If you care about digital thriving, you will need to learn the lingo.
This is a list of common (and not so common) terms. Familiarizing yourself with them can help you communicate more effectively with other people who are working in the space.
Since this list will grow and evolve over time, we recommend you bookmark this page.
A
Accomplishment
Accomplishment is successfully achieving something through significant effort. This is also one of the feelings produced by digital thriving.
Altruism
Behavior that benefits another individual at a cost to oneself.
Amenability
The willingness and openness to cooperate, collaborate, and adapt to the needs and perspectives of others within a social setting.
Assertiveness
Assertive behavior is when a person appropriately expresses personal thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions, and rights in a respectful manner.
Autonomy
In self-determination theory, the experience of acting from choice, rather than feeling pressured to act.
B
Behavior detection systems
Systems designed to identify particular behaviors, typically to address disruptive behaviors.
Belonging
The feeling that you’re connected, accepted, respected, and an integral part of something.
Bonding
The formation of connections, attachments, or commitments between people or groups.
C
CGI
Not to be confused with computer generated graphics, CGI is a core framework in the Playbook that ensures we approach digital thriving through the interrelation of communities, groups, and individuals.
Churn rate
Measure of the number of players who leave a game during a given period.
Citizenship
Fulfilling a community’s potential through active contribution and self-actualization of the individual.
Cohesion
A group’s stickiness and commitment to each other for a shared purpose or objective.
Comity
Courtesy and considerate behavior toward others.
Compassionate
When a person feels or shows sympathy or concern for others.
Compatibility
When people compliment each other in their interests or personalities.
Core loops
The series of actions that a game is built around, what players generally do.
Creative convergence
The ability to say no, stay focused, and make decisions in creative work.
Creative divergence
The ability to expand the range of possibilities, to open one’s mind to new ideas.
D
Design-driven conflicts
When a design creates a situation that puts people at odds with each other, which the designer did not intend.
Design heuristic
A rule of thumb for making quick, practical decisions in design. 10 Heuristics is an example.
Design lenses
A lens captures a design principle in a form that is both memorable and immediately helpful. Source UX Booth.
Dichotomy
In relation to creativity, demonstrating a combination of optimism / doubt, extroversion / introversion, fantasy / reality, playfulness / discipline, responsibility / irresponsibility, intelligence / naivete.
Digital spaces
Virtual spaces where people interact, such as games, apps, or social media.
Digital thriving
The outcome of digital spaces intentionally designed to help people thrive.
Diversity
The practice of including differing people into the same group.
Disruptive behavior
Refers to the wide range of actions that undermine or disrupt experiences and digital thriving.
E
ECE
ECE is a framework that helps developers think strategically about promoting healthy communities. It stands for environment, consequences, and encouragement.
Empathy
The ability to feel what others are feeling.
Equity
The quality of being fair and impartial.
H
Harmonizing
Optimizing a digital space to produce successful interactions between different kinds of people or mindsets.
Hotspots
Areas of concern or danger. Used often in social mapping.
Humanizing
Optimizing an experience to generate empathy and friendliness between people.
I
Identity
Refers to an individual’s sense of who they are. The portion of the identity that individuals derive from their relationship to others is a social identity.
Inclusion
The act of including someone or something as part of a group and creating a sense of belonging.
Interventions
Actions to correct, and sometimes promote, particular behaviors.
K
KPI
Quantifiable measures of performance towards an objective. Short for key performance indicator.
L
Livestream
A live broadcast by a player via a streaming service.
M
Mastery
The desire to get increasingly better at something challenging.
Mockups
High-fidelity visual draft of a design concept.
Multiminded thinking
A mindset where a person practices proactively incorporating the views, needs, and motivations of multiple people into work or life.
O
OKR
Goal-setting methodology for setting ambitious objectives that are measured by key results.
Onboarding
Process of introducing someone new to a game or group.
Observing norms
Following the shared standards of acceptable behavior in a group.
P
Penalty
A punitive measure applied to an account to encourage reform or to shield other players from exposure to further problem behaviors.
Players
The term the Playbook generally uses to refer to people.
Player dynamics
- Type of behavior — Actions of individual players and player groups in games.
- Type of design — Field of design focused on social interaction in and around games.
Plasticity
In relation to creativity, this is imaginative play. role playing, exploring, experimenting, connecting, curiosity, openness to experience.
Player typologies
A tool for creating different lenses that help you examine games or products..
Proactive design
Thinking early about what can promote or undermine digital thriving in design.
Productive behavior
Refers to a range of actions that produce digital thriving.
Prosocial behavior
Actions that benefit one or more other people, usually (but not always) by intention.
Reactive design
Design work — which could have been avoided — that happens as a reaction to player feedback.
Reciprocation
Mutually corresponding, beneficial actions.
Reformed players
Refers to players who once demonstrated a pattern of disruptive behavior, but no longer.
Report
A request from other players to a company to examine the specified account’s behavior as possibly disruptive to the experience.
Resilience
The ability to bounce back from difficulties or challenges.
Risk register
Risk registers are documents that help identify, assess, and prioritize risks. See Essential Design Tools for Digital Thriving.
S
Self-actualization
The process of becoming everything you’re capable of becoming. Source: Abraham Maslow.
Self-determination theory
A framework that helps explain how being self-determined drives motivation.
Self-management or self-regulation
Control of oneself by oneself in ways that are respectful of others.
Sociability
Making healthy connections and developing relationships.
Social acceptance
The formal or informal admission of an individual into a group.
Social capital
Value generated through social investment and relationships.
Social friction
When a designed interaction puts two or more allies in opposition to each other.
Social infrastructure
Mechanisms that enable healthy connection and thriving in social systems.
Social mapping
A process of visualizing social experiences to understand and improve them.
Social norms
The shared standards of acceptable behavior in a group.
Spectating
Watching another person play or perform. May be in person or through a game or livestream.
Sportsmanship
Showing respect for the game and everyone involved – with or without the objective of mastery.
Success signs
Indicators of achieving an intended outcome.
T
Trust
Refers to a person’s confident belief that another’s motivations are benevolent toward him or her and that the other person will therefore be responsive to his or her needs.
Trust-building
Process of building trust between people in order so they can work better together and unlock benefits not otherwise possible.
W
Warning signs
Indicators of not achieving an intended outcome and heading towards possible danger.
Welcoming
Friendly behaviors that make people who are new to space feel safe and accepted.
Well-being
The desire and ability to feel happy, healthy, socially connected, and purposeful.
Wireflows
A series of wireframes ordered to show the flow of a person’s experience as it could be shown in a user interface.
Wireframes
A low-fidelity, bare-bones visualization of a user interface or webpage.
Now what?
If you’re interested in learning more about digital thriving concepts, continue with Getting Started with Digital Thriving.
