Playing to win

Editor's note: Liang Zhang is a user experience manager at AnswerLab, a San Francisco research firm.

Mary Poppins once said that, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and - SNAP - the job’s a game!” As children, we were all hardwired to create and play games. Mundane chores like cleaning the dishes or taking out the garbage quickly became quests that needed to be conquered. We instinctively knew that playing games unleashed our imagination and magically caused time to hasten.

The experience of playing games can also be a great way to promote innovation within companies. One of the best parts of being a user experience research manager at AnswerLab is that I frequently get to work with clients who are eager to innovate and take advantage of the latest technologies and research methods, such as innovation games, to develop their digital solutions. As we’ll see in the detailed case study below, we found that perfect combination with our clients on the mobile team at PayPal.

Fostering a game-play mind-set by incorporating innovation games into your research efforts with customers, and even internally with your employees, can bring research to life and produce extraordinary results. Furthermore, innovation games can be applied broadly across all product development and even business planning activities. And, doing so is easier than most people think – this article highlights some simple ways that you can start incorporating innovation game methods into your research projects right away.

Why they matter

Let us begin by reviewing what innovation games are and why they matter, before we explore some specific applications and techniques. While a more formal definition does not currently exist for innovation games, one commonly used description is that they are open-ended, primary research activities that help participants generate ideas and feedback about a product or concept1. While this is certainly accurate, I would like to propose that a more apt definition would be that innovation games are a process for tapping into people’s inner creative confidence through game play to unlock insights about a product or concept.

Innovation games are a powerful (and fun) way to engage participants and gather richer, more accurate information because the game-play experience relieves respondents from the constraints and pressures of typical focus group or in-depth interviews (such as coming up with the “right” answers or simply trying to express an opinion when there are more dominant or outspoken members2). The game-play experience also has the effect of stripping away participants’ fears and anxieties about social judgment, internal politics or trying to be “perfect.”

Innovation games are well-suited for exploratory research, early-stage concept testing and as an alternative to brainstorming meetings because playing games taps into people’s imagination and emotions to generate a wealth of creative ideas. Whereas in a typical brainstorming meeting, the objective is to come up with “good” ideas or solutions, the objective of an innovation games group is simply to play a game together. If implemented correctly, innovation games can also greatly enhance internal meetings3 by aligning stakeholders around a shared sense of purpose, establishing ownership and prioritizing outcomes. (A tip: We have found that simply framing a brainstorming meeting as an innovation games group or workshop can dramatically improve people’s willingness to engage and collaborate in the experience.)

Table 1 features is a more detailed summary of the key advantages and challenges of using innovation games.

Numerous games available

Depending on your business objectives, there are numerous published innovation games available to help you get started using this methodology. All of these innovation games work well whether you are looking to gather insights for digital or physical products/services. Table 2 identifies and groups three of the innovation game methods available on innovationgames.com, along with one of AnswerLab’s own innovation games, by business objective as a starting point.

The common theme among all of these innovation games is that they remove constraints and pressures so participants are able to think creatively in a safe environment. Another key takeaway here is that innovation games are quite flexible. Depending on the game elements, objectives and rules (i.e., game dynamics/mechanics), many of these methods can be applied to achieve multiple objectives. For example, the use of anchors as a game element in the Speed Boat innovation game helps to surface (or is it sink?) participants’ current pain points with a product or service. However, if we replace the anchor metaphor with propellers, then this “new” game element could be appropriate for helping to prioritize the most important features for an upcoming product release.

As part of our innovation games research, we frequently integrate several different game design elements to create new innovation game methods and experiences based on our clients’ objectives. We will explore a few of these hybrid innovation game approaches in the case study below to demonstrate how a game-play mind-set can enable you, as the researcher, to come up with creative solutions to uncover deep insights. (Another tip: referring to your participants as players rather than customers, consumers or employees will empower you to think more like a game designer when creating and conducting innovation games research.)

A deep understanding

The mobile team at PayPal knows that consumers increasingly expect to have access to the same types of services they have online in the offline world via their mobile device. To drive new product innovation in mobile and online payments, the PayPal team sought to get a deep understanding of the end-to-end in-store shopping experience, both domestically and in Europe. They needed insight into consumers’ challenges with in-store payments and potential digital solutions. To address these challenges, PayPal approached us to meet these research goals:

  • Identify existing behaviors and attitudes pertaining to the holistic, end-to-end shopping experience.
  • Understand the retail landscape and major pain points with the current shopping experience in four key markets: U.S., U.K., France and Germany.
  • Solicit ideas for improving the end-to-end shopping experience across these key markets using cross-platform technology.

Together with PayPal, we designed and implemented a multiphase research study involving several innovation game methods to meet these objectives.

Innovation game 1: Mock retail store shop-along

During the first phase of the study, we transformed a traditional usability research lab into a mock retail store environment to conduct mobile shop-alongs.

Research objectives: Identify players’ mental models for using their mobile device while shopping and discover which mobile features were most important to customers and which features caused customers the most confusion or frustration in the retail store environment.

Game design and elements: Players were asked to complete a series of real shopping scenarios inside the mock retail store to test a new mobile payment application. For each scenario, some rule or element of the game was altered to change the overall shopping experience, like allowing players to pay ahead using their mobile device or to find store deals and coupons on their phone.

Key learnings/insights: In addition to identifying the most important mobile features for customers, the team also uncovered a few potential features they had not considered. One unanticipated insight occurred when a few players refused to jump ahead of others waiting in line even though they had already paid ahead on their mobile phone (we had placed several cardboard cutouts of people standing in a line to simulate the checkout). These players revealed that they were afraid of being socially scolded. This insight drove us to recommend having a separate line for customers who had already paid ahead using their phone.

Innovation game 2: Build a human shopping assistant

For the second phase of the study, we designed a series of activities starting with pre-task homework leading up to an innovation games group involving a storyboard activity to come up with an ideal human shopping assistant.

Research objectives: Understand the pain points associated with the end-to-end shopping process today and discover new factors and considerations for improving the shopping experience beyond just the payment process using mobile technology.

Game design and elements: As part of recruiting, players were asked to complete a pre-task homework activity in which they had to document and share a series of journal/diary entries. There are many benefits to including homework4 as part of your research studies, including allowing time for independent thought and building engagement and commitment to the study.

First, players were asked to provide a photo of their physical wallet along with a written explanation of their wallet organization strategy (e.g., where they kept certain items in their wallets and why). The idea behind this was to understand players’ mental models for how they might group or organize wallet items in a digital wallet on their mobile phone.

Next, players were asked to document different types of end-to-end shopping experiences over a two-week period. Players recorded their experience planning their shopping trips, shopping in various retail store environments and any follow-ups they had after shopping. These entries provided a rich set of artifacts and experiences for players to reference during the innovation games groups at the end of the two weeks.

During the innovation games groups, players were assigned to smaller teams of two to three people each and instructed to come up with an ideal human shopping assistant. They were also tasked with creating a storyboard to illustrate or write down the specific tasks that this ideal assistant would help them with during each phase of the shopping experience and to describe the personality characteristics of this human being.

By personifying the mobile technology as an ideal human shopping assistant, players were able to focus and provide feedback on the holistic shopping experience rather than trying to come up with sophisticated mobile technology solutions.

Key learnings/insights: As a result of this study, the PayPal mobile team was able to discover new factors and considerations for improving the end-to-end shopping experience beyond just the payment process. For example, the feedback from the innovation games groups helped PayPal’s mobile team glean a lot of valuable insights into just how much stress people experience on routine shopping trips (such as at the grocery store). Several storyboards showed the shopping assistant helping people better stick to their diet, getting the best deals by remembering to bring and use their coupons and loyalty cards, bagging groceries while they paid at the checkout and even providing recipes and alerting them to expiration dates at home. One person in the U.K. came to the realization that what she really needed was a modern-day Mary Poppins.

Key takeaways

While innovation game methods require more upfront preparation, planning and setup than traditional qualitative research techniques, the payoffs are well worth the effort. Here are three additional key takeaways to help you start incorporating innovation games into your research projects immediately.

Be creative. The best innovation games are often ones that combine game elements from each of the three business objective categories outlined above – think about the current barriers or obstacles to innovation and apply innovation game methods to break down (or work around) those constraints.

Don’t overthink it. Even simple games such as fill in the caption, show and tell or storyboards can yield rich data. We often recommend these games because most people already have some familiarity with the concept. Ben Crothers offers an excellent practical guide to storyboarding as a workshop activity5.

Homework is your friend. As I mentioned earlier, pre-task homework activities can help build engagement and commitment up front and provide valuable data and insights even before getting your participants into the lab environment (consider this bonus research!).

Unlocks creative confidence

Research organizations can benefit greatly from developing a game-play mind-set because game play unlocks our inner creative confidence and innate ability to interact and communicate our ideas. Whether conducting research with customers or brainstorming solutions with employees, innovation games can help draw out deeper insights and provide richer, more accurate data than traditional research methods. Who knew innovation could be so much fun?

References

1 Innovation Game. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 10, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation_game.

2 Eskenazi, Jay. “How to fix the 5 most common mistakes with focus groups.” UX Magazine, article No. 671, May 13, 2011 (available at: http://uxmag.com/articles/how-to-fix-the-5-most-common-mistakes-with-focus-groups).

3 Koloski, Beth. “Don’t have a meeting, throw a workshop.” UX Magazine, article No. 852, Aug. 16, 2012 (available at: http://uxmag.com/articles/don%E2%80%99t-have-a-meeting-throw-a-workshop).

4 McGee, Tom. “Don’t forget to do your homework.” Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, article ID 20011211, Dec. 2001 (available at: http://www.quirks.com/articles/a2001/20011211.aspx).

5 Crothers, Ben. “Storyboarding & UX – part 3: storyboarding as a workshop activity.” Johnny Holland, Oct. 19, 2011 (available at: http://johnnyholland.org/2011/10/storyboarding-ux-part-3-storyboarding-as-a-workshop-activity).