Explorable Explanations What are they? What do they explain? How do we work with them? Let's find out. by Jesper Hyldahl Fogh May, 2018 Thesis-project – Interaction Design Master at K3 / Malmö University / Sweden Examiner: Maria Engberg Supervisor: Simon Niedenthal Time of examination: 28th of May, 13:00 Page 1 / 35 ​ TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 ABSTRACT 3 1 · INTRODUCTION 3 1.1 · Research Question 3 1.2 · Delimitation 3 1.3 · Structure 3 2 · THEORY 5 2.1 · Generic Design 5 Critiques 6 2.2 · Educational games theory 6 Educational games 7 Games research 7 Play, games, toys, and simulations 7 Mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics 8 Intro to relevant educational theory 9 The cognitive process dimension 9 The knowledge dimension 10 2.3 · What's next? 10 3 · ANALYSIS 10 3.1 · Explorable explanations 11 The categories of analysis 12 General examples 13 Simulating the World In Emojis 14 Introduction to A* 15 Notable examples 15 4D Toys 15 Pink trombone 16 Page 2 / 35 ​ Something Something Soup Something 16 Hooked 17 The Monty Hall Problem 17 Talking with God 17 Fake it to Make It 18 So what are explorable explanations then? 18 What's next? 19 4 · METHODOLOGY 19 4.1 · Sketching and prototyping 19 4.2 · Evaluation 19 5 · DESIGN PROCESS 20 5.1 · The design goals 20 5.2 · Neural networks 20 What are neural networks? 20 Why neural networks make sense as a subject 21 5.3 · The three iterations 21 Iteration 1 · The Visualized Network 21 Evaluating the iteration 22 Iteration 2 · The World's Dumbest Dog 22 Evaluating the iteration 23 Iteration 3 · A Tale of 70.000 Numbers 24 Evaluating the iteration 24 5.4 · A summary of the whole design process 25 6 · REFLECTION & FUTURE WORK 25 6.1 · Reflection 25 Method 25 6.2 · Future work 26 For designers 26 For researchers 27 7 · CONCLUSION 27 Page 3 / 35 ​ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 27 REFERENCES 28 APPENDICES 31 Page 4 / 35 ​ ABSTRACT In this paper, the author examines the concept of explorable explanations. It has emerged as a genre of educational software within the last 7 years, yet descriptions of it are vague at best. The author works with the genre through a generic design approach that consists of an analysis of existing explorables and the design of three iterations of the author's own explorable explanation on the topic of neural networks. 22 examples, of which 9 are presented in-depth, are analyzed with educational theory and games research theory as tools. It is found that explorable explanations tend to be digital experiences with a high degree of interactivity that attempt to teach facts, concepts and procedures to the user. Furthermore, the author embarks on a design process of creating explorable explanations of their own to understand what can be relevant when designing and evaluating an explorable explanation. The paper is concluded with reflections on the employed method in the project. Future work is also briefly outlined about what impact the analysis and design work can have on the practice of other designers seeking to work with the genre, as well as to other researchers. Page 5 / 35 ​ 1 · INTRODUCTION There is an explorable explanation that teaches how the human voice works (Thapen, 2017). Another one, called Fake it to Make It (Warner, 2017), teaches how and why fake news works. You can even find one that introduces the concept of the fourth dimension through play (ten Bosch, 2017). There are plenty more out there with a variety of other subjects. Yet it is not an easy task to understand if explorable explanations can be considered different from educational games, data visualization, interactive narratives or similar. There are some definitions out there (Case, 2017; Lambrechts, 2018; Victor, 2011), but none of them are really all that helpful in understanding the field. Goldstein (2015) does an admirable job of trying to nail down definitions for it, but most of his references and conclusions are seemingly pulled from thin air. Within the academic world, my searches have not shown much help either. Granström (2016) works with the genre, but is ultimately more interested in the dissemination of physics than designing and understanding explorable explanations. Other sources (He and Adar, 2017; Kaltman, 2015) merely mention the genre in a passing reference. Before we can compare the genre to others, like those mentioned above, it helps to understand what the genre actually is. This paper seeks to do this by conducting a categorical analysis of 22 explorable explanations, and a design process with three iterations of an explorable explanation design concept, which attempts to explain the inner workings of artificial neural networks. 1.1 · Research Question This project focuses on answering the following research question: How can we characterize explorable explanations, and what design qualities should be considered when designing and evaluating them? 1.2 · Delimitation This project is not about design guidelines. I am not attempting to find a design process that can be relied upon for future work with explorable explanations. This is also not about evaluating whether explorable explanations are good at teaching their subject matter to players. These are both worthwhile endeavours, but not within the scope of this paper. 1.3 · Structure First off, I will go through some theory that is necessary for understanding the analysis of explorable explanations as well as the description of my design work that follows it. The analysis has gone through 22 examples of explorable explanations, and presents 9 of these examples in-depth. Following this, the paper introduces my own explorable explanations, which serve to gain a better understanding of what it takes to design explorables. Finally, I will discuss and reflect on the project and the process that I have gone through, before suggesting possible paths for future work. This paper is part of a larger story on the research behind it, and there are more aspects to this research than what can be conveyed in the format of a paper. First of all are the prototypes that were developed as part of the research process. In the hopes that it will give a more vivid image of my research, the latest version of each iteration is available to try online on the following address for at least a year after publication: http://neuralnet-explorable.herokuapp.com Page 6 / 35 ​ The source code for the prototypes will also be available for at least a year on the following Github repository: https://github.com/jepster-dk/neuralnet-explorable It is recommended that the prototypes are experienced by the reader at some point during the reading process. Secondly, the way that this paper is structured does not adequately reflect the research process that lies behind it. Papers are written linearly, but the process behind my research did not occur linearly. Furthermore, there is not enough room to present all of the thoughts, experiences and discussions that have led me to this point. So, in order to accommodate the critique of Zimmerman et al. (2010) on the importance of process documentation in research-through-design, I have attempted to visualize the trajectory of my work in figure 1. Figure 1 · My research process, visualized ​ In general, this visualization shows a process that has featured many explored branching paths, as well as a process that has had to throw away some work in order to trace back to what was important. It is my adaptation of Buxton's idea of design as branching of exploration (Buxton, 2007, p. 388). An example of a branch is the fact that this project started as simply an attempt to create an explorable explanation about neural networks, without regard for attempting to describe the genre. Another example of a branch would be that I initially wanted to play test my prototypes on an expert in the field of neural networks. Due to time constraints, this never came to fruition. Finally, a small note on language. I will sometimes refer to explorable explanations as simply explorables for the sake of brevity. Furthermore, I will use the terms artificial neural network and neural network interchangeably. The words user and player will also be used interchangeably, since explorables are still poorly defined. They will both be used regardless of whether a referred explorable can be labelled a game or not. With that said, let us move on. 2 · THEORY Before moving on to the meat of the research process, I wish to establish the theoretical grounding for the project. This includes two main aspects: the employed research-through-design approach and theory on educational games. When structuring and framing my design work, I am following the notion of generic design thinking as introduced by Wiberg and Stolterman (2014). On the matter of educational games theory, I am relying on Page 7 / 35 ​ both theory on games and play, as well as more general educational theory. 2.1 · Generic Design Wiberg and Stolterman (2014) propose their idea of generic design thinking as an answer to the issue of gauging whether a design is novel. Generic design is a way to both conceptualize a new design while relating it to an existing body of designs. The goal is that generic designs can make it easier for researchers to figure out if their own and others' work is novel, and thus eligible as a new contribution to the existing body of knowledge. Wiberg and Stolterman draw the notion of generic design from Warfield (1990), and they describe it as: "A generic design in HCI can be seen as a design concept [emphasis added] that ​ ​ captures some essential qualities of a large number of particular designs [emphasis ​ ​ added], i.e., it defines a class or design space of interactive systems." (Wiberg and Stolterman, 2014, p.