A Guide to Gamestorming for Workshops and Programs

Gamestorming is a powerful approach to facilitating workshops that emphasizes creativity, engagement, and collaboration through structured play activities. These activities, often referred to as “games,” are designed to break down barriers, stimulate innovative thinking, and generate new ideas. This guide will explore the principles of Gamestorming, its benefits, and provide an overview of some key activities that can be incorporated into your workshops.

What is Gamestorming?

Gamestorming is a set of practices and techniques that use game-like structures to foster creative thinking and problem-solving within teams. The concept was popularized by the book “Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers” by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo. The core idea is to create a playful and open environment where participants feel free to explore ideas without the constraints of traditional meeting formats.

Benefits of Gamestorming

There are many powerful benefits of using gamestorming techniques in organizational and business practices, including:

  1. Enhanced Engagement: Gamestorming activities are designed to be interactive and fun, keeping participants actively engaged throughout the session.
  2. Improved Creativity: The playful nature of these activities encourages out-of-the-box thinking and helps generate innovative ideas.
  3. Better Collaboration: Gamestorming fosters teamwork and communication, breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration.
  4. Structured Exploration: Despite the playful approach, these activities are structured to guide participants through a process of exploration, ideation, and problem-solving.

Traditional Activities done Gamestorming Style

Here are some popular activities from the agile, design thinking, and innovation world you can learn about or do Gamestorming style in a more visual way. These activities can be used in workshops to stimulate creativity and collaboration:

1. Affinity Mapping

  • Purpose: To organize ideas and identify patterns.
  • How to Play: Participants write down ideas on sticky notes and place them on a wall. They then group similar ideas together and discuss the emerging themes.
  • Benefits: Helps in categorizing and prioritizing ideas, making it easier to see connections and commonalities.

2. Empathy Map

  • Purpose: To understand the user’s perspective.
  • How to Play: Participants create a map with sections for what the user says, thinks, does, and feels. They fill in these sections based on their knowledge and assumptions about the user.
  • Benefits: Enhances empathy and understanding of user needs, leading to more user-centered solutions.

3. SCAMPER

  • Purpose: To generate new ideas by modifying existing ones.
  • How to Play: SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Participants use these prompts to brainstorm modifications to an existing idea or product.
  • Benefits: Provides a structured method for creative thinking and innovation, encouraging participants to look at ideas from different angles.

4. The 5 Whys

  • Purpose: To identify the root cause of a problem.
  • How to Play: Participants start with a problem statement and ask “Why?” five times, each time probing deeper into the cause of the issue.
  • Benefits: Helps uncover underlying issues that may not be immediately apparent, leading to more effective problem-solving.

5. Dot Voting

  • Purpose: To prioritize ideas or options.
  • How to Play: Participants are given a set number of dots or stickers and use them to vote on their preferred ideas or solutions from a list.
  • Benefits: Facilitates quick and democratic decision-making, highlighting the most popular ideas within the group.

6. Customer Journey Map

  • Purpose: To map out the entire experience of a customer with a product or service, identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement.
  • How to Play: Participants create a visual representation of a customer’s journey, from initial contact through to the end of their interaction with the product or service. They highlight key moments, emotions, and pain points along the way.
  • Benefits: Provides a comprehensive view of the customer experience and helps identify areas for improvement and innovation.

“Unique” Gamestorming Activities

Here are some more unique and engaging Gamestorming activities that can add variety and excitement to your workshops:

1. Anti-Problem

  • Purpose: To explore problems from a different perspective by considering the opposite of the actual problem.
  • How to Play: Participants define the opposite of their problem (the “anti-problem”) and brainstorm solutions for it. They then reflect on how these solutions might inform their original problem.
  • Benefits: Encourages creative thinking and helps identify hidden assumptions and alternative solutions.

2. Heuristic Ideation Technique (HIT) Matrix

  • Purpose: To generate new ideas by combining attributes of existing products or concepts.
  • How to Play: Participants create a matrix with different attributes of products or concepts on each axis. They then brainstorm new ideas by combining these attributes in novel ways.
  • Benefits: Stimulates innovative thinking and helps participants see connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.

3. Bodystorming

  • Purpose: To explore ideas through physical activity and role-play.
  • How to Play: Participants act out scenarios or physically simulate the use of a product or service to gain new insights. They use props and environments to make the simulation as realistic as possible.
  • Benefits: Provides a hands-on approach to understanding user experiences and uncovering practical insights that might be missed in traditional brainstorming.

4. Draw the Problem

  • Purpose: To visualize and understand the problem in a new way by drawing it.
  • How to Play: Participants are asked to draw a picture that represents the problem they are trying to solve. They then share their drawings and discuss the different perspectives and insights each drawing provides.
  • Benefits: Engages visual thinking and can reveal aspects of the problem that are difficult to articulate with words.

5. Reverse Brainstorming

  • Purpose: To identify potential obstacles and weaknesses by brainstorming ways to make a problem worse.
  • How to Play: Instead of brainstorming solutions, participants brainstorm ways to exacerbate the problem. They then analyze these ideas to identify potential pitfalls and challenges, and brainstorm solutions to avoid them.
  • Benefits: Helps identify and mitigate risks and encourages thinking from different angles.

6. Pre-Mortem

  • Purpose: To anticipate potential failures and develop strategies to prevent them.
  • How to Play: Participants imagine that their project has failed and work backwards to identify the reasons for the failure. They then brainstorm actions that can be taken to avoid these pitfalls.
  • Benefits: Helps teams proactively address risks and develop more robust plans.

7. Role Storming

  • Purpose: To generate ideas by adopting different personas or perspectives.
  • How to Play: Participants assume different roles (e.g., a famous person, a specific character, or a stakeholder) and brainstorm solutions from that perspective. They can switch roles multiple times to explore various viewpoints.
  • Benefits: Encourages empathy and diverse thinking, leading to more comprehensive and creative solutions.

8. Cover Story

  • Purpose: To envision a successful future outcome.
  • How to Play: Participants create a mock cover story for a magazine that features their project or idea. They include headlines, images, and quotes to describe the success.
  • Benefits: Encourages participants to think about the end goal and the steps needed to achieve it, fostering a sense of vision and direction.

Gamestorming Conclusion – Implementing Gamestorming in Your Workshops

To successfully integrate Gamestorming into your workshops, consider the following tips:

  • Set Clear Objectives: Define what you want to achieve with each activity and communicate this to participants.
  • Create a Safe Space: Encourage open-mindedness and ensure that all participants feel comfortable sharing their ideas.
  • Facilitate Actively: Guide participants through the activities, keeping the energy high and ensuring everyone is involved.
  • Debrief: After each activity, take time to discuss the outcomes and insights gained, and how they can be applied moving forward.

By integrating these unique Gamestorming activities into your workshops, you can foster a dynamic and engaging environment that promotes creativity and collaboration. These activities provide fresh approaches to problem-solving and idea generation, ensuring that your workshops are both productive and enjoyable. For more detailed guides and additional resources, explore the articles and resources available on the InnovationTraining.org blog.