fun & games at work

Fun & Games at Work

Nancy Frishberg, [email protected]

CHIFOO Meeting • 5 November 2008

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mailto:[email protected]


FrishbergCHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008

Tonightʼs meeting• Who are we talking about• How to engage with them• Why play or fun in the workplace• How to play in the workplace• Letʼs play tonight (briefly)• The worldʼs quickest overview of Innovation Games®

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CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg

Who are we talking about?

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Many careers, one life • Creative job titles, such as

• Research Professor for Interpreting Services (at RIT)• Discipline Specialist for the Humanities (with IBM)• User Interface Institute Fellow (with IBM)• Licensing Engineer (with Apple)• Evangelist for User Centered Design (with Sun)• and now User Experience Strategist

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Who are we talking about?

Definitions:Customers ≠ Markets ≠ Users

Aphorisms:“You are not your User”“Make many mysteries one”

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Listening to customers and users

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“There's no substitute for having stakeholders physically present during customer research. If stakeholders are there, they buy into the process. No one needs a master's degree in human factors to understand that three customers in a row failing at the same place is cause for immediate improvement.”

Mark HurstCreative Good, November 4, 2008

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How to engage with customers & users

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Methods to engage with users

• Observation• 1 hour? 1 day? 1

week?• Interviews (+/- structure)• Card Sorting

• open • closed

• Diary Studies

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• Focus Groups• Surveys, Questionnaires• Usability Studies

• “Scavenger Hunt”• “Compelled shopping”

• ...and many, many more

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Focus Groups

• Traditional:• Someone writes a script and someone recruits

participants (sometimes the same “someone”)• Moderator spends an hour with 8-12 people; team

observes (ideally through mirrored window in observation room in real time, or via audio transmission on mute)

• Several someones examine the transcript and decide what it all means

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Why Play in the Workplace?

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Power of Play• Learning styles

• audio, visual, tactile• Strong emotions tied to memorable experiences

• Large brained animals perform better when they are having fun

• Multiple intelligences• 7 or 8 kinds of smarts: How many do you get to show

at work?• Managing to have fun

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Books about Play12


Multiple Intelligences

• 8 “intelligences”• Verbal, Linguistic • Logical-Mathematical• Visual-Spatial• Bodily-Kinesthetic• Interpersonal• Intrapersonal• Musical• Naturalistic

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Book by Howard Gardner (1983)

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• Two types of Games• Quick definitions and examples

• Goal of Business• Is business a finite or infinite game?• What parts of business, if any, are infinite?• What parts of business, if any, are finite?

Finite & Infinite Games

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Book by James Carse

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• Holidays, birthdays, life-cycle events• Workplace-sponsored events• Employee-initiated events• Your experiences?


Play in the Workplace

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50 ways

52 ways

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Innovation Games - What?• 12 Games

• Involve several customers in face-to-face activity with each other• Most take ~2 hours to complete• 2 are more ethnographic and require longer time

• Recommended: use one or two in a single day• Physically distributed play supported for one game• Cultural differences and expectations are still being

explored

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Innovation Games - Why?• Identify unknown market needs• Direct market research that provides actionable results• Generate rich understanding of customer/user needs

and desires to feed requirements techniques• Support on-going relationships

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Innovation Games - What?

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Game Brief GoalShow & Tell Identify the most important artifacts created by your product

Speed Boat Identify what customers donʼt like about your product or service

Start Your Day Understand when and how your customer uses your product

Buy A Feature Prioritize proposed features

Prune the Product Tree Shape your product to market needs

20/20 Vision Understand customer priorities

Me & My Shadow Identify your customersʼ hidden needs

Spider Web Understand product relationships

Product Box Identify the most exciting product features

Give Them a Hot Tub Use outrageous features to discover hidden breakthroughs

Remember the Future Understand your customersʼ definition of success

The Apprentice Create empathy for the customer experience

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Letʼs Play!

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Remember the Future• Goal: Understand Your Customerʼs

Definition of Success

Activity:Hand each of your customers a few pieces of paper. Ask them to imagine that it is sometime in the future and that they’ve been using your product almost continuously between now and that future date (month, year, whatever). Then ask them to write down exactly what your product will have done to make them happy or successful or rich or safe or secure or whatever – choose what works best for your product.

Key point – ask “What will the system have done?” not “What should the system do?”

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The worldʼs quickest overview of

Innovation Games®

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Innovation Games - How?• Choose Game(s)• Logistics

• Invite participants (to a place at a date)• Determine staff roles, materials, equipment...

• Play!• Process results

• Observer notes, photographs, artifacts, audio• Present to client (and potentially customers)• Act

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The term “games”

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I have never been a fan of suggesting the use of “games” in the enterprise workplace, as in XPʼs “Planning Game”. The term does not sit well with some traditional-type folks; to them it sounds unprofessional and not serious enough for important work. Yet the Innovation Games described by Hohmann are high performance facilitated workshop exercises that produce great results. If the project is serious enough to engage busy stakeholders then I think we owe it to the business to use the most effective tools at our disposal. If calling them “facilitated workshop exercises” eases their acceptance then Iʼm all for it, because it is the results Iʼm really interested in, not so much what we call them.

http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2007/03/release_and_ite.html

Mike Griffiths “Leading Answers: Leadership and Agile Project Management Ideas, Observations and Links”

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More alternatives to “games”

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While I and some others call these activities "games," there are good reasons to refer to "focus groups" (but not your father's focus groups!) for customer engagements, and "visioning exercises" where management are the players. For internal work, sometimes it's good to call it team-building, and sometimes it's better to say, "internal customer feedback" or "requirements gathering" or “designing for productivity” (as for your service offering).

Nancy FrishbergPrivate communication, October 2008

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Which Game?

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To Understand... Consider These Games

Customer Needs• Product Box• Me & My Shadow• Remember the Future

• Buy a Feature• Give Them a Hot Tub

Product Functionality

• Product Box• 20/20 Vision

• Buy a Feature• Speed Boat

Product Usage • Spider Web• Start Your Day

• Show and Tell• The Apprentice

Shaping Future Products

• Prune the Product Tree

• 20/20 Vision

• Buy a Feature• Remember The

Future

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If youʼre not sure, start here...

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Use This Game To Understand...

Speed Boat What you need to improve

Buy a Feature What features you need to build next

Product Box New Possibilities

Spider Web How or Where your product fits in

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Innovation Games - How?

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Preparing

Phase 1 5 Wʼs

Final Prep

Process Observer Note Cards

(same/next day)

Process Game

ResultsLetter to

ParticipantsPhase 2 Invite &

Prep

Post-Processing ActionPlaying

2-6 months 6-12 weeks 1 week 1-2 weeks 1-3 weeksBefore

Playing

Playing

Playing

After

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Clients: Setting Expectations

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• Why choose Innovation Games?• Which Game(s) to choose?

• Open vs. closed• Time available• What question(s) is the client trying to answer?

• When to choose Innovation Games?• Ideation stage• Debate among staff on prioritization...

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Benefits of Innovation Games• Benefits to client organization

• Find out what customers feel and think• Learn what you donʼt know you donʼt know

• Benefits to customers• Know that they are being heard• Contributing to direction of product/service• Contact with client staff

• Plus...FUN

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Provocative Questions• What makes a good issue to be the focus of the

Game? Whatʼs a poor question for the focus of a Game?

• Is there an order to the Games that is preferred or that should be avoided?

• You want the client to pay attention to comments exchanged during the game, rather than the outcome. How do you do this? When do you pay attention to outcome?

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Provocative Questions (more)• Can facilitation skills be learned or are you born

with them? • What to do with a participant who wonʼt play?

“Teams are the enemy of freedom” • How many Observers are enough? How to train

them? • What do clients want as a report or outcome of

the activity? What do you want to provide as report or outcome?

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Questions?

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Contact Nancy Frishberg, [email protected]+1 650 804 5800 (mobile)

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