Fun & Games at Work

Fun & Games at Work - Presentation Transcript

Fun & Games at Work Nancy Frishberg, Ph.D. nancyf@ﬁshbird.com CHIFOO Meeting • 5 November 2008 1

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® 2 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 2

Who are we talking about? 3 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 3

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 4 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 4

Who are we talking about? Deﬁnitions: Customers ≠ Markets ≠ Users Aphorisms: “You are not your User” “Make many mysteries one” 5 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 5

Listening to customers and users Mark Hurst Creative Good, November 4, 2008 “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.” 6 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 6

How to engage with customers & users 7 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 7

Methods to engage with users • Observation • Focus Groups • 1 hour? 1 day? 1 • Surveys, Questionnaires week? • Usability Studies • Interviews (+/- structure) • “Scavenger Hunt” • Card Sorting • “Compelled shopping” • open • ...and many, many more • closed • Diary Studies 8 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 8

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 9 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 9

Why Play in the Workplace? 10 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 10

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 11 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 11

Books about Play 12

Multiple Intelligences Book by Howard Gardner (1983) • 8 “intelligences” • Verbal, Linguistic • Logical-Mathematical • Visual-Spatial • Bodily-Kinesthetic • Interpersonal • Intrapersonal • Musical • Naturalistic 13 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 13

Finite & Infinite Games Book by James Carse • 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? 14 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 14

Play in the Workplace • Holidays, birthdays, life-cycle events • Workplace-sponsored events • Employee-initiated events • Your experiences? 50 ways 52 ways 15 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 15

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 16 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 16

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 17 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 17

Innovation Games - What? Game Brief Goal Show & 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 18 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 18

Letʼs Play! 19 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 19

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?” 20 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 20

The worldʼs quickest overview of Innovation Games® 21 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 21

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 22 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 22

The term “games” Mike Grifﬁths “Leading Answers: Leadership and Agile Project Management Ideas, Observations and Links” 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 23 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 23

More alternatives to “games” Nancy Frishberg Private communication, October 2008 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). 24 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 24

Which Game? To Understand... Consider These Games • Product Box • Buy a Feature Customer Needs • Me & My Shadow • Remember the Future • Give Them a Hot Tub Product • Product Box • Buy a Feature Functionality • 20/20 Vision • Speed Boat Product Usage • Spider Web • Show and Tell • Start Your Day • The Apprentice Shaping Future • Prune the Product • Buy a Feature Products Tree • Remember The • 20/20 Vision Future 25 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 25

If youʼre not sure, start here... 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 26 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 26

Innovation Games - How? Playing Preparing Post-Processing Action 2-6 months 6-12 weeks 1 week 1-2 weeks 1-3 weeks Before After Phase 2 Process Phase 1 Final Letter to Invite & Game g 5 Wʼs Prep Participants Prep Results g Process Observer Note Cards (same/next day) g 27 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 27

Clients: Setting Expectations • 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... 28 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 28

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 29 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 29

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? 30 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 30

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? 31 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 31

Questions? Contact Nancy Frishberg, Ph.D. nancyf@ﬁshbird.com +1 650 804 5800 (mobile) 61 32 CHIFOO Fun and Games - November 2008 Frishberg 32