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Ideation Game Personas
Ideation Game

Ideation Game 2020

The challenge

I was invited along with Pedro, one of the Team’s Leads, to help design and organize a Client event, at Cognizant’s offices in Hudson Yards. Throughout it we’d engage with clients from multiple industries who’d be roaming through several stations, one of them being Softvision. We also wanted to give the clients something meaningful to bring back with them. Something that would speak about our approach to Human Centered Design.

The result

Based on PACT Analysis, we created a card game, with 4 different card groups, Persona, Role, Task & Technology. The core objective of the game was to ideate Technological Solution Concepts from a Human-Centered focus. We worked together with Pedro and Luisa, our Branding Creative Design Director. Together we came up with multiple ways of using it:

Core Mechanics

  1. Give out a sheet of paper (A4 or bigger) to each participant.
  2. Split cards into piles by type, face down, and shuffle each pile on it’s own.
  3. Still facing down, draw one card from each pile for every player.
  4. Before starting, Answer any doubts that might arise, revisit the question and rules:
    Participants should generate as many concepts as they want, focusing on quantity not quality. They can Write, Draw, Build, whatever suits them.
  5. Set a 5 minute timer, and have participants turn over the cards.
  6. Once the 5 minutes are up, share together.

Alternative Mechanics

  • Use it as an Ice Breaker: Full Serendipity. Any idea is valid, no matter how crazy. We are not looking for immediate feasibility. We are testing the waters, setting the mindset. If blocked, change a card.
  • Focused Ideation: Focusing on a particular Industry? Limit roles to those existent in it. Focusing on a particular Technology? Give out the same Technology card to every Participant. Focusing on a particular Task? You get it… Personas are different beast, but we encourage you to think about it.
  • Feel anything is missing? You can always brainstorm and add your own specific personas, roles, tasks or technologies!

Companion Material

The Branding team outdid themselves for us here. They also created a companion deck and a micro-site for the game.