Manipulated Discovery: The Art of Immersive Storytelling
Winston Churchill once said, “Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught”. This is how many people see education, learning and personal development. That’s because most training approaches haven’t evolved that much since Churchill was caught yawning in the back of a classroom.
As a professional storyteller and learning expert, I have always been fascinated with the overlap between entertainment, storytelling, and meaningful learning. The crossroads of education and entertainment (often dubbed Edutainment) lies in a program’s ability to engage an audience by making them feel like they are valued participants and contributors in the overall experience.
Edutainment involves a targeted blending of meaningful narratives with tangible learning objectives, designed to immerse participants in the experience, while promoting learning retention. In education, this often manifests as case or scenario-based learning. In entertainment, we often see it in immersive AR/VR gaming environments that encourage deep exploration and non-linear gameplay.
A number of years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting “Bob,” the Director of Learning at the Ford Skilled Trade Center. Bob’s job was to prepare skill trade workers (welders, electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, etc…) to become certified Journeymen and Journeywomen across Ford’s global manufacturing facilities.
While touring his training center, Bob clued me in on his revolutionary approach to Edutainment that he called Manipulated Discovery.
In Bob’s mind, Manipulated Discovery meant using intelligent design to heighten learning through self-determination. This model relied on the belief that people will retain more skills and knowledge when they discover things for themselves within real-world environments.
Bob’s immersive programs depended on minimal guidance with maximum exploration, so participants felt like they were uncovering hidden knowledge, and gaining expertise through independent activities. In actuality, their entire experience had been designed for them to “discover” everything they needed to complete the learning objectives and pass their skilled trade certification exams.
For Bob, Manipulated Discovery involved designing scenarios, activities, and assessments that allowed the trades people to actively participate in a simulated work space. Through these interactions, students learned by doing, while uncovering the processes, skills, and best practices required to excel at their trade.
Bob even created “meta” exercises that allowed students to craft the tools they would using on the job. Imagine, learning the skills you need to perform your job function by building the tools you’ll be using when you’re out in the field!
What Bob showed me as a very robust, form of Edutainment, dropping people right into the story that would eventually become the real working world.
The art of immersive storytelling and manipulated discovery isn’t new. In fact, Disney has been doing it a long time within their theme parks. Disney Imagineers believe that the “ride experience” is all about pulling you into the story, which begins as soon as you step off the main thoroughfare.
Disney knew that people would have to stand in long lines to experience their world-famous rides. But queuing up can be very boring and uninteresting activity for kids and adults alike, so something needed to be done while they were waiting. Through Manipulated Discovery, Disney Imagineers created environments that slowly immersed each park guest prior to sitting in an actual ride.
The Tower of Terror ride is a great example of Disney’s flawless execution of storytelling through Manipulated Discovery. The ride actually builds a story around you, drawing guests into a new narrative about an old, haunted hotel in Hollywood, revealing what happened, who died there, and your new role as an invited guest. All these details lead up to the actual “drop ride” at the end.
The designers of the Tower of Terror made sure that as soon as you leave the main walkway of the park and step through those front gates, your participation in the story begins. As you walk up the hill, you become a character in the story. The signs and symbols of the Disney Park below disappear, as you slowly slip back in time to Hollywood in the 1930’s. By the time you reach the doors of the hotel, you are fully immersed as an active participant in the story itself.
Certain objects have been strategically placed all over the grounds, meant to be discovered by patrons, creating a deeper, personal experience for each guest. As they uncover these hints, clues, and details about the creepy history of the hotel, guests feel like they are getting the “inside scoop,” staying one step ahead of their fellow visitors through Manipulated Discovery.
SPOILER ALERT:
At the climax of the experience, you’re brought into an elevator that lifts you up and drops you down multiple times to the thrilling screams of fellow patrons, and the gasps of those watching on the sidewalk below.
As you exit the ride, you walk back down the hill, a little shaken, wondering what just happened. Was it real, or did you just imagine it? The experience was so vivid and engaging, you could have sworn it was designed just for you.
In his seminal article, STORYTELLING HAS ENTERED A BOLD, NEW AGE. BUT WHAT HAS CHANGED?, lead UX designer John Lupo notes:
“We are used to thinking of stories as linear narratives. That is, we tend to think of them as having a beginning, middle and an end. However, this conventional notion of linear narrative has changed with the rise of the Internet and the non-linear nature of hyperlinked content.
Today, technical innovations provide storytellers with an entirely new canvas. This exciting new canvas is more than non-linear; it enables storytellers to completely teleport visitors to new worlds. Immersive media gives them 360-degree and three-dimensional perspectives that make imagined worlds all the more convincing.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) enable users to blend their actual surroundings (or new ones), countless perspectives, sensations, emotions, and a storyteller’s limitless imagination.”
What Lupo is tapping into is that new technologies are challenging designers to create experiences that immerse, engage, and teach people in ways they’ve never seen before, blurring the lines between the fantasy and reality in an effort to educate and entertain. The strategy is the same, it’s the execution that is ever-changing.
For in the end, people will never stop loving stories, especially when they see themselves within them. And as tools and technologies continue to evolve, great storytellers will never stop pulling you into the worlds they’ve created — manipulating you all along the way.
