Game Design Case Study: Decision-Making in Action

How do you get a room of 85+ people excited to practice collaborative decision making?

You task them with inventing a game! This was the focus of Day 2 (out of 3) of the product developers retreat in St. Louis last month. 

Prior to starting the activity, we presented a handful of discussion and decision-making techniques to everyone, such as silent brainstorming, round-robin, fist-to-five, dot voting, and consensus building.

We split the group up into their actual work teams, and gave each team a few hours to plan, design, and play-test a brand new game. We broke the project up into stages, and gave them one key decision that they had to make during each stage:

1. Coming up with the concept of the game

2. Selecting what supplies and materials were needed to develop the game

3. Building the game so others could actually play

4. Writing out clear instructions so others could play

5. Selecting a name for the game

This was the table of miscellaneous game, office, and art supplies the teams could use.

We also tasked each team to pick one or two discussion and decision-making techniques to try out during the process. After each stage, the teams had 10 -15 minutes to reflect on how well those techniques were serving them, how well they were working together overall, and what could help them feel more successful in the next phase. These interim reflections kept their focus on the process of working together amid the excitement of games.

At the end of the day, the teams got to play a few of the other games in the room, and do a final reflection about how to implement these new techniques in their real work. The insights were powerful, as the teams recognized how much faster they made decisions and how much more confident they were with those decisions when they had an agreed upon process for making them.

On top of that, several participants came up to me afterwards to tell me that this was the best professional development day they ever had. A victory for all!

To learn more about our how we facilitate and structure retreats please email us at info@barometerxp.com