Facilitator Toolkit : Core Games

Affinity Mapping/Clustering

Bodystorming

Dot Voting

Empathy Mapping

Forced Ranking

Post-Up

Storyboard

WhoDo

The following games or tools work well in any situation; you can often use them as a small part within another activity. 

Objective: Affinity mapping helps us gather meaning from data generated during a brainstorming event. It helps sort language-based information into relationships and can give a sense of where the majority of thinking is focused.  

Number of players: Up to 20

Duration: Depends on the number of players, maximum of 1.5 hours

How to play:

1. Start with a question for your participants to respond to, write it on a flip-chart
2. Have each participant take 10 minutes to silently generate sticky notes (or hexagons) in response to the question
3. Post ideas to a flat working surface visible to everyone
4. Have participants sort ideas into columns (or cluster, if using hexagons) based on relationships
5. Create a “parking lot for ideas that don’t naturally fall into a category.  
6. Once the content is sorted, and no earlier, have group suggest categories that represent the columns/clusters they’ve created

In situations where there are many ways to organize ideas, take a stronger role as the facilitator by asking questions to clarify the group’s thinking.  If ideas fall into too many categories, the data gets watered down.  With too few categories, the analysis gets watered down.  

Objective: Brainstorming, but done with the body.  It’s all about getting people to figure things out by trying them out.  Bodystorming helps break participants out of their conference table mindset and generate solutions that will work in the real world.

How to Play: Use role play and props to develop an idea and physically act out an experience.  For example have your participants “reimagine the utility-customer relationship.”  Identify and assign critical roles then improvise the experience.  By acting the situation out, participants will ask simple and important questions that often lead to the unexpected.  

Note: Bodystorming is a little out of the ordinary for a typical conference or workshop.  If you choose bodystorming as an ideation tool, make sure you use the process at a time when participants have had the opportunity to get comfortable with each other and with the structure of the charrette.  

Dot voting is one of the handiest and simplest ways to prioritize and converge upon an agreed solution.  Use this decision making tool when your participants have come up with too many good ideas, concepts, or possibilities to proceed.   

Once these ideas are compiled, be it a wall full of Post-its or a flip-chart that captures all ideas, give each participant a set number of dots to place next to the items they feel most strongly about.  Five dots per person seems to be a good number -- but with large groups the voting process can become quite lengthy, so one or two dots should suffice.  Participants will cast their votes, voting for one item more than once if they feel so inclined, and you will use the results to prioritize ideas or to reach a final decision.  

In some cases, you may want to discuss the ideas that didn't’ receive many votes to make sure they weren’t dismissed without cause.   

Objective: This game is useful in situations where you want to develop a customer or user profile.  For example, to help utility executives build empathy and think more about the needs of the end user when designing a new business model.

Number of players: 3-10

Duration of play: 10-15 minutes

How to play: While not the research-based process that is necessary for truly understanding the customer or end user, empathy maps can quickly help your participants focus on the end user’s persona and develop a clear understanding of how to best solve a problem with the customer in mind.  

Start by drawing a large circle with eyes, ears, nose, mouth, as below:

1. Have the participants name the user
2. Label areas around the head: thinking, seeing, hearing, and feeling
3. Ask the participants to expand upon the user’s experience in each of these categories, from the user’s point of view
4. The game shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, at the end, ask participants to synthesize: what does this person want?  What forces are motivating this person?  What can we do for this person?  

Keep the end user’s needs and goals in mind as you continue throughout the charrette process.

Objective: Forced ranking is another decision making tool that requires the group to prioritize a list of potential ideas.  Can be an important step in making decisions on items like investments or business priorities.

Number of players: 3-10

Duration of play: 30 minutes to an hour depending on the length of the list, the criteria, and the size of the group

How to play: You’ll need an unranked list of items and the criteria for ranking them.  Criteria should be as clear as possible, ie. “Most potential impact over the next year.”  With multiple criteria, it is best to rank each separately, ie. “Most potential impact over the next year” separate from “Least amount of effort over the next year.”  

Create a matrix of items and criteria.  Have each participant rank the items by assigning it a number, with the most important being #1.  Require each participant to make a clear-cut assessment, they cannot rank two items as the same number.  

Once ranked across all categories, tally up the numbers, discuss the prioritized list, and determine next steps.  

Objective: Silent brainstorming

Number of players: 1-50

Duration of play: 10 minutes to an hour

How to play: Start with a question for your participants to brainstorm.  Have each participants come up with ideas individually, silently writing each idea on a separate Post-it. Silence lets people think without interruption or influence.  After a given amount of time, have each person post their notes to a whiteboard or wall and quickly present their ideas.  Each idea on a separate note lends to easy sorting, mapping, or prioritization of ideas later on.  

Objective: This game is particularly powerful as a visioning exercise as it allows players to imagine and create possibilities to describe an ideal future.  By telling stories with happy endings, the participants plant seeds for creating a different future.  You can also use storyboarding to let participants describe their experience in a field or to show approaches to solving a problem - the applications are unlimited.  

Number of players: Groups of 2-4

Duration of play: 45 minutes to 1.5 hours

How to play: Before the charrette, determine the topic around which participants will craft their “ideal” story.  

1. Give the participants the topic of the story: “The Ideal Future for…,” their goal is to visually describe the topic and narrate to the group
2. Give groups 20-25 minutes to agree on an ideal state, determine the steps necessary to get there, and then draw each step as a sequence -- one step per sheet of flip-chart paper
3. Have all groups present their stories
4. Have participants identify what was inspiring in what they heard, describe recurring themes, and expand upon observations and insights about the stories

Objective: Brainstorm, plan, and prioritize actions

Number of players: 1-10

Duration of play: 20-45 minutes

How to play: Almost any endeavor of impact requires the help of key people.  The WhoDo list will help scope out the undertaking.

1. Start with the vision
2. Draw a two column matrix, “Who” on the left and “Do” on the right
3. Who is involved in making this endeavor happen?  Who are the decision makers, the ones with the resources, the potential obstacles?  These individuals or groups make the list of “Whos”
4. For each “Who”, determine what they need to "Do" or what they need to do differently.  Focus on measurable actions.

Once the list is complete, have participants identify which individuals are the most important and which they need to target first.