In this post I note how politics can teach designers about message content.

This is elections year in my country, Colombia, which has suffered of corruption for long time. Traditional groups of politicians have controlled significant number of the votes that give them power to define the next president. 8 years ago, current president Alvaro Uribe won the elections with an unprecedented portion of opinion votes because he delivered a strong and simple message: security. People were tired of guerrilla and voted for him. 4 years ago he won again because he showed good results in security. Uribe’s parties became the “new” traditional and, sadly, people have seen the persistence of corruption and illegality.

Today, the 2 major runners for president have an interesting contrast of message: simple and complex. Juan M Santos, former head of defense, belongs to Uribe’s party and his message is simple: “because going back isn’t an option” referring mainly to security. It is basically a contemporary political marketing strategy. The other runner, Antanas Mockus, former Bogotá major, has a more complex message that is difficult to summarize. He argues that all citizens have to be legal, from families to government administrators. He plans a large educative intervention in social and citizenship competencies. Although it is complex, it seems to be clear for opinion votes that transparency could be the way to go. Lately, the survey trends have shown a decreasing vote intention for the Santos’s simple approach and an increasing intention for the Mockus’ complex approach.

Because past Uribe’s simple message was successful and current Mockus complex message might be, there is no a best way to deliver a message. I’ve seen a trend in design and other areas of life for simplicity that not always applies. Although Mockus’ ideas are complex, they need to be complex. Besides, Mockus uses well-crafted and powerful metaphors that have entered in many people’s mind. We’ll see soon who wins between simple and complex messages.

To learn more about current elections: http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16015299&fsrc=rss

The video below is a documentary about Bogotá that shows how Mockus uses metaphors to explain complex concepts.

It’s a couple of weeks now since my wife and I have played eRepublik. It is a MMOG game, “a mirror world where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics, set economic policy, start businesses and wage wars with other countries.”

This game proves that there is not need of complex visual graphics to engage players. Today, there are more than 350.000 citizens! The game has a clear goal of entertainment and the creators have clear profit goals. However, it seems to me that the game have a powerful potential of learning social competencies. Reading some articles and discussing with my wife we found core mechanics that strongly review and reinforce social competencies.

One is described by Alexis Bonte, one of the cofounders in the game, in an Spanish newspaper interview. He described that some time ago the president of France reduced taxes to zero and the companies collapsed. Then players migrated. Bonte says that players auto regulate themselves, which is a relevant social competence.

Besides, talking with my wife, she concluded that essential social values such as recognition of others’ differences and citizen identity are reinforced. She for example compared political invitations between political parties in USA and Colombia and understood cultural differences in how people invite and promote membership. We also have done metacognitive analysis of our social potentials wondering whether or not we are able to participate in certain career paths like army, politics or business. Although the game offers you an option to try with low risks, you make decisions from your capabilities and how you better can support the community.

I wonder if the game has more potential for adult learning because children and youths might not be interested in a text-based game. Anyway, the growing alternatives that non-serious game industries offer can fit serious game needs in the future. Serious games aims could be achieved more effectively with instructional/interaction design than with game design and development.

These are two good examples of information design in audiovisual format. The first above es one the Sprint ads (cellphone service), it might be difficult for us “humans” to process the statistics but the goal is persuasion and the designer wants to show us how reliable, fast, and popular is the service, not to make information understandable at all. The ad is beautiful and very dynamic, which is great and enjoyable.

The other example below is the last video clip of the Story of Stuff. I love it because with very simple graphs they explain complex concepts. In audiovisual information, audio is part of the tools available to solve information presentation and the oral explanation of the presenter helps a lot.



Both clips are rich in rhetoric tropes, one of the design tools in which I am very interested. I think that the first one for TV teaches us that short persuasion is a powerful tool. Sprint wants to sell, but how can we use this persuasion tools for social change? The second one can be the answer, but I wonder if people stay passive that long.

PS. Gui Bosiepe is from who I heard first the concept of audiovisual rhetoric and you can read it here