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Home» Activities » Design Games — Reverse It

Design Games — Reverse It

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Donna Spencer in Activities - No Comments

Description

Reverse It is a simple game that can help a design team get unstuck when trying to solve a problem, or to generate new ideas. Instead of solving the actual problem, the team solves the reverse problem.

For example, if the problem is how to increase conversion, design a
solution that would decrease conversion. If the problem is how to help
people find information to make decisions, design a solution that would
make it harder for them to find information, or harder to make
decisions.

It’s interesting to see just how powerful this game is. By identifying a way to do the opposite, it is easier to identify and explore key factors causing a particular design approach to fail. It also helps the team think about what a successful solution may look like, because the opposite is now clearer.

Tips

Make this more fun and game-like by:

  • Making sure that the opposite questions are more extreme than you would otherwise do
  • Encouraging fast responses & a large volume of ideas

How to

Prepare

This game will be most useful when a team are already in the middle
of working on a problem, and are getting stuck. In this case, no
preparation is necessary.

It could, however, be played as a deliberatelty-planned game involving actual product users or the design team. If run like this, a little preparation may be necessary – for example, coordinating user participants, a list of problems to reverse, or ‘negative’ situations to design a solution for.

Run

Explain the design problem to participants. Provide them with a reversal scenario, or allow them to come up with their own.

Ask participants to brainstorm and design a solution to the reversed problem, then explain their solution.

Teams may like to immediately follow with a design for the original problem.

Analyse

Little to no analysis is needed for this game. Its purpose is to help
teams look at a problem in a different way and break out of existing
patterns, not to create a real design solution.

More articles on this topic:

  • 4Cs
    Design Games — 4Cs

    …

  • Freelisting—Design Games
    Design Games — Freelisting

    …

  • Design Games Card Sort
    Design Games — Card Sorting

    …

Design Games, design teams, ideation, Users
Donna Spencer

About the author: Donna Spencer


Donna Spencer is a freelance user experience designer who specialises in large, messy websites, and large, messy business applications. She has written three books, on card sorting, web writing, and information architecture. In her spare times she runs UX Australia, an annual user experience conference.

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