But until recently, we haven’t understood exactly how game-based tools can achieve this.  What are the “active ingredients” in games that can be intentionally designed to elicit specific behaviors?  Over the past several years, HopeLab has been doing some deeper research to tackle this question.

One study conducted with Stanford Business School colleague Jennifer Aaker, PhD showed that even an hour of Re-Mission game play could cause shifts in emotion, knowledge, and perceptions of chemotherapy that might potentially influence downstream behavioral impacts.   We tested that idea again in another way by measuring the activity of brain regions involved in positive motivation, reasoning, and memory.  For this research, we teamed up with another Stanford colleague, neuroscientist Dr. Brian Knutson. We did a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (technology that measures neural activity in the brain) to map the brain regions activated when people play Re-Mission, and compare those activations with the patterns observed when people passively watched and heard the same information.  This study, which is being published today in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, showed that playing Re-Mission activates a variety of brain regions, including neural structures involved in emotion and motivation and others involved in learning and memory. You can take a look at this PowerPoint to learn more about the study.  Also, check out this excellent movie that shows the pattern of brain activation among Re-Mission game players:

HopeLab VP for Research and Development Steve Cole had this to say:  “Playing Re-Mission definitely activated brain circuits involved in positive motivation and arousal.  However, one of the most interesting things we discovered was that gameplay also activated a small region of the brain known as the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory.  People who showed the strongest activation in the hippocampus also showed more positive cancer-related attitudes – a major target of Re-Mission – when measured immediately after gameplay and again during a surprise one-month follow-up assessment.  That suggests that Re-Mission’s impact on out-of-game outcomes such chemotherapy adherence might potentially be related to the effects of in-game experiences on cancer-related attitudes and their storage in long-term memory.”

So what does it all mean?  In a nutshell, we learned that motivation and emotion appear to be key ways in which playing a serious game differs from watching a movie that contains the same information, and are major active ingredients in serious game effects on behavior and health.   This finding will inform HopeLab’s work as we dive into the development of Re-Mission 2, the next generation version of our cancer game.

We also learned that it’s a good idea to first develop a non-ferrous game controller for use when playing a videogame inside a large magnet.  But that is a blog post for another day…

Did you ever fly a kite in bed?

Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head?

Did you ever milk this kind of cow?

Well, we can do it. We know how.

If you never did, you should.

These things are fun and fun is good.

- Dr. Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Dr. Seuss is a marvelous example of great impact through fun and experimentation. Using the power of storytelling, Seuss tackled both collective global challenges, from environmental destruction to genocide, and profound personal moments, like learning to read, experiencing resilience and practicing integrity.

At HopeLab, courageous experimentation and joy are in our DNA.  We believe in the power of play and science with heart. In fact, the introduction to our 2012 strategic plan we presented to our board was a riff on Horton Hears a Who, entitled HopeLab Hears a Hey. Delightful AND informative!

The images in this post are from our first staff meeting of the year, where our team gathered to share and discuss priorities for our work in 2012.

The year ahead for us includes some great partnerships and projects to support Zamzee, testing and iteration on new Re-Mission mini-games and deeper exploration of ways we can help young people tap into their natural sources of physical and psychological resilience (more on that soon).

To do all of this, we’re paying a lot of attention to the people who contribute their energy and time to our mission – in other words, creating a culture that supports our work. Building environments that promote curiosity, respect, play and joy fosters resilience and innovation in our own team at HopeLab.

So, we laugh a lot, we experiment, we reflect on and practice our values, and we approach our work with a spirit of collaboration and humility. It’s how we generate positive impact, not only in our own lives but also in the lives of the young people we serve, in our communities and in our world.

For me personally, it remains an incredible privilege to work among a group of people leaning into the future together, tapping into the power of play and science with heart to create tools that improve kids’ lives.

Zamzee went back to school in September, unrolling their first school pilot program to over 600 students at Cupertino’s Kennedy Middle School (above). We left our lunchboxes and pencils, but we brought something better: the opportunity for 200 6th, 7th and 8th graders to get a Zamzee for themselves, plus the element of free invites for friends that we hoped would help Zamzee “go viral”.

Zamzee is a platform for fun that’s powered by young people’s movement. Wear the nifty 3-axis accelerometer to record how much you’re moving around, and upload your Pointz to the computer to track your progress, compete with friends, and complete challenges. Zamzee was researched and developed by HopeLab, then spun-off and run as an independent social enterprise at zamzee.com.

But do middle schoolers actually want it? After preparing a slideshow to introduce Zamzee to the students, and a competitive “move-off” to show them how it’s done, we were still not sure whether Zamzee would fly in a school gymnasium.

But these remarkable middle schoolers did not disappoint: they eagerly volunteered for the move-off—dancing, running, and even doing flips to see who could earn the most Activity Pointz. They listened avidly and asked specific questions (“Is it waterproof?” “Does it have a warranty?” “Will it work for spinning on ice skates?”). They even jumped out of their seats, making us feel like rock stars being surged by a crowd. In short, Zamzee soared.

In the two weeks since then, our 200 Kennedy Middle School users have put in over 27,000 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity, racked up over 161,000 Activity Pointz and inviting 247 of their friends to join them. In fact, we’re so impressed that we plan on taking Zamzee on the road to more schools soon. We hope Zamzee continues to get straight A’s from the users who matter: real live young people!

To find out more about Zamzee, check out our About page or visit zamzee.com.

Rose Garrett is content manager at Zamzee. She’s the one that writes the words that make using Zamzee fun and easy. She also makes sure that lots of good stuff is happening on zamzee.com. Rose has worked as a writer and editor in news, education and social enterprise. She’s super good at ping-pong.

I recently returned from the Burning Man Festival, a huge arts and cultural gathering that takes place each year in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. While there I made an effort to carry my Zamzee with me, both to see how it survived the notoriously difficult conditions (dust storms, 100 degree days, rowdy mock protest marches) and to take a record of how much I moved.

For those of you unfamiliar with Zamzee, it’s a new product researched and developed by HopeLab that will be launching publicly in the fourth quarter of this year. Zamzee is now run as an independent social enterprise, partnering with HopeLab in ongoing research. The  Zamzee meter, a three-axis accelerometer,  records your movement, which powers your online account at zamzee.com.

The activity graph above is from the research version of the Zamzee site, where activity points are referred to as “Zamz.” The graph is a record of my movement from Tuesday August 30  to Monday September 5, which was our pack-down day, and though a lot of work, I wasn’t wearing my Zamzee unfortunately. But you can see how much I got around in the second half of the festival.  On Sunday morning I rode the nearly 10 miles to the far northern reaches of the festival site, and throughout the week I was regularly criss-crossing the desert in search of art and fun and friends.

To my chagrin the double-points day, which happen randomly, fell on my least active day of the festival, Wednesday, when I focused on rest and relaxation. No matter – Zamzee survived the conditions brilliantly and has given me a fantastic snap-shot of my unusually active week.

The commercial version of Zamzee, which is designed specifically for young teens, will be available in the coming months – you can sign up for email alerts at www.zamzee.com to be one of the first to know.

My Zamzee.com Avatar with dog (not allowed at Burning Man).

Here’s a peek at a few fun things you may have missed and a couple of opportunities to support HopeLab:

Vote for Our Panel Submissions for NTC 2012

HopeLab submitted two panel concepts to the Nonprofit Technology Conference 2012. Want to see us there? Then we could use your vote! Here’s what we proposed to organizers:

Positively Inspired Change Campaigns

A proposed joint presentation by HopeLab Manager of Emerging Media Tom Dawkins and Epic Change founder/CEO Stacey Monk.

“Social change agents often use guilt, fear, pity, or outrage to rally an audience around a cause. But does tapping into negative emotions with the hope of creating positive change make sense?”

Read the full description and vote here.

Stealth Health: Scaling Gamified Systems for Good

A presentation by HopeLab VP of Communications and Marketing Richard Tate.

“Academics, nonprofits and independent developers have spent years and millions proving the potential for games to engage consumers in their own healthcare. Still, few titles have reached the kind of scale that can move the needle on the world’s most challenging – and costly – health problems.”

Read the full description and vote here.

To vote for either panel look for the “Vote this Session Up or Down” box alongside the “Takeaways” and click the up arrow.

Support HopeLab and Help Little Rue do a Little Good

Here’s another opportunity to show some love. Rue La La is a members-only shopping destination focused on top fashion brands. Not an obvious fit with our work at HopeLab, but the folks at Rue approached us about a campaign that tapped into the power and appeal of shopping to do some good. During the month of September Rue La La are giving 100% of profits from Little Rue, their new children’s site, to four children’s charities. We are grateful that they selected HopeLab as one of these charities, alongside three other wonderful organizations: First Book, Room to Read and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

The proportion of funds each organization receives depends on how many votes it receives during the month. You can vote once each day here.

Click through to see more news and photos!

The JOY Campaign at Wisdom2.0 Youth

HopeLab’s JOY Campaign took our photo booth along to the Wisdom2.0 Youth Conference in Silicon Valley this weekend and captured some amazing expressions of joy.

Here are some more of our favorites:

And these are the people I work with:

Check out the rest of our fav’s at our Facebook Page.

Zamzee Gearing up for Launch

Meanwhile Zamzee  is working hard towards their launch before the end of the year. They recently introduced the product to several hundred students at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino, Calif., and the kids couldn’t wait to get in on the fun!

Zamzee also released their eagerly-anticipated team photo and it didn’t disappoint! Meet Team Zamzee:

Sign up to the Zamzee email list to get an alert when the product is available.

HopeLab and our sister company Zamzee will have a strong presence at the event. Our CEO Pat Christen is speaking alongside representatives from Twitter, Google and Zynga on the topic of “Mindful Parenting in the Technology Age: Lessons and Challenges” from 11.15-12 and at 5pm Zamzee CEO Jonathan Attwood is introducing  Zamzee (and doing giveaways!).

Other scheduled speakers include Meng Tan (Jolly Good Fellow, Google); Daniel Siegel (Co-Director, Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA); Susan Kaiser Greenland (Author, The Mindful Child); Eric Schiermeyer (Co-founder of Zynga, creator of CityVille and FarmVille); Michelle Gale (Learning and Development, Twitter) and; Jennifer Aaker (co-Author, The Dragonfly Effect). As a lead-in to Jennifer’s presentation, which she will make with her son Cooper, be sure to check out her post on the JOY Campaign Blog.

Can’t make it to the event? Never fear, you can still join in via the live stream – check www.wisdom2youth.com for details.

If you are in attendance please say hello to any of the HopeLabers in attendance and be sure to visit the JOY Campaign photo booth during the lunch break – we’d love to share a moment of joy with you!

The growing indie games space, and the Flash games market in particular, are making my future umbrella world possible. There are a lot of cool things happening in the field that are unexpected and sometimes completely awesome. Thanks to Flash and a lot of hungry developers (literally and figuratively; a career in games doesn’t always equal big paychecks), we’re seeing more small teams coming up with really fun, random, and interesting stuff.

What does that look like? Well it might be:

-        A game where you have to scare people out of a house by possessing a moose head. And other things.  (Haunt the House)

-        Or how about adventuring as a laser-shooting elephant on a quest to retrieve your bowler hat (Elephant Quest)

-        Not your thing? Maybe you’d prefer to be a bison escaping from a kingdom of evil gummi bears (Burrito Bison)

These games show you don’t need a huge budget to make a game that people will love, and players don’t need hundreds of dollars to enjoy them. The space – and technology – are opening up to provide opportunities to anyone with a good idea, some programming knowledge, and time.

This is great news for HopeLab because it allows us to look at games for health through a whole new lens. Online Flash games may be a way to develop, test, and distribute small, impactful play-based experiences specifically targeted at health issues facing young people. It also allows us to stay current with what young people love, evolving with the technology they access and making something positive and compelling for them.

I laughed so hard during this shoot and definitely had one very long #momentofjoy.

We ask a similar question in our work here at HopeLab: “How might we promote positive, healthy behavior in young people by tapping into the power and appeal of technology?” So it’s no surprise we’re looking forward to Wisdom 2.0 Youth. There’s bound to be some thought-provoking conversation, as tech developers, parents, mindfulness practitioners and teens gather to share their experiences and insights.

HopeLab will be there – our experience at last year’s Wisdom 2.0 event continues to inspire us – along with Zamzee. We’ll even have a special opportunity for conference-goers to engage with our JOY Campaign.

Scheduled speakers include Meng Tan (Jolly Good Fellow, Google); Daniel Siegel (Co-Director, Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA); Pat Christen, (CEO, HopeLab); Susan Kaiser Greenland (Author, The Mindful Child); Eric Schiermeyer (Co-founder of Zynga, creator of CityVille and FarmVille); Michelle Gale (Learning and Development, Twitter); Jonathan Attwood (CEO, Zamzee); and many others.

Intrigued? Check out www.wisdom2youth.com for more information and to register. If you attend, look for us and say hello – we’d love to see you there!