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IA Summit 2006

Jess McMullinwww.nForm.ca

Game ChangingHow You Can Transform Client Mindsets Through Play

Jess McMullin | nForm User Experience

I’m Jess McMullin, Thanks for coming out to my session this afternoon. Things about nForm. www.nform.ca

IA Summit 2006


Disclaimer• A significant barrier to success on many consulting projects is lack of buy-in from business stakeholders.

Sometimes this shortfall of support simply requires IAs to be fluent in the language of business and communicate the business benefits of a project. However, the challenge is often deeper when business stakeholders hold a mindset that doesn't appreciate the approach or objectives of a project. It's these mindsets that are often dismissed with a rejoinder that they just don't get it'. Instead of this abdication, IAs can actually change mindsets to increase project success.

Changing mindsets takes more than talking with business people in their own language, it takes transformative experiences that make perspectives flexible and open to new views. These reframing experiences most often come through participation in successful projects, but this leads to a chicken-and-egg problem - how do we provide success with IA projects for an audience of people that are causing failure? The common answer is to run a pilot or prototype to tackle low-hanging fruit and build buy-in with a track record of success - but what happens when you don't have time, budget, or support for a pilot?

One avenue for accelerating mindset change is playing design games. Games create low-risk situations that let stakeholders experience new perspectives, approaches, and methods without the time, expense, and commitment of a pilot. By scaling human-centered design principles and methods down to the level of games, we can rapidly expose entire teams to new ways of thinking, opening up their world views, and offering valuable perspectives that can bring new appreciation for IA to their mindset. This session will mix principles with examples to help IAs use games that can change business mindsets and develop increased buy-in for human-centered design and information architecture. Fundamental principles will lead to a discussion of various game options and outline how IAs can pitch games as a serious tool to facilitate project progress. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in some gameplay during the session.

[Your Mileage May Vary]

Some of these ideas are conceptual

IA Summit 2006


Blue Sky thinking

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Blue Sky Barrier

We run into roadblocks in our pursuit of possibility

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about buy-inabout gamesgames + you

We’re going to talk about three things today that relate to building buy-in from business decision makers.

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The Tieand the

TurtleneckA fable about the thinking that goes on with different professional cultures.

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Turtleneck

Turtleneck – more relaxed, informal, creative, right-brained

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Tie

Tie – more formal, logical, financial, bottom-line, left-brained

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The Solution – which Chris Baum and I came up with at about 2:30 am this morning – wear more ties.

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User Faces

The real solution – think of business people as your users. We have great skills in understanding other people’s hopes, dreams, needs and desires. Turn those skills towards communicating with business decision makers.

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Develop Business Fluency

The outcome of focusing on business people as users is that IAs and designers need to develop business fluency.

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That’s why last year, I ran a panel called ‘Talking the Talk – helping IAs speak the Language of Business’. Here’s our illustrious panelists.

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Conceptual Fluency

When we talk about business fluency, we are often talking about conceptual fluency – knowing the ideas like ROI, net present value, internal rate of return, cash flow, and other business concepts.

Recommended resources:

What the CEO Wants You to Know, Ram Charan

10 Day MBA

Portable MBA

Encyclopedia of Leadership

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Cultural Fluency

But more important than the concepts are understanding the culture of business. You need to be able to navigate politics, power structures, decision making, negotiating, and more.

Recommended:

Influence, Robert Cialdini

Getting Past No

Talking with Harry Max, if you bump into him here

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Design Maturity

http://www.bplusd.org/2005/10/19/a-rough-design-maturity-model/

See my blog for more on this

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Reframing

What you see depends on where you sit – reframing let’s you choose a different chair / viewpoint / worldview / um – frame.

Chairs photo from DUX 2005

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Creating Shared

ReferencesWe need to have things to reference on a team / project to guideand shape conversations, providing a boundary object that lets people communicate by referencing it. Almost all our work as IAs is work like this [move to deliverable examples]

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Deliverables provide a shared reference for a team to have a conversation.

Diagram created with Lou Rosenfeld

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Goal-Receptor Model

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[more deliverables]

• Persona• Sitemap• Wireframe• Web Analytics Roll-up(removed)

Deliverables snipped

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BUT

Shared references based solely on deliverables are insufficient,inefficient. They are like telling about a situation. We need toremember about Telling / Showing / Doing

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[family photo – kodak moment]

I can tell you about my family, or I can show you.

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[family photo – reality after too long a photo shoot]

And then I can show you what it’s really like

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We Need Better Shared

ReferencesAnd the most powerful shared references are ones that we do together.

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My Mary_Poppins

MomentHow I realized that games could be used

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“…you find the fun, and<snap>

the job’s a game.”

Talk about Productopoly

In fall 2004, shortly after Gene joined company, we were at whiteboard talking about how to communicate our process. Came up with idea of using a boardgame of the design process to familiarize clients.

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about games

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Why Games

• Game examples: board games, card games, roleplaying games, tag, sports, war

• Games as rehearsal• Games across learning styles• Games tap tacit knowledge• Games are fun• Games create a shared narrative that acts

as a bridge for conversations

My thinking about design games came from playing regular games…

Games as rehearsal

Engage with different learning styles

Tacit knowledge

Games generate experience

Games create a shared narrative

Tell / Show / Do of learning

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ObjectivesConstraintsOutcomes

CompetitionGame Principles

-At the core, a game must have:

-OBJECTIVES – goals

-CONSTRAINTS – limits, boundaries, rules

-OUTCOMES – success criteria

-COMPETITION – sometimes

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MINDSET

SKILLSET

solo social

Games can be solo or social.

Games can affect Mindset or Skillset

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Risks

One risk in talking about design games is the difference betweenthe packaging and the actual product. Did design games sound funbecause they’re novel and new, or could I really use them?

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Frogger Screen

Frogger is still a fun game, even if the packaging doesn’t match the actual experience. Maybe there’s something to design games besides novelty (and the fact that they aren’t wireframes)

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games+you

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3 Approaches» Modify Existing Activities For Play» Use Existing Games and Formats» Create New Games

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Design Game Examples

» Design the Box» Improv» Interactionary / IA Slam /

SlamCamp» MetaMemes

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Participatory Design

Have teams design the box for a product. You can make actual boxes, or just collect the copy, and then do a box later in photoshop. More from Joel Spolsky’s blog (I talked about this approach at Comspace 2003 – I should dig up those slides)…

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/JimHighsmithonProductVisi.html

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Teamwork

Improv from CanUX – Gene is lifting a very heavy object

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Improv

Which was so heavy Kelly dropped it, I think

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Live Case Study

We did our own Slam back in September, about Clam Oil, at CanUX, the Canadian User Experience workshop.

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Live Case Study

A Slam is just working through a live Case Study

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Brainstorming - MetaMemes

MetaMemes is a card deck to help brainstorming.

www.metamemes.com

New version in the works, but think it’s sold out for now.

MetaMemes + Personas

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Selling Games

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Selling=

Reframing

Reframe using language

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We’re going to work

through a case study exercise.

Games? What Games?

Put on your serious business face (this is mine)

-Instead we have:

-Innovation Tools for Structured Brainstorming and Increased Creativity (MetaMemes)

-Team Building Exercises (Improv)

-Participatory Requirements Gathering (Design the Box)

-Live Case Study Exercises (IA Slam)

-Facilitation Tools

-Simulations

-Facilitated System Models

-Artifact Collection Exercise (scavenger hunt)

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Let’s Play A Game

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Jenny

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Terms• Heisenberg’s

Uncertainty Principle

• Gross Out• Anti Aging Gene• Connection• Swarm

Intelligence

Make banking relevant to a 10 year old boy

Tom

Randomly Selected Persona, then gave choice of 5 cards, pick two. Brainstorm Ideas about how to make financial services more relevant for 10 year old.

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Sarah

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Thank you!

Jess McMullinnForm User ExperienceBlog: bplusd.orgWeb: nForm.cajess <dot> mcmullin <at> nForm.ca

IA Summit 2006


References

• Kes Sampanthar, MetaMemes Designerwww.metamemes.com

• Rules of Play• Game Design Workshop• Brandt & Messeter (2004) Facilitating

Collaboration through Design Games, Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference.

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