design thinking warm up games

Design Thinking Games — a blessing or a curse!?

You are standing in a room full of grownups who all walk around making chicken sounds and wave their arms like wings… Well, you made it. Stop reading. This behavior will usually only happen in workshops consisting solely of designer and creatives — or in a kindergarten — where openness and fun outweigh fears of disgracing oneself.

You run many design workshops, you are always looking for new energizing activities and you had participants refuse to or at least show reluctance to Design Thinking games — even the ones that do not involve any sort of chicken dance?

In this article I will outline what to consider when picking and running Design Thinking games for workshops, the benefits of these activities and share a few of my favorite games with you.

What is important, when picking and running a design activity?

Overall, ensure particpants know what to expect from the workshop, ideally beforehand. Make clear that only with their active participation the workshop will be a success.

While most people generally struggle with things like being creative, making scribbles of their ideas and are conditioned to avoid risks and failure — Design Thinking embraces all these behaviors and attitudes. The design process and design workshops will require participants to get out of their comfort zone, try new things, deal with insecurity and be ready to fail fast and often.

I had single participants refusing to draw their favourite app as a warm up activity. There is not much you can do in such an instance. I had participants rejecting to do Crazy-8s, as in their mind that was, what they were paying us for. By having a visual designer in each workshop group — which I know comes at a cost — we were able to overcome this obstacle.

A well-chosen game can help participants in your workshops to develop the right mindset (at least for the day) and add real value to a Design Thinking workshop. While a poorly chosen activity can have the opposite effect: making people feel nervous, uncomfortable and leaving them behind confused.

Here are three key things to consider when picking a Design Thinking activity:

· Know your participants a.k.a feel the room: Speak to your contact person to get a feel for who will be participating in your workshop. During the workshop, be attentive to the energy in the room: Are your participants loosing drive and need an energizing activity? It is good to have a few different activities in your pocket so you can address the needs in the room. While the chicken dance might not be the right activity for everyone, a quick sketch will work for most people.

· Make sure to embed the activity into the workshop: Doing a Marshmallow challenge just because you think its a great activity does not make it a good choice for every workshop. Using it because you want people to understand the benefit of interdisciplinary teams, communication & failing early and often — different story. Playing "No, but… and yes, and…" before an ideation session will help people to show the right mindset during ideation. Running a quick "Sketch your favorite app and get someone else to guess it" activity before going into an afternoon of 8-Ups for a new mobile app sounds right. You get it. Ultimately, reflect on why you will or have done a specific activity.

· Give clear instructions: As with all activities, clear instructions are crucial — otherwise people feel confused and get even more intimidated. Definitely not what you want.

The benefits of Design Thinking games

When chosen carefully and used right, warm up and energizing activities/games can have a positive impact on a workshop by:

· Getting people to know each other, breaking the ice between strangers;

· Creating a positive group atmosphere;

· Bringing the energy in the room back up;

· Distracting the group temporarily to re-focus;

· Fostering a specific mindset — like a "Yes we can" attitude;

· Take fears from sketching;

· And many more…

Seeing participants loosen up and getting them to start sketching — just so they realize that everyone else has as bad drawing skills as they do (unless your visual designer sketches too…). Great! If you are lucky, you might even identify a participant with hidden drawing skills whom you can abuse as a visual designer throughout the workshop. This will make ideas more tangible, easier to communicate and boost your workshop outcomes.

Two of my favorite games

There are many different variations of the stone-paper-scissors game, with roaring dinosaurs or arm- respectively sword-swinging gremlins, as well as numerous great sketching activities like the Squiggle Birds. Many of these games have their heritage in Improv Comedy, so I can encourage you to get a book on improve comedy as a source for design games.

Here are two of my favorite workshop games:

1. Two truth and a lie

Methodology: Each participant gets three post-it notes on which he/she writes two true sentences about him-/herself and one lie. Afterwards participants walk the room, share their stories and try to guess each other's lie.

Benefit: Great icebreaker for strangers to get to know each other by learning something incredibly personal about each other. It helps to bring everyone in the room on the same level — even the CEO.

2. "No but…" & "Yes and…"

Methodology: Provide a theme e.g. "Plan your next holiday". Build groups of two. In round one, the first person has to come up with an idea for their holiday; the second person has to react to the idea with "No but…", person then also reacts with a "No but…" and so on. In round two, get the pairs to react to every idea with a "Yes, and…" instead. Afterwards ask for feedback on how they went during the different rounds.

Benefit: This activity helps participants to understand the benefit of having a yes-and-attitude during ideation and encourages them to share a positive attitude and come up with ideas that are more creative.

Summing it up:

Feel the room and know your participants when chosing design games for your workshop. Ensure games are meaningfully embedded in your workshop. Clearly explain games and reflect on why you are using them. This way you will foster the right attitude and mindset in your workshop and make Design Thinking games a powerful tool to boost your workshop outcomes.

I hope you enjoyed reading this short article and will successfully use Design Thinking games in your next workshop. I will leave you with an inspiring TED-talk from Tom Wujec about the "how to make toast" design activity.