Sg2009wc:designgames
From She's Geeky Wiki
Title: Design Games for Product Innovation
Session: 2-F Bay Area Jan 2009
Convener: Nancy Frishberg (check linked nfrishberg on LinkedIn)
Attendees:
Notes:
See slides at: http://www.slideshare.net/nancy.f/fun-games-at-work-presentation
Also check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/nancyf/collections/72157600268471726/
Consider: How do you currently engage with customers/users?
- Focus group
- Diary studies
- Question and answer
- Observation
- Etc.
Games are playful and tactile communication devices that go beyond what is available from primarily number and verbal methods. They are especially useful in fields of architecture, emergency medicine and many many other applications.
Contents |
Activity: “Product Box”
With a physical sample of a product, customers can see size and shape, can see for instance, that it is intended to serve multi lingual audience, configuration requirements, emblems communicate quickly. Feature the things visual that are the most important things to the customer.
1. Get the right participants: Remember: “You are not your user.” User (person who touches it) vs. customer (person who buys)
2. Have a design question: E.g. “How shall She’s Geeky collaborate with people and other orgs using the same space?”
Some Examples of Design Games …
Activity: Spider Web
Use for: How will the thing I’m designing solve a problem for the user or fit into their environment? Example: show me that thing … “Diagram what your home computing situation/environment looks like.” People will give you floor plans, schematics, etc. Ask questions about how they use the different pieces. You will see what they forgot. Watch and find new applications from “unnatural acts” (quicken use for business)
Another approach: use a customer council and ask: “Show us what you have done that you think will surprise us?” They will show you how they are using the product to solve problems and this may reveal potential product extensions.
Activity: Buy a Feature
An activity that has people “spend” a limited resource to buy different proposed features of the product. You will see people negotiate, deliberate, strategize about what is important to them. It will show you how they make tradeoffs, etc.
Activity: 20 20 vision
Forced choice (have to choose, no ) statements pair, makes the respondent rank Ask: What is riskier: a or b?
Activity: Prune the product tree
Use this to shape product roadmap/timeline to market needs Infrastructure at roots Place product features that are wanted sooner closer to trunk
Question: in game design, where do you look to locate your blind spots? Question: How to gauge have we brought in the right customers?
Nancy’s bias: Human cognition evolve slower than computing
Consider Myers Briggs profiles and other learning styles. Engineers are notoriously NTs and NJs and are usually not aware there is a large part of the population that is not.
From a background in linguistics, think: “here’s an utterance - now, what it’s the negation of it? what is a question about that utterance?” Have you narrowed it too soon -- or have you narrowed it with data? Have you opened too far -- or have you opened it with data?