Tag Archives: design

08 Jun

The Open Forum

Off-site at Codesign-it

When I was working with the Codesign-it collective, I often heard about the Open Forum (often know as OST, “Open Space Technology”), a method that they were deploying in collaborative innovation projects with clients. In July 2018 I was able to witness how it was used by the members of the collective themselves as part of the “Summer Sprint”, their annual off-site meeting. This was an opportunity to observe more closely the ins and outs of this technology, whose origins can be found in citizen-run open forums.

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07 Oct

Cursed problems in facilitation

What happens when we take the analytical work of a game designer and feed it back to a group of people working on real-life collaboration problems? 

Thanks to the invitation of Myriam Hadnes I was able to put on my mad-scientist hat once more and create a workshop for the Never Done Before community of facilitation professionals. By definition my workshop had to be something new and for this one I thought I’d use as a starting point a talk from Alex Jaffe called “Cursed problems in game design“. 

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15 Feb

Why is Scrum so much fun? Part 3: The Feedback System

Feedback system

Feedback is a decisive aspect of human interactions. Be it in education, games, management, design or in interpersonal relationships, the way we communicate to people if they have met our expectations can have a strong impact on their future behaviours. Well-designed feedback loops are thus crucial for crafted experiences, and one of the  main reasons behind the success of Scrum as a method. 

After looking at the goal (part 1) and at the rules (part 2), we are continuing the exploration of the fun in Scrum with the third trait defining a game: The feedback system. 

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01 Oct

Non-evil Gamification

Gamification

When we hear of gamification, it is often in reference to the tip of the iceberg: achievements, levels, points, and other forms and representations of scoring systems. This leads to a common misconception that one could simply add a few levels and points to turn a boring task into something fun. However, even if these kinds of game mechanics are able to prompt behaviours to some extent, it is a double-edged sword.
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