted on the topic of Serious Play, Serious Gaming -- using games, simulation and virtual worlds to help stimulate learning in innovative new ways and find real world solutions.

Ross H. Kukulinski is the Director of Product Development at Advanced Simulation Technology inc. His team works to develop innovative solutions for conventional military and commercial training. Additionally, ASTi's gaming product team builds COTS voice communication and radio simulation for serious games. Prior to his product development role, Ross worked as a project engineer, interfacing with customers and gaining hands-on experience designing full-fidelity sound and communication models for flight simulators. Now, Ross is actively seeking new ways to bridge the gap between higher-fidelity training systems and serious games in the L-V-C environment. Ross earned his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a concentration in embedded real-time systems at Carnegie Mellon University.

Q: How has military unit-based training evolved in the last decade?

A: I think ‘evolved’ is an excellent term to describe the progress military unit-based training has made and continues to make. While modifications to military doctrine occur slower than their commercial counterparts, there have been a number of additions to military training that are saving lives and money. Most notably in my mind is the use of serious games to improve understanding of tactics techniques and procedures (TTPs) for new recruits prior to live training as well as combined arms training. With that said, however, I think it is important to note that serious games will never replace live training – rather serious games can supplement live as a form of blended training.

Q: You specialize in voice communication. Why is this such an important component of a military simulation?

A: I will explore this topic in much greater detail in my talk at the Serious Play Conference, but one of the fundamental requirements for teamwork is effective communication. It is essential that military training simulations include accurate communication modeling to ensure that trainees communicate as they would in the real world. For example, one of the primary duties of a convoy vehicle commander is to relay messages between his vehicle, other vehicles, and the command headquarters. The radio channels tend to be very busy so the commander must quickly determine which information is pertinent to the mission and pass it on as needed. Several instructors have vented their frustration to me regarding the built-in communication systems in many serious games. In these simulations, unlike the real world, all players are on the same voice channel. This means that the commanders are missing out on essential communication practice and this negative training is endangering lives when the commanders are deployed. The instructors simply want a communication system for serious games that models the real world for proper and effective training.

Q: What breakthroughs have been made in communication simulation in recent years?

A: Big-name vendors of voice communication and radio simulation have been providing high-fidelity radio communication for decades. Unfortunately, these capabilities are usually found only in the highest-fidelity training devices such as flight simulators.
What we have seen in recent years, however, is an expansion in the availability of these communication systems in a wide variety of training environments. By replacing expensive hardware-based interfaces with software clients, vendors have found a way to cut costs without sacrificing fidelity. Serious games can now have integrated communication systems that accurately model the real world. Furthermore, due to vendors’ experiences in distributed training exercises, serious games can interact not only with other games, but full-fidelity flight trainers as well as with live training. We call this Live-Virtual-Constructive training.
One of the outcomes of L-V-C exercises is an increase in the number of communicating players. To that end, we have been focusing on the scalability of our systems to support thousands of players using a variety of cloud-inspired techniques as well as innovating new user interfaces such as mobile devices.

Q: Besides military use, where else could this new communication product be used?

A: In commercial markets, these communication systems can be used in a variety of gaming applications, such as MMORPGs and first-person shooter games. Additionally, these systems can be used in any situation where teamwork training is required. For example, medical personnel such as doctors, nurses, and administrators, rely on effective communication to provide outstanding patient care. High-fidelity communication systems are crucial in these non-military games and training scenarios to improve the user experience and further the learning objectives.

Q: What are the challenges to the industry right now?

A: We have seen an uptick in the adoption of serious games for training in the military, but there are still a number of hurdles to overcome. While some commanders are embracing the cost saving and effective training provided by serious games, many still view them as expensive toys. It is important for industry and government to push for games that provide the best training, not ones boasting ultra-realistic graphics. Additionally, we need to take a close look at the training requirements and find one or more games that provide a comprehensive solution. I’m not convinced that a one-size-fits-all serious game will solve the complex training requirements for the military.

TrulyAmazingPeople.com is an organization devoted to helping individuals, families and communities seeking meaningful work, whole system change, and talent integration ecosystems. TrulyAmazingPeople.com would like to thank the Serious Games Association, The Bohle Company, and the Future Working Together community for their assistance with our research.

Lori Sortino, Lyn Wiltse, and Emily Swift are Truly Amazing People. Lori and Lyn are Creative Solutions Consultants who host Playful Inquiry events. Emily Swift is a technical writer with a BS in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies.

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Inquiring About Serious Play

In spring, 2012, Lori began to inquire about the application of game design in helping whole communities and cultures shift to their desired vision for their community or organization. This inquiry looks at the structural aspects, which include purpose, rules, protocols, expectations, member/participant behavior, environment, roles, controls, types of feedback and how feedback influences choice and outcomes; basically systems based views. Gamers are very open about their behavior; they don’t waste time hiding the fact that they may be using cheat codes. They’re more concerned with doing whatever it takes to reach their goal. They dedicate full resources to their mission and work under intolerable conditions; focusing on task often for hours and hours without breaking for anything beyond essential physical biological needs. Compare this to the secret life of organizations in corporate culture (a phrase borrowed from Dr. Ariane David), where people spend more time and energy hiding their true motivations, avoiding authenticity, and unintentionally misunderstanding almost everyone around them. Lori found herself becoming more and more vocal, saying essentially, “Most will acknowledge that organizations are dysfunctional, but can we please move beyond creating comic strips, embrace our intelligence, and accept responsibility for our collective experience?”

Lori quickly found the Serious Play Conference, scheduled in August 2012, and realized this would be a superb environment for immersion. This sparked the desire to interview the conference presenters, and those interviews are being shared here on the Playful Inquiry site. Whole fields and disciplines are merging in some of the work and research being done; it's fascinating. While the sectors of education, public health and public defense are certainly engaged in the Serious Games and Serious Play dialog, Lori is keenly interested in the conversation on behalf of the collections of individuals that are coming together looking to collaborate on co-creating better communities and a better world. How can we improve connecting talented individuals with the work they are good at and love to do? How can we support the individual and independent people who want to contribute and are looking for a place to plug in and “play” in real life? How do we more effectively allow the innate desire in people to make the world a better place to be realized? How? By realizing why.

"We've seen what the Gaming Guilds are capable of in terms of their ability to form teams based on strengths as well as their completely organic models for shared leadership," says Norma Owen, who, along with Lori Sortino, is holding regular conversations about the applications for the Future of Work and Nurturing the Essence of Community. Lori claims "If we watch what's going on in the gaming community, and ask ourselves what it would take to bring those conditions into the world of work and community, we will accelerate the shift to our collective desired reality. If we can become a talented orchestra with the structure of music composition, the playbook of sheet music, and the discipline of practice, then we can borrow the process and play with games and simulation until we practice ourselves into better ways of working and being."

The momentum behind this inquiry for Lori includes her work with Lyn facilitating Playful Inquiry, and also her work with the Future Working Together Guild, which is a Network of consultants, teachers, coaches, and other professionals who are bringing new models of working together to the world of work, offering conferences that border on simulation and are the bridge to introducing new creative models to existing communities and organizations. In addition, the systems thinking background that Lyn and Lori share provides a structure for studying systems in the process of inquiring about how to change any aspect of our life experience; work, relationships, education, our health, etc.

Lori’s work with facilitating community groups, designing events, and connecting groups and individuals for collaboration has placed her in countless intimate conversations; a sort of un-reportable yet very real research that results in a knowing about what’s deeply important to people; what they’re yearning for and where our collective hope resides. Our experience with any aspect of life is somewhere on a continuum. Playful Inquiry is the invitation to look at our own individual approach, our unique experience, our current challenges; the things we are trying to change or bring into our life, and the level of importance.

What does it mean to be serious? What does it mean to play? Serious Play, in essence, points to an emotional connection with an outcome. It indicates that people are concerned about how things turn out. Why? Because they believe the outcome matters. They have identified a need and have connected to a calling to meet that need somehow, and this creates a focus and an intention. We view focus and intention as serious rather than playful.

The art, though, is noticing when the focus and intention becomes attached to the "how". Playful Inquiry invites us to let go of the how in order to reconnect with the why. Why do gamers spend hours and hours on line playing games? What are the very real needs that get met with this activity? Grab an open mind and take a look: community, recreation, immersion, strategy, problem solving, competency, belonging, accomplishment, autonomy, self-reliance, collaboration, completion, respect, opportunity to lead, celebration, creativity, exploration, and more.

These are real life basic needs that everyone has to some degree and so many of these needs are met in reality via on line gaming and are largely NOT being met in mainstream educational and work environments and cultures. Part of the shift in consciousness being explored by hundreds of groups is acknowledging the power and importance of these basic human needs and harnessing that awareness in the designing and nurturing of community going forward.

To play, or not to play. Observe or participate. It’s your life. If you’re not happy with recent outcomes, do some research for yourself and play it a little differently.

Biographies

Lyn Wiltse (left) and Lori Steed Sortino (right) are passionate about helping individuals and teams ask the right questions to achieve their goals. They will no doubt tell stories about their trip to Brazil and want for you similar experiences in life: The opportunity to immerse yourselves in a different culture, language, and political reality, the ability to recognize the truth of who you are, and the realization of how you can best contribute to the world.

Lyn Wiltse is the founder and president of PDSA Consulting, Inc. She is a graduate of Willamette University and holds a Master’s degree in Educational Policy and Management from the University of Oregon. She has over 25 years of experience facilitating process improvement and interest-based collaborative initiatives. She demonstrates empathetic listening which creates a trusting environment for relationship-building and consideration of new ideas, especially regarding the potential impact each person has on surrounding systems.

Lori Steed Sortino facilitates groups and mentors leaders with an emphasis on individual growth and transformation that supports and encourages our capacity for embodying authenticity. Key themes in her work are transparency, awareness, aligning with core beliefs and core values, and integrating what we do well and what we most love to do. Her diverse background includes corporate management and training, continuous improvement, project management, and solution discovery. She's a starter, innovator, designer and photographer with a focus on celebrating life.

Quotes

Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Steve Jobs

In the degree that we remember and retell our stories and create new ones, we become the authors, the authorities, of our own lives.

Sam Keen

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.

Tuli Kupferberg

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Henry Miller

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

Japanese Proverb

On with the dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto, whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

Mark Twain

Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will insert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safer, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

Cecil Beaton

Viola Spolin:

Play is democratic! Anyone can play! Everyone can learn through playing! Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person – mind and body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition, when all are attentive to the moment.

Intuition bypasses the intellect, the mind, the memory, the known. Using intuition cannot be taught. One must be tripped into it.

There is, clearly, a strong resemblance between improvisation in the theater and jazz. Art Farmer, the jazz flugelhorn player, says, “You can never force what you’re doing. The harder you try, the less happens. At the best time, it’s as if you had been taken over by some other power. This power plays you and you become the instrument.”

The heart of improvisation is transformation.

Creativity is not rearranging; it’s transformation.

The Spolin theater games are artifices against artificiality, structures designed to almost fool spontaneity into being – or perhaps a frame carefully built to keep out interferences in which the player waits. Important in the game is the “ball” – the Focus, a technical problem, sometimes a double technical problem which keeps the mind (a sensoring device) so busy rubbing its stomach and its head in opposite directions, so to speak, that genius (spontaneity), unguarded, happens.” Film Quarterly.

When we are conditioned to look to others before we can respond, a time-lag is established, a space, a gap, between query and response, which allows the approval / disapproval syndrome to show itself. There is no integrity, no honesty in the reaction of someone debating, “Should I or shouldn’t I?”

Play experience can prepare the student for purposefulness in non-play activities, for true play creates the incentive to use one’s best ability.

Neva Boyd

Excitement and enthusiasm are a precondition to breakthrough.

Schiller taught us long ago that we are fully human when we are at play.

Eric Bentley

What Is Playful Inquiry?

8/20/12

An Interview with Ross Kukulinski

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