Teaching Failure as Wisdom With an Interactive Biographical Game

Principal Investigator
Shannon Johnson, Media Arts and Sciences; Prof. Ed Boyden, Media Arts and Sciences
Fund: Alumni Class Funds
Funding Period: AY2022
Department/Lab/Center: Media Arts and Sciences

To develop an impactful technology requires many prior failures. Not because it is impossible to achieve success the first time, but because failing the right way provides insight into improving future iterations of the technology or it may provoke a pivot into an entirely novel direction. How to fail and improve one’s intuition in the process cannot be fully captured in a textbook since it requires a change in behavior, in habits, so for MAS.881/9.42z2/20.452 “Principles of Neurotechnology,” we are developing a web-based, biographical game that will enable students to live through informative moments of the development of existing neurotechnologies and tie the lessons learned from the game to the class discussions and reinforcing homework assignments. Students will peak behind the curtain of success to see that time and again, impactful technologies are built on the foundation of good failures.