Collaboration and Visibility

A few days ago my kids were playing MineCraft together. Each of them was in their own room, and they were all playing on a common server. In MineCraft, this means that they share a world and can either build things collaboratively or they can compete. In this case, my daughter Haifa became very upset because my son Justice killed her character (not the end of the world). Anyway, at first I was very angry at Justice. However, after consulting with Melanie, we realized that some of the problem was simply that Justice was not aware of Haifa being upset until it had escalated to crying and shouting!

Solution? A very simple rule: everyone needs to be in the same room together if they are playing together! So, we set them up in my office downstairs where there is enough room.

Now - no problems. Visibility creates empathy which in turn enables better collaboration!