#reflective design

I have an interest in moments of enlightenment, those "aha" moments where you suddenly realise something and it changes your point of view, and even potentially your values. It mostly happens to me while reading or having a great conversation. To a lesser degree, I might experience something like this while watching something with substance (but usually this is also coupled with a reflective conversation with someone else) and much less so in games, which I think is a shame.

It might be because video games create numerous levels of abstraction between people. Bearing in mind Calleja's model of Involvement, if we have our cognitive and body attention split by a lot of activities, we might not necessarily devout any time on reflection. Another potential challenge to reflection is the goal oriented view of games, i.e. players expect problems with pre-defined solutions in games.

Thing is this. Can we measure reflection? Who and how can we tell that there is an "aha" moment? Is it possible to introduce a game that uses reflective design techniques such as defamiliarisation, and measure it's efficacy to provide for reflection?

If so, can we start with a hypothesis and do the following:

Ask players, before they play, about their view of a subject matter,

Players play the a game with the idea that the experience should unlock their current mental model of the subject matter

Ask players, after they play, about any changes (if any) on their view of the subject matter.