How to respond to a TalkThree challenge?
The TalkThree Challenge is a thinking game which presents two words and asks you to think about the third word. Once you figure out your own answer, you can share it with the world.
Several years ago, I designed this game for my own intellectual exercise. Inspired by Twitter’s card, I designed a card format version for the challenge. It looks like this:
So simple, Right? Yes, you can easily and randomly put a word there. No, it doesn’t work that way.
If you want to run it as an intellectual exercise as I did, you have to put these two words into your own context. What are you thinking about recently? Is there a puzzle in your real life? Have you debated on some issues with a friend last week? Did any book inspire you this month? Connect the TalkThree challenge with your life, it will make the challenge hard and fun.
For example, I used the following TlakThree challenge for thinking about digital behavior.
This TalkThree challenge gives me two words: CONTENT and ACTION. I found most of social media behaviors are placed in the CONTENT side and just a few of them are about ACTION.
When I made these two categories I considered “Read an article on New York Times website” at the CONTENT side and “Buy something on Amazon” at the ACTION side. I thought it was reasonable though “Read” is a type of action.
The situation became more complex when I applied this idea to social platforms including social media sites. Let’s look the following items:
#1. Like a post on Facebook
#2. Comment a video on YouTube
#3. Retweet a tweet on Twitter
#4. Like a post on Linkedin
#5. Vote a comment on Quora
#6. Clap a post on Medium
#7. Call a person on Slack
#8. Back a project on Kickstarter
#9. Become a patron of a creator on Patreon
#10. Fork a repository on Github
It is not easy to put #1 to #7 into CONTENT side or ACTION side because they are all real acts, but if we compare them with #7 to #9, the first group may be called micro action, the second group should be normal action. The #10 is very unique. According to Github, “A fork is copy of a repository. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project. ” So, #10 means it is not an isolated act, it is a preparation of another act.
Finally, I find the third word for this TalkThree challenge. It is “Interaction”!
All of #1 to #10 are about acts within social context. We need to consider more things about social acts. This insight guided me to develop an analysis framework called SET which stands Social Engagement Theory. I use Action, Relation and Settings as primary aspects of social interactions and use Information, Identity and Experience as secondary aspects of social interactions. It’s impossible to describe the SET idea in a short post since I wrote a 160-slide document for it.
TalkThree Challenge is not a close question. It allows more than one answer. For the “CONTENT-ACTION-?” challenge, my second answer is CALL which is a category bridged CONTENT and ACTION. For example, “Call to Action”. I consider CALL has two levels of content or two steps of content, the initial part is a Challenge, the following part is a Response. So, the Challenge-and-Response is a basic unit of social interaction.
I really like the second answer! It inspired me to think deeper and took actions on building a brand new social platform. I even decided to use it for naming my next personal journal: Creative Action Learning Lab.
The TalkThree challenge is an open idea, you can make your own TalkThree challenge and challenge yourself or your friends. Once you made a TalkThree challenge card, share it with hashtag #TalkThree on Twitter.
I also made 18 TalkThree challenge cards and published them on Doowit as a Doowit channel:
The TalkThree Challenge is presented as a Creative Trigger by CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab). Check out the links below to find more Creative Triggers.
Action-based Creativity #1 The Pinwheel Framework (Feb 25, 2020)
The Avocado Effect #1: Introduction (Feb 28, 2020)
Social Platform Experience Design (#SocialPxD)(Mar 4, 2020)
DEKIN Innovation System (Mar 6, 2020)
The Action After Talk Project (April 10, 2020)
Based on the Pinwheel framework, the TalkThree Challenge is categorized as a Creative Thing which aims to impact your context of tools. Creative Things are brand new tools, artifacts, objects, instruments, etc. These things change the way we interact with the world. Activity Theorists called this effort “mediation” which means tools are a bridge between human (as subject) and the world (as object).
