Five games to play for your User Experience process

Dima Popovici Mar 24 · 7 min read

Why should you read this?

Its fairly simple, people hate one-way communication. Do you know the type of “sit your ass down and listen to me “ how I prophesy my methods and boost my accolades ?! As social creatures, we love to interact and exchange information. Sometimes we even engage in arguments and disrupt the person who is speaking just because ideas or distractions bubble up in our head. Like right now I am sure something else caught your attention while you committed the few minutes to read this. As the writer and the important officer that prompted me to write this article, I would demand you to pay attention to it. At least that is what happens if you were in a close room with me and others. Since you are on your own couch now, and you devoted screen time to this here is what I promote.

Lets play games

That is the based way I found to share information and learn something. Games are fun and interactive and did I mention Fun ?! Why sit in the boring meeting or watch someone talk to you and you just stay still and wonder when you get your chance. While I will make this case for UX requirement gathering process since I also consider myself a “designer” . You can apply games to anything you convey. Don’t believe me, that’s fine, check this book , I save you time from googling:

Gamestorming: A Playbook For Innovators, Rulebreakers, And Changemakers Paperback — July 30, 2010

by Dave Gray (Author), Sunni Brown (Contributor), James Macanufo

WARNING

Before you start , this can be very addictive and fun so be careful of your time constraints. Make sure the people in the room , the “stakeholders” are open enough to try a different approach to “spec gathering “ , “persona development “, “user research” and “empathy mapping” .

That is it my tongue is twisted . Translation now for the common folks :) what I just wrote is simpler, though we as designers want to make it a mystery. Basically, we get everyone who touches the project involved at least to one meeting so we can listen to everyone, yes even the finance person who needs to approve all of this. Together we establish what will success looks like for both the company and the users. Our goal is to turn unrealistic deadlines into reasonable goals that everyone feels can be met. We can eliminate problems like :

1 Personal opinions of those doing the “gathering.”

2. The technology preferences of the IT department.

3. What customers have said they want.

4. What everyone is assuming customers want.

Game one : Environment Mapping

The object of this game is to map the “environment “ by co-creating a mural-sized, visual network of the connections.

25 minutes to create the first version of the network; the network remains up for the duration of the meeting and may be added to, changed, or studied throughout.

How to play

1. Who are you ? Start by taking your card and drawing your avatar (profile picture) that you’ll be uploading to the network. Save room on the bottom of the card for your name.

2. Create the avatars write two words on the card that “tag” who are you or what are you responsible for.

3. Make the connections. Stand up and bring your card and a marker to the butcher paper wall, then “upload” yourselves by sticking their card to the wall.

4. The next task is simple: find the people you know and draw lines to make the connections. Label the lines if you can: “responsible for him” or “sends emails of approval” or “comments the prototype”

Game two :Fishbowl

The Fishbowl game is an effective way to activate attention — to prime our natural listening and observing skills so that a more substantive conversation can take place.

45 minutes; Arrange the chairs in two concentric circles in the room. The inner circle seats the players engaged in conversation; the outer circle seats the players acting as observers.

How to play?

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. For this one, you need the people who interact directly with the users, costumers.

1.Introduce the game and assign “observer” or “player” status to each person. Give everyone a pen and a handout (but mention that the handout is used only in the observer role). Ask the participants to sit in the circle relative to their assigned.

2. Announce the topic, in this case :what users want, and what the business wants ,and ask the players to take 15 minutes to have a discuss it. Pass the stick so you can maintain order. Make sure the players know that their responsibility is simply to converse in the circle. Make sure the observers know that their role is to pay close attention and to write on the handouts all discussion points and evidence that come out of the conversation.

3. When 15 minutes are up, ask the group to switch seats and switch roles. Then start another 15-minute discussion on the same topic or a different one.

4. After both conversations have completed, ask for volunteers to share the information they gathered and ask them to describe their experiences on the inner versus outer circle.

The Fishbowl game is based on ideas from the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, by Sam Kaneret al.

Now Definitely take a break

Did I mentioned you don’t need to do this in one meeting ?! When you have enough evidence to support your findings from the previous game you can start the next game until then there is no point since you make assumptions and you don’t want to make an ass of yourself.

Game number three : Customer, Designers, Shareholder

The object of this game is to imagine possible futures from multiple perspectives.

1–3 hours; Divide the group in the roles . Each group should focus on their roles — customers on what they need, stakeholders on business objectives, designers observing these groups should write requirements.

How to play?

The goal of the game is to understand the level of UX maturity and showcase the requirement gathering.

1. Create a list of website features. Create a list of features for a made-up website (or a current project) — no more than 30 features Each feature should include a name and short description outlining what the feature is and what the benefits to the user are.

2. Assign a price to each feature. This price related to the complexity to implement the feature — so a feature that’s twice as complex as another should be twice as expensive.

3. Give each player a budget. This is the amount they can spend on features. Giving them enough money to buy between 1/2 and 1/3 of the features available usually works well.

4. Play the game. Hand out the money and the features list, and start the game. You play the role of the shop keeper, answering questions and taking payment when a feature is purchased. Keep in mind: In order to buy a feature, players have to explain why they want that feature. The game continues until all money is spent, or players are done buying. Make it clear to players that it’s OK for money to be leftover at the end; you don’t want people buying features just to get rid of their unspent cash

Game number four : Empathy Map

The object of this game is to quickly develop a customer or user profile.

10–15 minutes; Personas help focus a group’s attention on the people involved in a project — often the customer or end - user. Although creating an empathy map is not the rigorous, research -based process that is required for developing personas, it can quickly get a group to focus on the most important element: people.

How to play?

In this exercise, you will be creating a study of a person with the group.

1. Ask the group to give this person a name.

2. Label large areas around the head: “Thinking”, “Seeing”, “Hearing”, and “Feeling”.

3. Ask the group to describe — from this person’s point of view — what this person’s experience is, moving through the categories from seeing through feeling.

4. The goal of the exercise is to create a degree of empathy for the person with the group. The exercise shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. Ask the group to synthesize: What does this person want? What forces are motivating this person? What can we do for this person?

The Empathy Map game was developed by Scott Matthews of XPLANE.

Game number five : Start , Stop , Continue

The object of Start, Stop, Continue is to examine aspects of a situation or develop the next steps for everyone involved. It may seem that only the UX Designer needs to do something with the info from the previous games, though every stakeholder is advised to get the ball rolling. The content, the metrics , the funds , all the bits of this project can’t be just silo enterprise.

10 min to an hr; Ask the group to consider the current situation or goal and individually brainstorm actions in these three categories:

1. Start: What are the things that we need to START doing?

2. Stop: What are we currently doing that we can or should STOP?

3. Continue: What are we doing now that works and should CONTINUE?

THE END …or is it?

Nothing is set in stone and perfect.If you need help or guidance or just brainstorm ideas , or have a project and you need a UX designer reach out at [email protected]