Object of Play Rarely are ideas born overnight. And for an idea to become a great idea, it takes considerable work and effort to develop. Part of the reason we end up with under-developed ideas is that we stick with the first good idea we have — rather than taking the time to explore complementary approaches. […]
I had a surprise client turn into a favorite client recently, namely ViaTech Global Publishing. Kurt Heusner, the CMO, tracked me down like many of my clients – through the semantic web – and together we planned a really successful session for 75 of their top team members. I met with Kurt before Gamestorming was published […]
As many of you know, TEDx events have sprung up all over the world. Planning the bigger events takes a lot of time and effort from volunteers who are serious about “ideas worth spreading.” I’m one of those volunteers, having been on the production team for TEDx Austin since its inception. The team was very supportive of […]
Object of Play Many of the games in this book are about seeing the bigger picture or relating a problem to its context. The 5 Whys game mirrors that motive to move beyond the surface of a problem and discover the root cause, because problems are tackled more sustainably when they’re addressed at the source. Number of Players […]
Summary of the Plane Metaphor and why to use it (neuroscience reasoning) One way of organizing information is to formulate analogies and conceptual links with other things. The information can be represented by anything that helps you break out of habitual thinking patterns. We all create our reality when getting external information to our brains. We use […]
Meetings tend to favor people who are quick thinkers who like to “think out loud”but everyone doesn’t think in the same way or at the same speed. A “think out loud” meeting can be discouraging to quiet, more introspective types who prefer time to think before they speak, leading them to disengage. To level the […]
Polarities live as interdependent pairs that need each other to exist, for example inhaling & exhaling. One pole is not valued as better than the other. Polarities have an enduring quality, they are unavoidable and unsolvable. Polarities live everywhere from our internal dialogue to external patterns of relating in society and within organizations. Overfocus on […]
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Looking for a job can be stressful. The many unknowns keep us guessing. Even when it’s updated, our resume or CV feels inadequate, incompletely representing who we are. Companies require them, but they’re often too sterile; we want to share in more dimensions the projects we’ve done, our skills and abilities and the little details […]
On May 4th we asked for your help: to share wisdom with students preparing to facilitate their first workshop. Your response flooded our inbox; it was reflective, generous, vulnerable and helpful. Thank you scrum masters, designers, authors, consultants, coaches, teachers, students and Gamestormers all over the globe. Common themes: Prepare to improvise Write your word-for-word […]
For more information Listen to Michael Schrage, research fellow with MIT Sloan School’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, describe the need for strategic KPIs, common pitfalls organizations encounter when grappling with new technologies and why co-creating dashboards in a workshop setting are fundamental to AI capability development. The game Read through your favorite Management publication […]
Humans live in language. It defines what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. Language is the bedrock of our cultures and societies. As with fish in water, we go about our daily business without paying much attention to the language around us and how it influences us. Information architect and […]
Any product change, project plan, change management initiative requires assessment of and approach to working with stakeholders, a term we use to describe anyone who can impact a decision. Stakeholders often slow or block change; in other cases, they bust obstacles and accelerate progress. To increase your likelihood of success, check out this activity from […]
Any innovation or technological invention can be applied to serve different types of customers. Understanding your set of market opportunities increases your chances of success: It not only allows you to focus on the most promising market, but also helps you to avoid a fatal lock-in. The Market Opportunity Navigator, developed by Dr. Sharon Tal […]
Are you struggling to break down organizational silos, increase creativity, engagement and collaboration? Do you feel like the people in your company are resisting change? Is your company’s culture holding you back? Nobody denies the critical importance of culture to a company’s success. And yet, although everyone agrees that culture is of vital importance, culture […]
Measures of success vary across an organization. Executives concern themselves with company-wide Objectives involving Revenue, Cost, Profit, Margin and Customer Satisfaction. Further down the org chart, management and individual contributors rate performance against more detailed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tracking customer behavior: a product manager may measure app downloads, or number of shopping cart items […]
Today, companies in every industry seek to better their design capabilities: from products to services to experiences. Fueling the growing design function in large organizations is a new discipline called Design Ops, charged with scaling design and design thinking up, down, and across the organization. Does your organization have a Design Ops function? If not, […]
Object of play Sometimes it can be difficult to keep a meeting on track when people have a hard time staying focused at the right level. People can find themselves “down in the weeds” or operational details when the meeting is supposed to be strategic, or, conversely, they can find themselves being too abstract and […]
We have organized the Gamestorming toolkit by category. Games for opening a meeting. Games for fresh thinking and ideas. Games for planning. Games for design. Games for team-building and alignment. Games for vision and strategy meetings. Games for problem-solving. Games for any meeting.
Object of play Personal Kanban is a tool for organizing your work to be more efficient and productive. Number of players Any number of people can play this game. Duration: 10-15 minutes. How to play 1. Divide a whiteboard or sheet of paper into four columns: Backlog, Ready, Doing, and Done. Or you can use […]
Object of playThe Hero’s Journey Agenda is a unique and different way to lay out the agenda for a meeting or workshop that creates a sense of adventure and builds anticipation for the meeting. Number of playersOne, usually the facilitator, created live in front of a group. Duration: 10-15 minutes. How to playI am going […]
We designed the Empathy Map at XPLANE many years ago, as part of a human-centered design toolkit we call Gamestorming. This particular tool helps teams develop deep, shared understanding and empathy for other people. People use it to help them improve customer experience, to navigate organizational politics, to design better work environments, and a host […]
Empathy map, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. The empathy map, one of Gamestorming’s methods for understanding audiences, including users, customers, and other players in any business ecosystem, has gotten some press lately because it was featured in Alex Osterwalder‘s excellent book, Business Model Generation as a tool for discovering insights about customers. Here’s how it works: […]
Object of play You can use the Draw Toast exercise to introduce people to the concepts of visual thinking, working memory, mental models and/or systems thinking. This also works as a nice warm-up exercise to get people engaged with each other and thinking visually. Plus, it’s fun! Number of players Any number of people can […]
Object of play: The partnership canvas is a tool that enables visualization of current and/or future partnerships. It can also be used for early testing of the value creating potential of a partnership between two partnership candidates. The tool’s purpose is to define your business priority for partnering, and empathize with your partner to explore whether […]
Check out this excellent Gamestorming design kit created by expert Gamestormer Brynn Evans.
“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.” That was the advice of Arthur Brisbane, Editor The Syracuse Post Standard March 28, 1911. Despite originally referring to newsprint, the adage still holds true in the digital age. “Sketching for understanding” is an efficient and effective way to gather tons of ideas in a short period of time while cultivating shared understanding […]
This game, developed by Johan Tré, is most probably the most simple collaborative cost benefit analysis ever. It is applicable onto subjects where a group has expert knowledge about costs and/or benefits. A group of developers is such an example. Especially a customer or customer proxy will have interest when it comes to prioritizing work […]
Object of Play This game has been designed to gather facts and opinions from the participants on different aspects of the issue at stake. It will help gain and share insight from all points of view, since everyone will have had the chance to contribute. Number of Players: Up to 50 Duration of Play: 15min to an […]
Object of Play Ideal activity for flex points in a gathering (the beginning, when coming back from lunch, at the end of the day). Give everyone at a gathering an opportunity to “get there” mentally by engaging with the purpose/subject. Give everyone a significant amount of “air time” so that everyone’s voice is in the […]
Object of Play When things do not go according to plan, there are two ways we can change our outlook. One is to ignore what is wrong and solely focus on the positives. Although possibly leading to a better attitude when the circumstance surpasses your low expectations, this technique still leaves you with the negative […]
Object of Play Scott Sehlhorst, President of Tyner Blain LLC, has developed an ingenious way to guide the development of your product by identifying your stakeholders. Before laying out a framework of requirements that your product must meet, it is necessary to know your most important users. Doing so not only allows you to prioritize […]
Object of Play Revolutionary sales experts Matthew Dixon — Managing Director of the Corporate Executive Board’s Sales and Service Practice — and Brent Adamson — Senior Director of the Sales Executive Council — have developed an insightful technique to help organizations develop customized sales strategies. In their book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the […]
Object of Play Innovation Ambition Matrix was inspired by the May 2012 Harvard Business Review article, “Managing Your Innovation Portfolio,” written by Monitor’s revolutionary co-partners: Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff. The productive game helps teams develop a holistic view of how to get ahead by organizing initiatives and goals based on three innovation levels: core, adjacent, and transformational. Play Innovation Ambition Matrix to […]
Object of Play: This game helps you discover what you and your colleagues like best and least about your jobs. When doing something you love, it is easy to get lost in the activity for its own sake, which stimulates creativity and commitment to the task at hand. This can be applied to your work […]
Mark Kraemer posted these slides from VizThink Dallas. For more information on the games referenced in this slide deck check out Elevator Pitch and Speed Boat in the Gamestorming Wiki. This slide deck is a great inspiration and also gives you a good sense of what can be accomplished in a couple of hours. Don’t […]
NOTE: We had to postpone the January workshop to March. We hope you can still join! Gamestorming co-author James Macanufo will be delivering a one-day workshop in Boston as part of the WorkBar Workshop series. It is going to be ‘wikkid awesome’ as they say here. “Work Better” Part One: GAMESTORMING MARCH 2, 2012 | […]
Today we are very excited to announce the release of the new Gamestorming Card Deck app for iPhone. The Gamestorming Card Deck is drawn from the GoGamestorm.com blog, the companion website to ‘Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers’ by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and Dave Macanufo. The cards are frequently updated and will […]
At the recent Design Jam Oxford I was introduced to the Gamestorming book and have been pretty much obsessed with it ever since. Given the slightest opportunity I have been putting its ideas to use and one fantastic success was at a recent event in Nottingham in the UK. We are a group of artists […]
Object of Play The first step of achieving your business goal is always the most difficult. Where do you start? Who can you talk to? Is there anybody that will support you in your risky journey? Fortunately, Deb Colden’s Circles of Influence can help you reach your action potential by identifying connections that will lead […]
Object of Play Many of us are overwhelmed by our to-do lists, and work hard each day to accomplish just a few of our countless tasks. However, we tend to focus on urgent items while disregarding the importance of planning for tasks that are necessary to reach our overall goal. This negligence will lead to […]
Object of Play Sitting through status meetings is boring, right? Well, then why do many of us go home and watch status reports for an hour or more every night?We watch news shows, ‘fake’ news shows, Entertainment Tonight, TMZ, ESPN’s SportsCenter, and many more. Something about those status reports must be working better than the […]
Object of Play Iteration retrospective activities are tricky; it is often difficult to think of practical improvements, and reflecting on negative aspects of the project can leave your team feeling upset and unmotivated. A great way to prevent these from occurring is to play a game that focuses on the positives while also pointing out […]
Object of Play Forming an attention-grabbing slogan or pitch can be difficult. Just like brain lateralization — the right hemisphere controls imagination and feelings while the left side manages facts and details – it requires the perfect balance of emotion and logic. To accurately identify this specific combination and maximize your pitch’s impact, Thomas J. […]
Object of Play The goal of game, introduced by Diana Larsen, is to efficiently form high-quality plans through retrospective analysis by recognizing factors that are within the team’s control. During retrospective activities, it is easy to hit a wall of unproductive blame. The moment the group reaches this barrier, “someone shoulds” and “if only you coulds” […]
Listening to project status reports can be deadly dull, but it doesn’t have to be. Imagine if the other meeting attendees were leaning forward in their seats, actively listening, and even calling out excitedly instead of thinking about what they were going to say on their turn, or checking their email! Project Jeopardy requires a […]
Object of Play Bang-for-the-Buck involves collaboration among the product manager and development team to prioritize backlog items. Rather than blindly moving down your agenda without any direction, this game allows you to analyze the costs and benefits of each task, and to organize them in a way that shows you where to begin and in […]
Object of Play In a competitive business environment, it is important to attract and keep customers by making your product stand out from the competition. Products are not just tangible items; they are a unique combination of benefits, services, and promises. The Whole Product Game — inspired by Ted Levitt’s “Whole Product Strategy” — categorizes […]
For many budding Gamestormers, one of the trickiest challenges isn’t in running the games, but in sequencing them to get to a specific outcome for a meeting. This template should help you think through the process of organizing games to evaluate where a certain game path may take you. It’s called Gameboarding because it’s akin […]
As some of you know, we are working on a Gamestorming iPhone app, the Gamestorming card deck. Here’s part of the description we are submitting to the App Store: Each card describes a game that you can apply to any number of business settings, including object of play, step-by-step instructions and strategies for making it […]
Because, oddly, I had never been to London, Andy Budd of Clearleft took pity on me and invited me to host a workshop at UX London 2011. (He swears it’s due to my content but I think he thought I needed a spot of tea.) So I must applaud his prescience – the Gamestorming workshop turned out to […]
Object of Play People who work in large organizations know that most change doesn’t happen immediately or in broad sweeps. It happens incrementally by taking small, strategic steps. Prune the Future uses a tree as a metaphor to show how the future of anything can be shaped,one leaf at a time. Number of Players 5–15 […]
Object of Play Plenty of us are visionaries, idea generators, or, at the very least, suggestion makers. But ideas never come to fruition without a plan. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Well done is better than well said.” Following up on a big idea with an executable action plan is one of the monumental differences between […]
Object of Play Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal. As individuals trying to build forward momentum on products or projects, we sometimes have blind spots regarding what’s stopping us. This game lets […]
Object of Play Quite naturally, most of us don’t think of products or services as being alive and animate. But there are a lot of benefits to imagining a product as a friend rather than an instrument. By pretending that a product has come to life, we can personalize and evolve its features in a […]
Object of Play As a group is developing ideas in a brainstorming session, it may be useful to do a quick “reality check” on proposed ideas. In the NUF Test, participants rate an idea on three criteria: to what degree is it New, Useful, and Feasible? Number of Players Small group Duration of Play Short; […]
Object of Play The goal of this game is to map out the motivations and interactions among actors in a system. The actors in this case may be as small-scale as individuals who need to work together to accomplish a task, or as large-scale as organizations brought together for a long-term purpose. A give-and-take matrix […]
Object of Play The Make a World game appeals to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners because of its layers of interaction. It’s useful (and downright fun) because it lets players imagine the future and take action to create a first version of it. All successful ventures start with a vision and some small, initial effort […]
Object of Play Every human being has blind spots and every company does, too. Knowledge openness can enhance businesses and relationships while knowledge blindness can make things unnecessarily more difficult. In other words, what we don’t know can hurt us. The military refers to this as “the fog of war.” The premise of this game, […]
Object of Play There is a time to go deep. Just as in science, breaking large structures into their base components is fundamental to knowledge work. It is how we create understanding and formulate new ideas. This exercise starts with a single item and ends with a layer-by-layer analysis of its components. It is useful […]
Object of Play Simple information-splicing games come in handy because, in an intentional way, they disrupt the standard ways we break down topics. The 4Cs game is a quick way to gather and organize information about any subject using four common key concepts. Number of Players 5–20 Duration of Play 30 minutes to 1 hour How to […]
Object of Play It’s common for people to attend meetings, voice strong opinions, and then waffle and dodge responsibility for follow-up actions. We have all been guilty of this at one point or another; it’s a built-in, easy assumption that the person who called the meeting bears the responsibilities coming out of it. We may […]
Gamestorming is an amazing way to improve the performance of teams. Unfortunately, Gamestorming doesn’t work too well when your team is distributed. In this guest post, written by Luke Hohmann (who also wrote the foreword to Gamestorming and his own nifty book, Innovation Games), Luke will describe some of the tools his company has created […]
Design Jams are one- or two-day events where people get together to learn, collaborate and hone their design skills while working on real-life problems. On February 26, a group of people got together to design a mobile service. I wasn’t lucky enough to be there, but since I’m following the #gamestorming hashtag on Twitter I […]
Gamestorming makes vivid for me the culture in which I wish to live. It’s a culture which meets us where we are, which encourages us to stretch and grow, just a bit at a time, with every game we play. Each game has an object of play, and so we can feel safe that we […]
Gamestorming is in the top 100!, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Gamestorming hit Amazon’s top 100 business books today! Watch out world!
The ten essentials of Gamestorming, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Overview of the ten essentials of Gamestorming, which you are free to use in your workshops or gatherings as a handout, print out as a poster, or share online. Hopefully a useful resource! You can view the pdf, add comments, or download it here.
Dave Gray: Gamestorming @ UX Book Club London, originally uploaded by evalottchen. I Skyped in to a UX book club in London this week and Eva-Lotta Lamm shared this wonderful page of sketchnotes that she took of the conversation. Thanks Eva!
The Gamestorming book lists more than 80 games. I share a visual cheat sheet that I made in my own exploration of how the games fit together. You can say, I made a game of it. First, at my Self Learners wiki, I listed out the games, with links to the Gamestorming wiki, and for […]
Sunni B. refreshed her union history during the latest Gamestorming session right down the street from the White House. Working with Union Privilege, a program of the AFL-CIO, together she used visual thinking and game techniques to devise their master plan for shifting from good to great. She invented a new game that actually isn’t in Gamestorming […]
Creativity and invention has long been seen as a “black box.” As business people, we don’t typically try to understand this process. We fully expect that when designers, inventors, and other creative people go into a room with a goal, they will come out with more or less creative discoveries and results. Although when we […]
The most exciting thing about gamestorming is the creativity it allows me. I’m essentially freed to create an experience perfectly suited for my audience. Because while the games the folks at Xplane have created are effective, they are still just “old standards.” They are like Monopoly® or Scrabble®. Everyone can play and everyone can enjoy. […]
Object of Play These fast, structured talks enable people to share ideas quickly and with a minimum of distraction. In addition, it puts the pressure on the person conveying the information to do so in a concise and compelling fashion. Number of Players Any size, from a small working group to an auditorium full of people. […]
Object of Play Many meetings happen in an ad hoc or moment-to-moment fashion. They happen without a formal plan, agenda, or prep work—but despite this they can be some of the most productive meetings we have. One characteristic that sets these meetings apart is a focused awareness of time constraints—for example, “We have 30 minutes; how should we spend […]
Object of Play Often in projects, the learning is all at the wrong end. Usually after things have already gone horribly wrong or off-track, members of the team gather in a “postmortem” to sagely reflect on what bad assumptions and courses of action added up to disaster. What makes this doubly unfortunate is that those same team members, […]
Object of Play The concept of a “stakeholder” has deep roots in business and managerial science, appearing as early as the 18th century in reference to any holder of a bet or wager in an endeavor. The term now has come to mean anyone who can significantly impact a decision, or who may be impacted by it. At […]
Object of Play People sometimes grumble about the dreaded “icebreaker,” but humans are like cars: we perform better when we’re warmed up. This meeting starter is great because (1) it lets people self-define, (2) it gives people a “personality” outside the typical work environment, (3) it gives participants quick snapshots of multiple players (since they see many cards as […]
Object of Play To truly create something new, we must challenge constraints. In this exercise, participants take an existing design, process, or idea and change one foundational aspect that makes it “impossible” in function or feasibility. For example: • “How do we build a house…in a day?” • “How do we create a mobile device…with no battery?” […]
Object of Play The object of this game is to introduce event participants to each other by co-creating a mural-sized, visual network of their connections. Number of Players Large groups in an event setting Duration of Play 25 minutes to create the first version of the network; the network remains up for the duration of the event, […]
Object of Play Organizations naturally look ahead to anticipate progress. But the past can be as informative as the future. When an organization undergoes systemic or cultural change, documenting its history becomes an important process. By collecting and visualizing the components of history, we necessarily discover, recognize, and appreciate what got us where we are today. We can see […]
Object of Play Words become more challenging to visualize as they become less literal. For example, the words computer and necktie offer immediate imagery. But the words strategy and justice are more abstract and lend themselves to broader visual interpretations. Graphic Jam is an all-purpose visualization game that you can conduct before many other games as a warm-up, but […]
Object of Play Often during meetings we bring together stakeholders who aren’t familiar with each other’s perspectives or aren’t accustomed to listening to each other without offering an immediate response. In some cases, stakeholders may even be meeting for the first time. In scenarios like these, it’s not surprising that it can be difficult for people to engage in a rich and […]
Object of Play Many of us make the mistaken assumption that others see what we see and know what we know. No one in the world shares your internal system map of reality. The best way to compare notes, so to speak, is to actually draw an external representation of what you think is happening. Welcome to My […]
Pro/Con list, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. It’s rare that we can clearly establish the provenance of a Gamestorming approach, but it’s very nice when we can. The Pro and Con list is a good example: It was invented by Benjamin Franklin and described by him an a 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley. Here’s the description […]
Inspired by the use of Poster Session. I had about 90 minutes of time with a Consumer Credit Counseling Service group I am doing some long term Managerial Leadership Coaching with. A slightly varied process was introduced combining an activity called Bright : Blurry : Blind and Poster Session provided some amazing insight and commonalities […]
Object of Play Open Space technology is a method for hosting large events, such as retreats and conferences, without a prepared agenda. Instead, participants are brought together under a guiding purpose and create the agenda for themselves in a bulletin-board fashion. These items become potential breakout sessions, and participants have the freedom to “vote with […]
Object of Play If a picture is worth a thousand words, what would 50 pictures be worth? What if 50 people could present their most passionate ideas to each other—without any long-winded explanation? A poster session accelerates the presentation format by breaking it down, forcing experts to boil up their ideas and then present back […]
Ice breaker, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Here’s a simple but effective way to break the ice and introduce people at your next meeting or event. It’s a good way to get people into a brainstorming/creative mood and sets the tone for a creative meeting. 1. Give everyone an index card and a colored marker (it’s […]
Force Field image by Seth Starner Object of Play The Greek philosopher Heraclitus asserted that change alone is unchanging. This is certainly true in today’s competitive global marketplace. As employees, we’re often responsible for understanding and even anticipating change in order to stay ahead. The Force Field Analysis game is a time-tested way to evaluate […]
Object of Play In business, it can be easier to have certainty around what we want, but more difficult to understand what’s impeding us in getting it. The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have going for us with respect to a desired end state, as well as what we […]
Recently, my team got stuck trying to choose from four different architecture options for our website. We need to find a balance between near-term tactical goals and long-term strategic goals. When we focused on our strategic goals, the solutions that we came up with didn’t meet our short-term requirements, and vice versa. We moved the […]
In the Back of the Napkin game, players on teams write/draw their answers to a provocative question on the back of a napkin. This game opens conversations and creates connections. Includes examples from the October, 2010, TEDxTC in St. Paul, MN.
Object of Play On any given day, we prioritize the problems that get our attention. Problems that are vague or misunderstood have a harder time passing our internal tests of what matters and, as a result, go unaddressed and unsolved. Often, meetings that address problem-solving skip this critical step: defining the problem in a way […]
Object of Play Cover Story is a game about pure imagination. The purpose is to think expansively around an ideal future state for the organization; it’s an exercise in visioning. The object of the game is to suspend all disbelief and envision a future state that is so stellar that it landed your organization on […]
Object of Play We don’t truly have a good grasp of a situation until we see it in a fuller context. The Context Map is designed to show us the external factors, trends, and forces at work surrounding an organization. Because once we have a systemic view of the external environment we’re in, we are […]
Object of Play Some of the best ideas are compilations from multiple contributors. Brainwriting is a simple way to generate ideas, share them, and subsequently build on them within a group. Access to multiple hands, eyes, and minds can yield the most interesting results. Number of Players: 5–15 Duration of Play: 30–45 minutes How to […]
Object of Play The Anti-Problem game helps people get unstuck when they are at their wit’s end. It is most useful when a team is already working on a problem, but they’re running out of ideas for solutions. By asking players to identify ways to solve the problem opposite to their current problem, it becomes […]
Object of Play This format for brainstorming compresses the essentials of an ideation session into one short format. The numbers 3-12-3 refer to the amount of time in minutes given to each of three activities: 3 minutes for generating a pool of observations, 12 for combining those observations into rough concepts, and 3 again for […]
Object of Play The objective of this game is to identify stakeholders and clarify goals. Number of Players: 1–10 Duration of Play: 20–45 minutes How to Play Who do you want to do what? Almost any endeavor of substantial impact requires seeking help from others. Developing a WHO + DO list is a simple way […]
VTS, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Object of Play This game asks players to envision and describe an ideal future in sequence using words and pictures. Storyboarding as a technique is so versatile that it can be used to show any topic, not just an ideal future. But it is particularly powerful as a visioning exercise […]
Object of Play When prioritizing, a group may need to agree on a single, ranked list of items. Forced ranking obligates the group to make difficult decisions, and each item is ranked relative to the others. This is an important step in making decisions on items like investments, business priorities, and features or requirements—wherever a […]
Object of Play Card sorting is a practice used frequently by information architects and designers to gather and structure inputs for a variety of purposes. In a common use of card sorting, information for a website is put onto the cards, and the sorting helps create categories for navigation and the overall architecture. The method works just […]
Object of Play Bodystorming is simply brainstorming, but done with the body. It may look different depending on the preparations and location, but in the end all bodystorming is fundamentally about one thing: getting people to figure things out by trying things out. A group may explore one of the techniques described below to get […]
Affinity mapping, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Object of Play Most of us are familiar with brainstorming—a method by which a group generates as many ideas around a topic as possible in a limited amount of time. Brainstorming works to get a high quantity of information on the table. But it begs the follow-up question of […]
Social-Network-Un-Plugged is effective with groups of people who know each other well as well as those who do not know each other well.
The objective is to find connections, then to continue to explore how people in the team are connected. By graphically illustrating connections people begin to feel and understand that the similarities and accountabilities are more alike than they at first thought.
Katie Koch of Project: Interaction is Gamestorming with high-school students. Here’s an excerpt from her blog post where she explains how she used Graphic Jam (page 96) to get students thinking visually and to get their creative juices flowing: Looking for a fun way to brainstorm, we decided to adapt a game called Graphic Jam, […]
As many of you know, TEDx events have sprung up all over the world. Planning the bigger events takes a lot of time and effort from volunteers who are serious about “ideas worth spreading.” I’m one of those volunteers, having been on the production team for TEDx Austin since its inception. The team was very […]
Offers insights into the needs that different team members have for information and detail, how people like to work in either a structured or unstructured approach to problem solving and change, and how quickly and slowly people are willing to move ahead with a plan based on how much they know and understand about the solution.
We have proposed a panel at the SXSW Interactive conference on Gamestorming. Here’s the description: Work is getting flatter. There’s no central server dishing out orders. It’s a peer-to-peer, co-evolving world. The team that flocks together, rocks together. The future of work is not about dull routine, it’s about being more human. It’s about curiosity, […]
This game is credited to Cyd Harrell and has been used by Bolt Peters in several client brainstorming meetings. Objective of play: Improve the onboarding process of a product or service. Number of players: 5-30 Duration of play: 30-60 minutes How to play: Everyone is handed a piece of paper and a marker. Participants are […]
Object of play: Brainstorm multiple solution and answers to participants pressing problems…while feeling like a 7-year old again. Number of players: 10-50 Duration of play: 30 minutes – 1.5 hours How to play: 1. Everyone is handed a piece of construction paper. 2. At the top of one side, participants are asked to write their […]
Object of Play: Co-create products or services using design insights gained from collaborative analysis of key frames of peoples’ activities from video clips recorded during ethnographic field work. Number of Players: 6 – 12 Duration of Play: 7 – 8 hours Required Resources: The Video Card Family Game requires use of a video camera (perhaps a smartphone), […]
Hot off the press!, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Entrepreneur and hipster Marcel Botha of Mutopo shows a copy of Gamestorming, hot off the press! Can’t wait to get my own copy 🙂 (Photographer unknown)
Gamestorming author Dave Gray was just interviewed by Mac Slocum of O’Reilly Radar: We’re hardwired to play games. We play them for fun. We play them in our social interactions. We play them at work. That last one is tricky. “Games” and “work” don’t seem like a natural pairing. Their coupling in the workplace either […]
Complex simulation illustrating communication by people listening and sharing information in a manner that other people can understand the message being received as well as sent.
Creates environment to transfer, strengthen and re-work systems of communication with intra as well as inter departmental systems.
Can also be used to highlight different idioms and references that are used internally, this can be confusing to other departments and cultures (for global organizations and teams).
Empathy Map Poster View more presentations from AdilsonJardim. Portuguese version here.
Object of play The end goal of value mapping is to build a visual matrix that quickly and clearly defines areas of interest for something – it can be a service, a product, a plan, a website. It consists of asking people to choose a limited number of features from a bigger collection and then […]
Object of play Ranking selections can be quite boring sometimes. In this game, participants have to create the homepage of a product, service or organization’s website as if it was a bingo card – everyone needs to make quick decisions about what comes top, what comes last. Number of players: Small groups Duration of play: […]
Object of play It is easy to come up with concepts in a world of imagination, where money, time and technical capacity are unlimited, or to generate ideas that look good in theory, but are impractical in reality. The Pitch is a role playing game designed to bring attention back to real world and focus […]
Gamestorming landscape map, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Great map by Matthias Melcher connecting the ten essentials with the list of games we are working on in the Gamestorming book.
WHAT IS GAMESTORMING? Think back to the last time you played a game. What was the game? Why did you choose to play? Was it a simple game like tic-tac-toe, or something more complex, like Monopoly, Scrabble or Chess? Or maybe it was a game of basketball? Did you play with friends? With family? […]
Dave Gray-Knowledge Games: A Grammar for Creativity and Innovation from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
Globalization and the emergence of digital business have changed the playing field for everyone. New business models can now rapidly disrupt an entire industry by changing the way value is delivered to customers (Look how Apple’s iTunes strategy disrupted the music industry, for example). The Business Model Canvas, developed by Alex Osterwalder, is a tool […]
Note: This approach is meant to be pretty flexible- other idea generating and prioritizing techniques may be substituted within the flow to suit the circumstances. Would like to hear how others approach this challenge. -James Object of Play: What has been a time-proven exercise in product development applies equally well in developing any concept: writing […]
NAME OF PLAY: Random Inputs Object of Play: To generate random thinking and new ideas around any topic you choose. # of Players: 5 – 10 Duration of Play: 30 minutes – 1 hour How to Play: Before the meeting, generate a list of 50-75 random nouns. You can do this however you see fit, […]
Meeting games, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Games are not a new thing at work. In nearly every office environment games are in evidence. Be assured: you are part of a game whether you know it or not. Games are going on all around you and most of the time the rules are unclear, unspoken or […]
What is a knowledge game?, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. Games and play are not the same thing. Imagine a boy playing with a ball. He kicks the ball against a wall, and the ball bounces back to him. He stops the ball with his foot, and kicks the ball again. By engaging in this kind […]
It’s very easy for the dynamics of a group to undermine the potential value of bringing a group of people together. If the same people speak every time, there is always a contingent whose voices are not heard; in creative work, a perspective lost can mean valuable ideas are never heard and “group think” can […]
Information Architect and Interaction Designer Donna Spencer practices knowledge games as part of her work. She calls them design games, which she describes as having these four essential characteristics: 1. They are fun, involving play to promote creativity. 2. They are hands-on, about making ideas real, not just talking about them. 3. They are useful, […]
Empathy map, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. The empathy map, one of XPLANE’s methods for understanding audiences, including users, customers, and other players in any business ecosystem, has gotten some press lately because it was featured in Alex Osterwalder‘s excellent book, Business Model Generation as a tool for discovering insights about customers. Here’s how it works: […]
While it’s enjoyable and worthwhile to discuss the ideas behind Gamestorming, it’s more useful to experience them. The image below represents output from a visual-thinking game that you can “play” with your employees. Caution: Adults have a tendency to link Show and Tell to child’s play. This is a learning faux pas. It’s right up […]
Fuzzy goals, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane. In industrial work, we want to manage work for consistent, repeatable, predictable results. Industrial goals are best when they are specific and quantifiable. But in knowledge work we need to manage for creativity – in effect, we don’t want predictability so much as breakthrough ideas, which are inherently unpredictable. […]
In a 1936 “thought experiment,” Alan Turing described a hypothetical machine that could perform any calculation. Fifteen years later the first mass-produced computer was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1969 the first link on the internet – then called ARPANET – was established, between UCLA and Stanford. In the 1970’s, the introduction of […]