Ideate to Win

I Believe you are a Creative Visionary

I believe great creative visionaries are only one small part creative and one large part analytical.  Creative visionaries must come up with ideas, but ideas are a dime a dozen.  Most importantly, they must use efficient, insightful and analytical processes to judge their ideas and to prove them out.

I believe it’s necessary to work in an environment where you feel safe to fail, where you feel safe to flounder and where you feel excited about bringing radical new ideas to others without fear of unfair judgement.  You will need to learn the ability to defer your own judgement and to look for the ways something might succeed instead of focusing on the many ways it could fail.

I believe you will become a great creative visionary and you will be amazed at what you achieve.

Innovation is a Function of Time

After working for IDEO and utilizing their innovation process, I believe innovation is merely a function of time.  I believe almost anything is possible – as long as you’re willing to devote the time to make it happen.  I’d like to talk about deadlines as it pertains to the innovation process.

Innovation can and should be efficient, but due to the nature of the ambiguity of innovation, it’s next to impossible to put a hard and fast deadline on it. When time is short, people tend to settle on a ho-hum idea thinking they can work out the kinks as they develop it.  Extending the deadline down the road is no better either. When the deadline is extended, the team rushes to fix the smaller details since they are too invested in what they have or still don’t feel they have enough time to solve the bigger problems. Therefore, this leads to wasted work, a longer development time overall and a less-than-ideal product launch.

In the world of game design, if you are working on something other than a tried-and-true mechanic, I would suggest spending time to rapid prototype the game.  If you want to try out a risky mechanic, I suggest starting with a quick and dirty prototype.  Use programmer art and don’t worry about the UI.  As long as you can try the mechanic and show it to a few colleagues  that should be all you need to quickly gauge it’s fun-factor.

If you want to get a quick gage at the mass-market appeal, it might make sense to start with a ‘look and feel’ prototype by making a power point or video fakery of the experience. It must look and feel as close to the final product as possible or your feedback will be useless.  People are easily caught up in details that aren’t a part of the final game, this will skew your results.  Put it in front of a FEW people one-on-one and pay close attention to how they react.  Ask lots of questions to see if they understand what’s going on and try to gauge if you think they would want to play it if they could.  If it goes well, ask more people and/or send out surveys with a video.  It won’t tell you everything but there will be a TON of learnings there and little time investment.

Now it’s time for a fully-fleshed out playable prototype (or you may want to start here if it is easy enough).  Don’t forget, the prototype must look and feel like the final product as close as possible.  Don’t stop developing and modifying the idea until you receive tons of positive feedback.  Once you do – run full speed with development!  There will be many challenges as you build the game, but hopefully your playable prototype reduced these risks substantially and any changes are minor.  Always remember, work efficiently to solve the big problems first, then focus on the details.

For projects desiring the highest innovation factor, I suggest loosening the importance of deadlines, particularly in the design phase.  Set milestone dates for tasks to keep the team moving quickly.  But for the final shipping deadline, take a “we’ll release it when it’s right approach.”  Better yet, have a design team devoted to designing and prototyping these more innovative ideas well ahead of production without a deadline at all.  That way you can build up a pipeline of ideas to grab from whenever you have a production team ready to go!

However, if you’re working with a strict deadline that doesn’t allow the time to work through any unknowns, I suggest working on something with a tried-and-true mechanic.  Don’t try to innovate on a hard and fast deadline – it doesn’t work.

IDEO’s Toy Lab on ’60 Minutes’

As part of the 60 Minutes segment featuring David Kelley, a web extra was created highlighting the Toy Lab’s “Elmo Calls” iPhone app.  It was SOOO cool to see my old stomping ground on TV!  Back then we were called Zero20 and not yet working on apps – but the place looks the same!

Take a look here!

’60 Minutes’ with David Kelley

The founder of IDEO and one of my heroes, David Kelley will be featured in a ’60 Minutes’ episode titled ‘Design Thinking.’  It sounds like it’s going to be a great follow up to the now infamous Nightline:  Deep Dive video filmed in 1999 when the company was focused heavily on product design.  I’m glad this new take on Design Thinking will demonstrate how IDEO’s human-centered design processes are applicable to so much more including business design and global issues like clean drinking water and improving school systems.  Empathy for the win!

The show airs Sunday, January 6th, at 7PM on CBS.  Here’s a link to the preview!

And if you haven’t seen the Nightline:  Deep Dive video yet, take a look here:

Finding my Rainbow

If you’ve read my posts A Tribute to Emma and How I Became Creative, you’ll notice I’ve had my fair share of heartaches in my life.  But I also talk about how I’ve been able to work through those difficulties to find rainbows in the end.  Here’s a poem I wrote at the very moment when I found my rainbow:

Have you ever seen pain?

I’m not talking about the sight of a child who skinned their knee,
Or the empathy felt with someone struggling from illness.

I’m talking about the stabbing edges that appear on the smoothest objects,
Or the heaviness perceived at the sight of a feather.
I’m talking about the blood-red sheen that permeates even the prettiest of sights.

I’ve seen pain.

I’ve looked away from the photos that ignited heartache.
I’ve drowned in the darkness of grief from love that I’ve lost.
I’d even close my eyes in anticipation for a seemingly destined gloom.

But, I opened my eyes.
And I forced myself to see through the pain.

And then, the heaviness lifted like a kite in the wind,
And the edges melted like an ice cube in the sun.
Soon, the redness transformed into the most brilliant rainbow!

And since I know what it’s like to truly see pain,
I know I can say I’ve truly seen beauty.

Fail Early and Often to Succeed Sooner

“Fail Early and Often to Succeed Sooner” is one of my favorite IDEOisms.  Just today, IDEO London’s Design Director, Tom Hulme was featured in a video in the Harvard Business Review.  Tom briefly explains this theory and updates it to reflect the current state of the industry.  Take a look here:

Here are some of my thoughts on Tom’s theory and how I believe it pertains to the social games industry:

#1 Skip the Focus Group

While Tom does have a point for products like soda, in the case of mass market social games, I don’t agree with skipping focus groups all together.  Depending on the circumstances, I find getting my ideas, the artwork or the prototypes in front of people as early as possible helps me to empathize with them and see things I would have missed otherwise.  Also, in mobile games it’s easy to put people in the ‘real’ environment since people play mobile games anywhere anyways.  The problem however, is making sure to not skew people’s judgement and to get enough of the right people to take a look.  That’s a finesse skill – see my post on feedback to get some pointers.

#2 Test it’s Appeal Online

I love that the example he uses to demonstrate this point is from Zynga.  I’ve actually posted about one of Zynga’s click-tests in another blog post (TBD) – they tested a roller coaster themed game through Facebook ads.  I agree with this approach wholeheartedly and think it is immensely important in the development of new game IP.  Luckily for Zynga, they can easily target their audience through Facebook ads – there are numerous different demographic criteria available to them to get incredibly useful data.  For games outside of Facebook like mobile games, there is no service quite as useful as this.

Through my experience, I’ve learned it’s very hard to judge what the mass market will like by using my own intuition or by asking a sample of people.  In fact, in doing tests like these I have been proved very wrong before!  Imagine if I went with my gut instinct in those cases… yikes!

#3 Launch a Mock Version

This sounds like an excellent idea for certain scenarios.  However in social games, the trend has been to launch a ‘minimum viable product’ and to perform rigorous testing before investing any further into the game.  Social games don’t typically take too long to build, and the important details are usually worked out while building them anyways.  It wouldn’t make sense to launch a game that isn’t representative of the final product.  But that’s not to say a MVP can’t be changed if data from it’s beta test reveals problems.  For best results, test in a small market like Canada before launching worldwide.

Summary

Finding success can be like the roll of a dice.  For the best chance of success, use tried and true strategies and plan for ways in which you can fail safely and learn from it.  This is the approach I personally use to determine a game to make:

• Start with feedback from a small sample of people – this will be qualitative data which can be used to uncover insights and opportunities and point out any major disasters.
• Then, get data from a wider audience through internet ad tests - this will be quantitative data which can be used to validate the mass market appeal.
• Finally, launch a minimally viable product in a small market to prevent spending any extra time in case the game does not work out as intended.

Good luck!

Post #46: WordPress Uses Game Mechanics

After every blog post I publish, WordPress launches a side bar showing how many posts I’ve published in total.  They even have a very game-like mastery meter.  And every so often I fill it up and achieve my “goal.”  I use quotations because I’m not the one who set these goals for my blog!

I’ve just now published my 45th blog post and achieved a new goal:

But where’s my reward???  Aren’t I supposed to get some premium currency or unlock something new?!?  While it’s a nice touch, WordPress’ experience meter doesn’t motivate me to publish more blogs (well, besides this one).

Perhaps if they numbered each goal much like a player level in a social game and surfaced it to the writer, to the WordPress community and/or allow the writer to surface it on their own blog it would make a difference.  *hint, hint WordPress!  But then again, it’s not how many posts are published that matters, it’s the quality of the posts that they really want.

The best “game mechanic” that WordPress has is actually a part of their statistics.  My favorite is the “Views by Country” feature.  Like in the game of Risk, I’m trying to CONQUER THE WORLD!  I want to get as many countries on the map colored in!  (Can anyone say – hoarder… completionist?)  38 countries and counting

29 Ways to Stay Creative

A former IDEO colleague who now works at Facebook shared this really neat video.  And now I’m sharing it with you!  Lots of great thoughts on how to increase your creativity, enjoy!

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.

I Dreamed a Dream… Les Miserables!

I saw Les Miserables in the theater today for the first time.  And wow, it was amazing!

I first started to love the theater when I was in high school – I led my school’s sound team.  We controlled the microphones, sound effects and any pre-recorded music.  I even selected the music for our production of “A Midsummer’s Nights Dream:  The 60′s” – yes it was a hippy version!  Being a part of the drama club was the most rewarding experience of high school, hands down.

From this experience, I was able to appreciate just how much work needs to go into a production to make it successful.  Everything from organizing 30+ talented performers and an entire orchestra to handling lighting, sound, set and costumes – it’s a massive endeavor requiring countless people on-stage and behind the scenes.  But, after seeing Les Miserables tonight, I have a much more profound appreciation for the original creation of these works of art.  I can’t imagine anything more demanding of a cohesive creative vision than the creation of a musical.

Creating a theatrical production seems like one of the most demanding creative undertakings – not only does the visionary need to create or integrate a story into their vision, they also need to think about the music design, fitting the lyrics to songs, timing for set pieces and costume changes, who they envision their characters to be like… the list just goes on and on.

Attending theatrical productions is one of the most humbling experiences I have the opportunity to enjoy.  Les Miserables is truly a masterpiece which has left me even more humbled than before.  Thank you to the creators!