[Design] Design Exercise Game Summary

[Priscilla Chung]

Thanks to all that participated in the design exercise game last  
Thursday. I was glad to see people who don't normally work together  
brainstorm as a team. Extra kudos to Philippe, Esther, Bear and Katie  
for taking the extra time to compile the detailed notes from their  
group!  -Priscilla

Here are just some highlights from the exercise:

http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/DesignExerciseGame

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A design exercise game was presented to explore specific scheduling  
and task management scenarios in the context of a variety of work,  
school and personal environments. The objective is to work as a team,  
try and explore real life scenarios, and most of all, have fun!!

People were divided up into small groups, about 5 per group. An  
envelop was distributed to each group containing the following:
    + Instructions
    + Images of users
    + A brief profile on each person and description of the event  
that's bringing them together

Shared Profiles
Each team was given a folder with five profiles and told the  
following: These are the people you are thinking for. Look at each of  
the pictures and descriptions, and imagine people you know or have  
known who resemble these people. They could be friends, relatives,  
and coworkers.

Each of the people in your group are coming together for a 3-day  
event in San Francisco for the reason described in your task. For the  
next thirty minutes, describe the process and plan the weekend using  
the large note pad and colored markers. This exercise is done  
offline. Please put your computers to sleep and silence your phones.  
There will be 30 minutes for this exercise and about 6 minutes for  
each group to present.

Two members of the design group (Mimi & myself) went around to each  
group to observe and help out when needed.

The Goal
To present a plan which accommodates ideally ALL the people in your  
envelop, for all the activities on your list.

Issues to Consider for the Design of the Game:
There was definitely some confusion in the beginning as there wasn't  
a enough information given to some of the groups. The relationships  
also caused people to loose focus on the task at hand.

Though once the ideas started to roll, people were brainstorming  
through some very interesting things one would need to think about  
when coordinating a three day event. I was especially impressed how  
everyone was involved and participated in the exercise.

The Results of What We Learned
Each group had made some similar assumptions in the scenario be  
tasked with the organization of the event. Whereas other items differ  
based on the scenario presented before them.

Where things were similar:
     + Dates
           o Asking the basic who, what, where and when questions to  
organize an event. Picking a theme also helped the groups to start  
thinking about on the location and date of the event.

     + Delegation
           o Selecting one or two persons from the collective groups  
to organize the event.

     + Individual needs
           o Considering people's individual needs such as dietary,  
hobbies, and political agenda may direct the plans for the event.

     + Multi-threaded task and information management
           o Every group had a number of tasks (oftentimes  
information gathering tasks) going on in parallel. The trick however  
was making sure that all of these threads resolved themselves in the  
right order so that decisions can be made and issues resolved.

Where things differ:
     + Budget
           o Group 1-Family Reunion had to think about budget as they  
may need figure out cost sharing in comparison to Group 3-Management  
Off-Site it was assumed the company would be paying for everything.

     + Communication
           o Group 4-Geekfest-BAR camp the people in the scenarios  
are a tight knit community and it was common these people would send  
e-mails to communicate in comparison to Group 4–Planning a Medical  
Conference, doctor's are not likely to be sitting at a computer  
everyday and receiving e-mails, so there may need to find other  
devices to create invitations for an event.

     + Flexibility & "Buy In"
           o Group 1-Family Reunion struggled with the flexibility on  
the dates & buy in from each family member, other groups did not  
necessarily need to have buy in from every member of the group.  
Though there was some thought behind individual needs.

Next Steps
This was just an design exercise was not to claim any specific type  
of users for Chandler, Cosmo, or Scooby. It is however generating  
thoughts for people to think about all the variables when planning an  
event for different types of people. And the dilemmas are real for  
many people and may be brought up again when thinking through some  
work flow problems for the products Chandler, Cosmo, and Scooby.

Some of these groups may be revisited again for future explorations  
of case studies in product design. We will taking 2 of these  
scenarios and exploring them further in our Thursday Design Session  
on Scheduling and Invitation workflows.



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