2022 Reflections: 3 Powerful Lessons

Well, we're closing the book on 2022. This was a challenging year… for all of us.?

But even with all the pandemic-driven craziness, it’s been a productive & inspiring year for us, here at the Game Thinking Academy.?

We got to work with dozens of innovative teams from all over the world, and help them level-up their skills & find product/market fit.?

And the best part? Seeing our students improve & expand on our framework, & come up with fresh new techniques for validating ideas.?That?blew our minds.?

Here are 3 powerful lessons we learned in 2022.?

Lesson 1. No-code testing accelerates concept validation

One of our foundational techniques is concept storyboarding - a low-fidelity approach to validating your end-to-end customer experience.?

This powerful technique lets you test ideas BEFORE writing code or crafting detailed UX designs. And...that can feel unfamiliar if you’re accustomed to a different approach.?

Like our client Amir Boziev - a skilled software engineer who’s accustomed to throwing together a working prototype to test out his ideas.?When Amir learned about Concept Storyboards, it was a time-saving revelation?

We also saw designers use these no-code tools to test out new features & solve tricky UX issues Like our clients Leon Cappel & Emiel de Graaf - UX professionals who work for a top financial newspaper in the Netherlands.?

They used Concept Storyboards to playtest a major new feature… validate core use cases… & tune their design… WITHOUT creating detailed mockups or a working prototype.?

This year, we learned that Concept Storyboards are part of the no-code revolution.?And seeing our customers save time & solve hard problems using these no-code tools really motivates us to get this technique into more people’s hands.

Lesson 2. Small-group coaching amplifies learning?

We run our online training programs as curated small-group meetings, where people from different teams can all learn from each other - and share their mistakes openly. And we’re seen that when professionals feel safe enough to show work in progress & ask for honest feedback… something kinda magical happens.

People open up - & professionals from entirely different industries offer each other fresh perspectives.??And the execution level of the whole group rises.

At the Academy, we’ve experimented with many different ways to train & empower professionals. And we’ve found that expert-led group coaching is the fastest, most effective way to acquire skills & get reliably better on-the-job results - as our client Sven Otto, MA, CSPO, CSM experienced during his Masterclass experience.

?Lesson 3. When students “mod” your framework - you win?

We designed the Game Thinking system to be the fastest way to get to product market fit.?

?But there’s ALWAYS room for improvement & we’re constantly learning from our students, and feeding those learnings back into the system.?

This year, many of our students came up with clever “mods” to the Game Thinking framework - & shared those techniques with the community.?

Like Marice Sy & Nicole Jendro ? at Geocaching, who invented an ingenious approach to kickstarting research & identifying existing behavior patterns called Review Mining.??Before talking to customers, they gather insights & clues by reading app reviews - & shaved months of time off their process.

Or Ian Brand , who leads innovative projects at GM. Ian accelerated his idea validation process by creating narrative playtests that use just words, and no pictures.?

That made me wonder... why are our students so comfortable "modding" the system?

I think it's the modular, flexible framework we’ve developed - along with our small-group meetings where people educate & inspire each other.?Plus, we host monthly VIP guests, who amplify our program’s impact & inspire our students.

In 2022 we brought in over a dozenguest experts - including Brendan Greene , Jonathan Lai , Bob Moesta , John Linden , & Mitch Zamara , Samuel Hulick Jason Hreha , Hilmar Veigar Pétursson & Philip Rosedale - who coached our students on game design, investor strategies, customer interview techniques, and building the metaverse.?

2023 is shaping up to be an amazing year. Want to get in on the action & level-up your innovation skills??Check out our programs here

From all of us at the Game Thinking Academy, have a safe & happy new year.

See you in 2023?????