Play Serious Games to Deliver Serious Insights
If you think that traditional market research — with glass-mirror rooms, dry surveys and scripted focus groups — is broken, you’ve come to the right place. Playing Innovation Games® transforms the Voice of the Customer process and provides faster, more economical and more actionable insights into the whats, whys and hows of unsolved market problems.
Collaborative Play = Customer Insight
We know it sounds weird, at first: Playing collaborative games with your customers will develop more powerful, actionable insights. It’s natural to resist this idea: After all, most of us have spent years believing that no activity that is fun can also do real work. But traditional thinking is just plain wrong. Research shows that human beings have been hard-wired to express themselves and interact with each other, through play. Engaging your customers in a well-designed Innovation Game frees them up from the constraints of typical focus-group sessions and delivers deeper, more accurate information than is available through online surveys or other tools.
Understand Your Customer. Understand Your Market
Our mission is to educate, inform and support you in understanding your customers and your market. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small company providing a specialized services to thousands of customers, a massive company serving millions, a consulting firm fed up with the status quo, or someone who needs to better understand his fellow employees. Our products and services, ranging from online software and full-service market research services and training, is designed to help you accomplish your goals.
Companies Who Try Innovation Games:
- Uncover unspoken needs and breakthrough opportunities
- Discover what customers don’t like about their offerings
- Understand where their offerings fit into their customers’ operations
- Clarify exactly how and when customers will use their product or service
- Deliver the right new features, and make better strategy decisions
- Increase empathy for the customers’ experience within their organizations
- Improve the effectiveness of their sales and service organizations
- Identify their most effective marketing messages and sellable features
Play an Instant Game now!
Bang-for-the-Buck
For more info, see our explanation or the post Tastycupcakes.com and Scott Selhort’s post for more info on how to play.
Objective: Collaboratively rank a project backlog based on estimated value and estimated cost.
How to play: Lightbulbs represents the projects to prioritize. The y-axis is the value of an epic or story and the x-axis is the cost. Players responsible for assessing the value provided by a project focuses on getting the light bulbs in the right place vertically, while players responsible for understanding the costs put each project in the right place horizontally.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Cover Story Game
We’ve collaborated with the Gamestorming team on this game, based on work by The Grove. Read our explanation for more info on how to play.
Objective: Think expansively around an ideal future state for the organization; it’s an exercise in visioning.
How to play: Suspend all disbelief and envision a future state that is so stellar that it landed your organization on the cover of a well-known magazine. details.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Empathy Map Game
The Empathy Map is one of XPLANE’s methods for understanding players in your business ecosystem. See how it works here.
Objective: Help you gain insight and understanding for a targeted persona.
How to play: Drag icons from the top left onto your empathy map. Use smiley faces to indicate what would make your persona happy. Use grim faces to indicate what would make your persona concerned. Use frown faces to indicate what would make your persona unhappy.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Event Benefits Game
Prune the Product Tree is a great game for eliciting feedback from customers. This version is adapted for conference/event offerings. Objective: Identify the kinds of benefits attendees of a conference, event or meeting received during and after the conference.
How to Play: Red Apples are benefits you expected – and got! Rotten Apples are benefits that you expected – but didn’t get. Presents are unexpected benefits that made the conference great.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
How-Now-Wow Matrix
We’ve collaborated with the Gamestorming team to bring you this online game. Read more on how it works here. Objective: Select the best ideas as a group.
How to Play: The game is a 2×2 grid in which the X-axis denotes the originality of the idea and the Y-axis shows the ease of implementation. Now/Blue Ideas – Normal ideas, easy to implement. How/Yellow Ideas – Original ideas, impossible to implement. Wow/Green Ideas – Original ideas, easy to implement. In this game, lightbulbs will represent your ideas.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Plus/Delta Game
We’ve collaborated with the Gamestorming team to bring you this online game. Read more about it here.
Objective: Generate constructive feedback.
How to Play: Ask players to reflect on what was positive/repeatable about an activity and capture their thoughts under the “plus” column using “plus” icons. Ask your players to denote what they would change under the “delta” column using the “delta” icons.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Speed Boat
One of the 12 games that started it all. Read why it works here.
Objective: Identify what is wrong with your existing products and services.
How to Play: In this game, you have 25 anchors to share with your fellow players. Anchors represent what is preventing your product or service from being as successful as it could be. The game will help you keep track of just how bad each anchor is.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
SWOT Analysis Game
We’ve collaborated with the Gamestorming team to bring you this online game. Read more about it here.
Objective: Conduct an online, shared SWOT analysis.
How to play: Rocket ships represent opportunities. The fit person represents strengths. The weak person represents weaknesses. The bomb represents threats.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Pros/Cons Game
We’ve collaborated with the Gamestorming team to bring you this online game. See how it works here Objective/How-to-Play: As described by Dave Gray, the Pro/Con list is credited to Benjamin Franklin. In this game, we’ll give you some blue pluses and red minuses so that you and your distributed team can all explore an issue using a centuries old technique with modern tools.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Whole Product Game
Learn more about this differential game inspired by Ted Levitt’s “Whole Product Model”.
Objective: Discover how you can most effectively differentiate your product or service from the competition.
How to play: Light bulbs represent ideas. Simply drag them to one of the four categories: the Generic Product, Expected Product, Augmented Product, and Potential Product.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Impact & Effort Matrix
This version of the famous technique has been popularized by XPLANE.
Objective: Find the most efficient way to reach your goal
How to Play: Drag light bulbs — representing strategies to reach your goal — to the corresponding quadrants on the matrix. Work toward forming as many second quadrant (high-impact/low-effort) ideas as you can.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Agile Game Incubator
Tasty Cupcakes’ activity provides a fun way to solve difficult issues. See how it works here. Objective: Create a way to explain complex problems so others will genuinely understand them and be able to form solutions.
How to Play: Place the following items onto the chart: Problems – Red Squares; Objectives – Stars; Aspects – Purple Squares; Inventions that can solve the problem – Blue Squares; Debrief and Learning’s- Light Bulbs.
Actions for Retrospectives
This retrospective game is based on Nick Oostvogel’s Actions Centered. Read more about how it works here.
Objective: Discover how you can improve an event for the future.
How to Play: Drag icons onto the chart and describe them. There is a different icon for each of the 5 categories: Puzzles – question marks; Wishes – stars; Actions – fists; Risks – bombs; Appreciations – happy face.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Circles and Soup
We have collaborated with Diana Larsen to bring you this retrospective analysis game. Read more on how it works here.
Objective: Form high-quality plans by identifying what is within your control.
How to play: Blue squares represent ideas. Drag them to the circles and describe what they signify. The three circles categorize aspects you control, can influence, and must adapt to.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Learning Matrix
This game from Diana Larsen and Esther Derby’s Agile Retrospectives is great for iteration retrospectives. Read more about it here.
Objective: Think of productive improvements for your iteration.
How to Play: There are four icons representing different aspects of your retrospective analysis: frown face – what you didn’t like; happy face – what you liked; light bulb – ideas you should try; bouquet – people you appreciated. Drag icons to the matrix and describe what they represent.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Merrill Covey Matrix
As described in First Things First, this game helps you productively accomplish your tasks. Read more about it here.
Objective: Efficiently prioritize your to-do list.
How to play: Organize your tasks based on their urgency and importance. Simply drag the icons (green squares represent priorities, red squares symbolize tasks that should be minimized) to the chart and describe what to-do items they represent.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Circles of Influence
Deb Colden’s game organizes your connections and support. Learn more here.
Objective: Identify who can help you achieve your goal.
How to play: In the “Circle of the Task” place people who can help you accomplish your goal. In the “Board of Directors” place people who will help you no matter what, and on whom you can rely on to provide encouragement and advice.
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
Franklin-Covey Opportunity Overview
This game is based on the FranklinCovey
Sales Opportunity Overview.
Objective: Create an overview of a sales opportunity so that you can sell bigger deals, faster. How to Play:Simply put post-it notes on the various regions of the image to capture your notion of the opportunity. Use different colored notes to represent different aspects of the opportunity. This is a great game to play with sales teams trying to help each other win deals!
Here is the HTML code for you to post on your site.
