Designing for Agency in Bible Study

I didn't make it to this year's BibleTech in Seattle, but Stephen Smith at OpenBible.info posted the slides of his presentation. (Find them HERE.) Doubtless he provided more context for the slides, but it's fairly easy to follow his argument. Basically, he looks at Bible software and Bible reading from the perspective of game design which is concerned about agency. I'm greatly simplifying and making some assumptions from the slides, but he points out the importance of Competence, Relatedness, and Autonomy as motivating factors. Bible software marketing tends to promote competence and autonomy. (You can master the Bible on your own with our program!) But that's not what most people are concerned about when looking for something in the Bible. Here's where aspects of creating relationships come into play. (E.g., YouVersion's sharing options.) As Smith states,

Bible software, in general, supports competence across a narrow audience: mostly male Christians in some kind of leadership role. This narrow focus limits the market for Bible software because it doesn’t support life as lived by most Christians (slide 23)

Here's where Smith's previous work on a "Franken-Bible" comes into play. (Cf. my blog post here or go to his Adaptive Bible site.) He now has an Expanded Bible site which attempts to bring in Competence (you get to choose among translation options; the text includes sidebar notes with info and links; once you complete a chapter, you're rewarded by it generating an audio version you can listen to), Relatedness (you can share your created translation with others, something that can't easily be done at the Adaptive Bible), and Autonomy (you can do it on your own, and there is no wrong answer to discourage you).

I'm including a graphic of Smith's annotation of the print version (which is really inferior to the online, interactive version) so you can see how the Expanded Bible site was constructed, but you really just need to go play around at the site.

Smith, slide 32

I appreciate the various perspectives that Smith brings to bear on this project. They are certainly worth considering. Thanks to Steve Smith for sharing this!