Learn from Computer Games

The content of the majority of computer games may be an anathema to authors of serious interactive texts, but their design often makes engaging use of the pleasures of electronic media. Consider:

Challenge: Provide clear short-term and long-term goals, performance feedback, and successive layers of difficulty, but keep the outcome in question.

Fantasy: Use emotionally appealing metaphors that the user can navigate by recalling real-world experiences.

Curiosity: Manage information complexity through audio and visual effects, randomness, and humor. Capitalize on the user's desire to possess well-formed knowledge structures by introducing new information when existing knowledge is incomplete, inconsistent, or unparsimonious.