Pattern of Life (PoL)

Goal

After reading this article you'll:

understand what Pattern of Life, Message stacks (staxs) and Decks are
be able to prepare message stacks in decks foreseeing possible outcomes during the exercise
be able to publish message stacks on the fly during an exercise

Summary

Pattern of Life (PoL) allows the Facilitator to publish content "on-demand" rather than in sequence as is the case with the Master Event List (MEL). This combination of scripted injects from the MEL and on-demand message stacks from PoL provides the player with a blended content experience within their Virtual Desktop, which feels realistic and engaging.

Name	Pattern of Life (PoL)
Benefit	PoL allows the facilitator to react dynamically to player decisions or activity. With a pre-defined deck of message stacks that foresee possible outcomes, the facilitator can increase or decrease the pacing of a tweetstorm, for example, or publish a different set of news articles depending on the adjudication of a team decision. This enables a faster creation of exercises due to greater re-use of content, a more agile/dynamic execution of exercises due to human-in-the-loop to publish content on-demand and more immersive experiences due to richness & relevance of content.
Features	Active deck of 64x independent message stacks, able to be published on demand at any time. Multiple decks configurable in Scenario Editor. Stax of content can be imported from Excel of CSV using same format as that used for MEL Stax can be saved & exported individually or as library including the decks. Personas and media are self-contained and not directly connected to scenario, hence allowing greater portability between scenarios. Operates independently of but in tandem with the active scenario

This video shows Pattern of Life in operation

Pattern of Life in Scenario Editor

Pattern of Life content is published in the same channels as all scripted content configured in your Master Event List or in the Flowchart view of your Scenario Editor. The player experiences a blend of all contents, but the scenario author creates this content differently, to allow the facilitator to publish it dynamically.

There are three main components in Pattern of Life within the Scenario Editor.

1. Stack library

2. Message stacks

3. Deck configuration

1. Stack library - Stack libraries hold all your scenario stacks in one place. To get started you can:

- select an existing stax library

- create a new stax library

- import an existing stax library (a .staxl file)

2. Deck configuration - A deck is a 8x8 grid to lay out your stacks as buttons for the facilitator to access them during an ongoing exercise. Each button can be assigned a stack, and then you can decide the time interval for each content within the stack to be published, and to loop the content or not.

You can learn about some design considerations for preparing your decks. You can also configure your stacks so they dynamically print different words according to your PoL predefined smartwords.

Once you have your Deck ready and you want to make it available to the facilitator, you just need to:

- pair it with the scenario you want to run it with

- click "upload active deck"

Pattern of Life in Facilitator Dashboard

Once a deck is uploaded from the Scenario Editor, the deck is accessible from the Facilitator Dashboard, in Manage > Pattern of Life.

There are two PoL modes in the Facilitator Dashboard:

1. Play mode - For facilitator to publish the stacks, turning them on and off independently. All available stax are low-lighted. When the facilitator presses a button, the activation is shown as a highlighted yellow button.

Each button displays the following information

2. Edit mode - Allows facilitator to modify some settings of each button: loop and session.

You are ready to go! This is a combined view of what your participants see in their Virtual Desktop and the Pattern of Life deck buttons publishing content in the Facilitator Dashboard.

Knowledge Base