Modeling and Designing for Key Elements of Curiosity: Risking Failure, Valuing Questions

This study develops a design model linking uncertainty, failure, and question-asking to curiosity, and tests it through Outbreak, a cooperative tabletop game for players aged 9 to 14. Across twelve design iterations and four months of playtesting in a science center and a YMCA serving a low-SES neighborhood, the authors examined how players' emotional responses and questioning behavior shifted in response to design choices. Their central argument is that curiosity-oriented design depends on managing the perceived risk of failure rather than failure itself, and that the findings can inform other games. The authors are explicit that their data were uncontrolled and not suited to formal statistical analysis, so their conclusions are qualitative insights rather than validated results.

Several findings stand out. Players often feared the risk of failure more than failure itself, and aesthetic elements such as scary music and named at-risk characters heightened anxiety, while calmer presentations produced predominantly positive affect. Repeated play increased positive emotional responses to failure by roughly 27 percent, and social norms, which differed between the two settings, strongly shaped question-asking and willingness to take risks. Sometimes players preferred certain failure over uncertain outcomes, indicating that fear can drive behavior in counterproductive ways.

Findings on question-asking further suggest that questions carry implicit hypotheses and support group knowledge-sharing. After successful rounds, players produced roughly three times as many hypothesis-building questions, while after failures they asked about twice as many broad discovery questions. Average questions per game rose after a design change, though this may reflect familiarity as much as increased comfort. Enforced participation empowered quieter players, and flexible rule enforcement helped sustain curiosity, with affective and aesthetic factors proving more influential than mechanics alone.