team cards

The checklist ECONOMIST

You excel at checklists and all project management skills. What the team needs,you can provide! great! Alas, you are also a bit of a tyrant. You frequently whip others through the process. good for the schedule but bad for fun and creativity. draw +1 method of choice at start, draw +1 blank anytime in first round

resources

progress

define

ideate

+1

+1

-1

-1

The nerdy coder

You spend your days and nights Hooked to the computer. There are people actually using what you do, but they are just clogs In your machine. You are a mean Powerhouse of knowledge and Ideas though. -1 method of choice at start for playing doom, +1 blank in first round

resources

progress

discover

ideate

-1

+1

-1

+1

The funky designer

You live the process and are an Expert of each step. That‘s why you love exploring the problem and coming up with lots of ideas. Unfortunately, a lot of them are „far out“ – management just hates these creative types. -1 blank card in the first round.

ideate

explore

evolve

progress

+1

+1

+1

-1

The frustrated ethnographer

You are always out in the field, spending time with the users and discovering what is really important to them. Unfortunately, no one is listening to you. That makes it difficult to bring in your ideas or participate during the development.

discover

define

ideate

explore

+1

+1

-1

-1

The merry experimenter

you celebrate the process, not the tool, testing and retesting potential scenarios to make ideas tangible. that's fun for you. you might sometimes deviate from the question at hand, but still try to create experiments in budget and on time.

discover

define

ideate

explore

-

-1

-

+1

The cross- pollinator

you draw associations and connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts to break new ground. you are a variety junkee with many interests and an avid curiosity. you love to bring in big ideas from the outside world. you dont like to implement them though. You also leave the needfinding to others.

-1

+1

+1

-1

The fast hurdler

you are a tireless problem-solver who gets a charge out of tackling something that's never been done before. When confronted with a challenge, you sidestep the obstacle and then move head on. you might become too set in your line of thinking though. you also don’t always work well with others.

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-

-1

+1

The smart collaborator

you are the rare person who truly values the team over the individual. you actually get people to work together and instill the team with confidence and new skills… though you leave others to do the nitty gritty of the work, you help by being an organizer. draw +1 method of choice at start, draw +1 blank anytime in first round. Give both to someone else.

+1

+1

-1

-1

discover

define

ideate

explore

resources

progress

ideate

explore

discover

define

ideate

explore

The firm director

you have an acute understanding of the bigger picture, with a firm grasp on the pulse of their organization. you help to find out what motivates people and direct others through the process. You are dependent on others ideas and execution though.

+1

+1

-1

-1

The set designer

you look at every day as a chance to liven up their workspace. you create a work environment that celebrates the individual and stimulates creativity. you turn the office space itself into a versatile and powerful tool for the team. However, this uses up some resources. -1 blank card in the first round, give your bonus cards to the team

-1

+1

+1

+1

The fluffy caregiver

you are the foundation of human-powered innovation. through empathy, you work to understand each individual customer and create a relationship. the user is everything to you. you are also the person who brings snacks to meetings and offers a shoulder to cry on.

+1

+1

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The great storyteller

you capture the teams imagination with compelling narratives of the users needs. you go beyond oral tradition to work deliver the message of the product by video, animation, even comic strips and roleplays.

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+1

-

+1

discover

define

ideate

explore

progress

define

ideate

explore

discover

define

ideate

explore

discover

define

ideate

explore

discover

Cultural probes are fun! mostly because they seem like less work for management and excite your team. they are also powerful. draw 3 blank cards. HOW THE METHOD WORKS IRL: pick a bag, ask users to throw stuff in that relates to the task at hand. collect the bag after a day and analyze the contents. hint: the bag can be a camera, too.

discover +3

Cultural Probe

Shadowing just the same as in any police movie. You sit in the car with your buddy while he looks through the goggles and tells you whats going on. Ideally, you should do this with the permission of your users. How the method works: a user is working on a task while an expert in the domain explains whats going on. Useful in the beginning of a process to gain fast expertise.

discover +3

Openended questioning of extreme users is very useful as long as you spend more than just an hour with the person. its important to create empathy and discover what the needs of the person are, so you have to take your time and really get to know the person and his context. Very timeintensive. Should be combined with observations.

discover +2

user interviews

Think „museum“ with this method. You get a gudied tour through a product, a service or a task that your user works through while narrating about the single steps and their importance. Dont forget to bring your camera and do not touch the exhibits!

discover +2

Guided tours

shadowing

Have you tried your own product? You would be surprised to hear how many haven‘t. Just put yourself into your users shoes and try it yourself. Also, try to mimic your users, too. If they are small kids, then get on your knees and pretend to be one for a day. You get the gist.

discover +2

Try it yourself

What‘s a day in the life of your user? Give him a notebook and ask him to jot down what he is doing and thinking about at the moment whenever you give him a call. Taking photos might help, too. you can narrow this down to a specific behaviour, like communication or food. Similar to cultural probes, but structured to focus on chronology.

discover +2

A day In the life

What the title says. Google for some studies and books and read what others have already written about this problem. Maybe some insights are just lying around, waiting to be found. Might be your lucky day.

discover +1

Secondary research

Grab a number of cards with many associations about the product or service you are looking into. photos, words or sketches will work fine. Now grab your users and let them sort the cards according to importance, or value or fun or any other factor you might think of. Good to figure out priorities. Bad to discover new aspects.

discover +1

Card sort

Know focus groups? This is the same but the opposite: get people who are unlikely users of your product, have no use for your product, are extreme users of your product, really hate your product… everyone but the average or the “target” group.

discover +1

Unfocus group

Ask your users to tell an exciting story involving the use of your product or service. Works great with kids and helps investigate the essence of a problem. It is especially useful for service concepts. Works well for testing purposes as well.

discover +1

scenarios

Grab a range of pictures of similar products or services and place them on a wall. Think „wall of weird“ in smallville or „crime wall“ in csi. Just gather as many different inspirations as you can. Ask friends, users, colleagues… grap magazines and surf websites. Collect everything and arrange them visually. You can also use colored strings to connect related stuff.

discover +1

Mood board

Dog. Cat. Boy. girl. Cookies. Milk. Basically, that is how it goes. Present your users with a range of words like that and see what kind of associations they come up with. Usually applied in brand research but also useful to figure out what menu points should be named or what users imagine a certain function should work like.

discover +1

Word association

define

Ist the same as in the movies. Think of a sequence for the problem you are looking at and visualize it in a storyboard. Whats happening off the panels? Why are we seeing these panels? Defining the story helps you to define the problem at hand.

+3

story- boards

Personas are fictional users. pretty handy if real ones don‘t hang out during the process. Draw 3 cards how the method works irl: gather insights generated from user interviews & observations. what did you learn? what kind of patterns in needs, goals and behaviours did you find? take them and create a person with age, job, hobbies, dreams, quotes…

define +3

persona

Which groups have an interest in what you are looking at? Who is involved and why? List all the possible stakeholders and place them on a map to see how they relate to each other. You can identify conflicts and possibilities while visualizing the problem at hand from every single groups perspective. Of course, you need to look into those individual views at some point.

+2

Stakeholder map

Create a 2x2 coordinate system and map similar problems, products or services onto it. Now look at the x and y axis. Which terms did you chose for them and why? The positioning of the objects is not important, this framework is just about figuring out value pairs. Cheap-expensive. Slow-fast. That‘s the kind of pairs you are looking for. Rearrange to find new ones.

define +2

2x2

define

define

Take the process you are looking at regarding your product or service and go through it from the users perspective. What is their journey? Look at restaurants, for example. How do you decide when and where to go? How do you find it? Do you just go or reserve a table? What happens when you arrive? What‘s the first thing the user sees? Smells? Hears? You get the idea.

define +2

User journey

What do people say, do, think and feel when they interact with your product or service? Usually, you can find discrepancies between actions and statements. Figure out why they exist. Really try to understand why someone thinks and feels the way they do. this method helps you identify the motivation of a person for using or not using your stuff.

define +2

Empathy map

Point of view. What is the pov of your user? Who is the user? What is their need? What is the insight behind it? When a manager tells you that the toilet is an oasis of peace, what he means is that this is the only place where people wont ask him anything and where he can simply be on his own for a while. Place yourself into his shoes mentally and imagine what the problem might be.

define +1

pov

You read studies. You talked to people. You observed them. You tried the service yourself. How do you condense and present all this knowledge? Easy. Just tell people about it. Often. The more you practice to put the information into a coherent story, the better you will detect patterns that lead to the problem definition.

define +1

Story telling

You got all this information collected in your research but how do you organize this stuff? Spread everything out on the floor and put everything into topical clusters. Once you figure out your categories, you can take your research and do …something else. Clustering is important to recognize patterns later on though, so don‘t skip this.

define +1

clustering

If you have done your homework, your research results will be too complext to give straight forward answers. Try to summerize them in different scenarios. That will also help to communicate your findings to others.

define +1

scenario

This is the classic. Nuff said.

define +1

Mind map

Where do you put all the stuff you have discovered? Into a folder? Wrong! Print everything out. Create some sketches. Take the pictures and saturate the space. Put everything on your walls, windows and furniture- just get it out of your computer and out of your desk. We are spatial beings and can use our spatial orientation to analyze information fast. Use that to your advantage.

define +1

saturation

ideate

What if people could fly? What if we could do something cheaper, faster, bigger, smaller? What if we had a million to solve this? What if we were 100 years in the future? The best ideas start with a question and the best question is… what if? Play this with some kids if you forgot how this goes. The simplest and most effective technique.

ideate +3

What if?

Whaaaa…? What kind of crappy Advice is that? Actually, your subconscious is Very good at figuring out serious Problems if you just let it work. So take your mind off work, go And get some new impulses, do your exercise and have some fun. If the problem has been defined really well, a solution will present itself in time. So… do nothing.

ideate

+3

Do nothing

Also called morphological analysis, this is a pure combinatorics approach. Just list all attributes and variations of a product you can think of, put them into a matrix and create similar squares for related products and services. Now line these squares after each other and… you get a box. Now combine within this box without going crazy. Loads of work. But very effective.

ideate

+2

Zwicky box

Basic combinatorics using a few easy activities, do each one as a step: S - Substitute C - Combine A - Adapt M - Modify P - Put to another use E - Eliminate R - Reverse

ideate +2

scamper

The classic for messy issues and Complex problems, involving lots Of forms, a panel of expertds, a Lot of writing, reading and Discussion. A good way to spend lots and lots of time Being crative... In a bureaucratic way.

ideate

+2

delphi

This is going to help against the heat of the project. Simply write down the problem on a paper and possible solutions to right next to it. If these obvious solutions seem impractical, take a step back for a broad analysis of the problem. Write that to the left of the problem. Now move either to the left for a general view or to the right for a specific view – fan in And fan out.

ideate

+2

Concept fan

Hey, it worked for salvador dali, right? So why not now? Think about the problem before you go to bed and keep a notebook handy. Write down whatever you dreamt about right after waking up. Alternatively, try taking a bath With a golden crown. Practice Screaming eureka first.

ideate +1

Dream diary

Triz is… … damn complicated. Just consult your charts, Draw a card and get on with it.

ideate +1

triz

Blork! Zoing! Gummy bears. Rose. …got an idea yet? No? I can go on All day. Basically, you pick up newspapers, magazines dealing with your problem, books or any other type of text, throw a dart at it any use the words you find to create phrases that may be solutions to your problem.

ideate

+1

Random stimuli

Take a piece of paper. Write down your idea. Then the next one. And the next one, too. If you are out, pass them on to your colleague. While he reads your stuff, you grab his ideas and read them. Now change or add to his ideas. Basically, it‘s brainstorming for people who can‘t stand each other.

ideate +1

brainwriting

classic! One of the least effective and yet most popular. Loud folks will yell their ideas into the shy smart ones and bosses will point fingers and demand ideas. If your team is balanced, it is a great way to come up with some impulses. Just make sure everyone has put some thought into the matter first.

ideate

+1

brainstorming

The new agey variant of brainstorming, very popular with actors and trainers. Still, more fun and active than brainstorming. In case of services, actually helpful, too. Just don‘t go too crazy with the costumes and the props.

ideate +1

bodystorming

explore

Before you start touching a line of code, grab a damn pencil and a piece of paper and just explain with a little drawing what you mean! Now grab some more paper, some scissors and some glue and start shoving stuff around to create an interactive prototype. Paper is cheap. You can do awesome websites on it without knowing a line of code.

explore +3

Paper prototype

Always, always, always remember: you are not creating a product, a service, an event, a process… you are creating an experience. So create the whole experience from start to finish. Make it the best, awesome experience for your user.

explore

+3

User experience prototype

This is basically a fancy way of saying: we are trying out many many different kinds of solutions because we don‘t really know what to do. that is totally fine though, as long as you are honest about it and give it a fancy name. A little structure might help. Like determining which aspects you want to explore.

explore

+2

Design space exploration

Does your show have toes? No? Mine does. There are shoes with five, four, three and two toe sections nowaday. If one had created the various form, it would have been a form study prototype. It‘s about variations of the way something is implemented.

explore +2

Form study prototype

Your prototype may look like crap but it does what the final thing is supposed to do as the function is exactly what you want to explore anyway. so just worry about the function and ignore all else.

explore

+2

Functional prototype

Same as a functional prototype though this eliminates all other aspects and functions and focuses on the core function. What is it your product or service does at its core? This is what has to work at any cost. its the essence of the idea. Thats what you have to create. Sometimes, the prototype is the final product.

explore

+2

Critical function prototype

Also called a mockup. It is a very fancy representation that doesnt work or do anything. It just looks good. Mostly creates oohs and aahs and lets management worry about the color of buttons. Doesnt help to test the usefulness but helps to determine the direction of the vision.

explore +1

visual prototype

its not visual, not functional, not…anything really, but a concept. The idea here is to test the idea. The principle itself. This can be done with a little roleplay for instance. Obviously, with some ideas, you might have to go into the lab and actually create something… that is called proof of concept. This is just about the principle.

explore +1

Proof of principle

A Dark Horse prototype is not an object created by the dt agency of the same name and not a comic either. +1 blank OR change for another method card from the deck. HOW TO: Take all the assumptions you have about your product. Now reverse them. Got a new feature list? good …now build THAT! Helps you break your line of thinking and gain new insights. may even deliver results.

prototype or take a method card

+1

Dark horse

its funky time! This is a mixture of a dark horse prototype and a critical function prototype. Something that combines various elements that seemed promising on their own… but might completely fail when together. Time to find out.

explore +1

Funky prototype

Canonical Abstract Prototyping is useful when attempting to take a task model and create an abstract concept for it. This helps to generate a realistic model. Use this when details for implementation and realization are not clear at this point, so abstractions are all you have anyway.

explore

+1

Canonical abstract

Just to be complete. You have done your iterations and learned all you can. Now you are creating your final prototype, integrating functions and visual design to create a pre-alpha version. Next step: implementing everything.

explore +1

Final prototype

evolve

Pointy Haired Bosses can be both a menace and a boon to a project. on the one hand, they don‘t get what you are doing. on the other hand… they don‘t get what you are doing. Keep the card. It‘s +/- 5 points. IN REAL LIFE: sometimes, managers won‘t unterstand your process and it‘s up to their interpretation so figure out if thats the case.

Pointy haired boss Someone just hired a clueless consultant who is here to steal your valuable time. With the money this guy is getting, you might have given the team a break and relaxed the schedule. Now you have to tighten it… and somehow get rid of the idiot. Lose 1 blank card in the next iteration to get rid of the guy. Or throw him at the pointy haired boss to get rid of both.

-1

clueless consultant

The users just took your beta and are now doing something totally different with it. Good thing you were watching. Now if you can just figure out how to turn their behavior into a viable product, you hit gold. Draw 2 additional blank cards in Ideation in the next iteration. And dump the card.

+2

user hack

It‘s flue / allergy / summer season and one of your team is either sick or pretending to be. Yes, your so perfect plans will be screwed by random events like this. Get used to it and plan some buffer next time, dummy. Now play some paper, scissors and rock to figure out who has to skip the next 2 steps. …yes, you may add lizard and spock if you want to. Shuffle the card back into the deck.

1 team member loses steps

-2

Sick team member

result +/- 5 Head -

Tail + coin flip To find out

Blank cards

Blank Card or See below

No, the intern did not back up the data and using a free host was a stupid idea in the first place. Yes, data can also get lost in the cloud. Megaupload, anyone? Repeat after me: i will always back up my data. I will always back up my data… The most common time wasters are due to bad file organization. Dump this card.

results -10

data loss

Well, you just wanted to create a little tool for yourself. Who knew it would become this popular with your users? Besides, that user you talked to saved you lots of time in your development. It really pays off to interact closely with your customers. Plus, we got lucky. Only happens once. Dump the card.

results

+50

we got lucky

You know that other company? Yeah, the one that DID get bought by google? They were faster than you. So, trash your great idea and get back to the board. Your development wasn‘t fast enough. You should have discussed less and prototyped more. Trash 1 result card. Shuffle the card back into the deck

results

-10

fast competition

The problem doesn‘t seem to be the one you should have been looking for. You learned a great deal but unfortunately, almost made no progress. You might go on to build on those wrong assumptions though. Who knows, management might not notice… Shuffle the card back into the deck after that.

wrong assumptions

results +/- 5 Head -

Tail + coin flip To find out

Scratch that study you wanted to buy, the new machine your coder desperately needs and the material you needed for your prototype. You just got a budget cut, baby. Your manager „just“ remembered that two weeks before delivery, of course. Suck it up and get on with it. It happens more often than you think. Everyone drop 1 method card back into the deck. Shuffle this card back into the deck.

methods -1

budget cut

Great! Your team just found some results someone else put online that applies directly to your project. All you need is to copy, paste and apply the stuff to save some time… …like someone has done with these cards. Keep this card for +20 results.

results

+20

copy & paste

Yes, we all hate it and we all do it. Just grab your notebook and grind your teeth, you workaholic! You want your results to be perfect. So, It is time to do some overtime. Besides, you secretly love it, don‘t you? Why else would you be here on a Saturday? Keep the card to remember the day and add +40 to results.

results

+40

overtime In a study by the russian space program, two astronauts living together started to hate each other‘s guts after three months. But you know the feeling, don‘t you? The team is about to enter a rage and kill each other. It‘s time to kick someone out. Play 1 round of paper, scissors, rock to determine who has to change his card. Yes, you may add lizard and spock if you want. Dump the card after that.

1 team Member has to draw a new role card

shift

team rage