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6-8-5

Object of Play

Rarely are ideas born overnight. And for an idea to become a great idea, it takes considerable work and effort to develop. Part of the reason we end up with under-developed ideas is that we stick with the first good idea we have — rather than taking the time to explore complementary approaches. 6-8-5 is designed to combat this pattern by forcing us to generate lots of ideas in a short period of time. The activity can then be repeated to hone & flesh out a few of the best ideas.

Number of Players
2+

Duration of Play
5 minutes to play each round
15-20 minutes for discussion

How to Play
1. Before the meeting, prepare several sheets of paper with a 2×2 or 2×3 grid. You want to create boxes big enough for players to sketch their ideas in, but small enough to constrain them to one idea per box. Prepare enough paper for everyone to have about 10 boxes per round.

2. As the group is gathering, distribute sheets of paper to each player. Or instruct the group on how to make their own 2×2 grid by drawing lines in their notebook.

3. Introduce the game and remind players of the objective for the meeting. Tell players that the goal with 6-8-5 is to generate between 6-8 ideas (related to the meeting objective) in 5 minutes.

4. Next, set a timer for 5 minutes.

5. Tell the players to sit silently and sketch out as many ideas as they can until the timer ends — with the goal of reaching 6-8 ideas. The sketches can and should be very rough — nothing polished in this stage.

6. When the time runs out, the players should share their sketches with the rest of the group. The group can ask questions of each player, but this is not a time for a larger brainstorming session. Make sure every player presents his/her sketches.

7. With time permitting, repeat another few rounds of 6-8-5. Players can further develop any ideas that were presented by the group as a whole or can sketch new ideas that emerged since the last round. They can continue to work on separate ideas, or begin working on the same idea. But the 5-minute sketching sprint should always be done silently and independently.

Strategy
6-8-5 is intended to help players generate many ideas in succession, without worrying about the details or implementation of any particular idea. It’s designed to keep players on task by limiting them to sketch in small boxes and work fast in a limited amount of time. 6-8-5 can be used on any product or concept that you want to brainstorm, and have the best results with a heterogenous group (people from product, marketing, engineering, design…).

6-8-5 works great in the early stages of the ideation process, and are often followed by a debrief and synthesis session or by another gamestorming exercise to identify the most fruitful ideas given the team’s business, product, or end-user goals.

6-8-5 has been used in design studio workshops for rapid ideation. This game is credited to Todd Zaki Warfel.

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Show us your Gamestorming pictures and win a free iPhone app!

Graphic Gameplan image by Brynn Evans

As some of you know, we are working on a Gamestorming iPhone app, the Gamestorming card deck.

Here’s part of the description we are submitting to the App Store:

Each card describes a game that you can apply to any number of business settings, including object of play, step-by-step instructions and strategies for making it work. Create a card stack of your favorite games and use it to plan your next meeting. Then when you are in the meeting, pull up the stack on your iPhone for easy reference. Over 100 games and counting! As we add new games to the Gamestorming deck your app will be automatically updated.

The Gamestorming card deck will include all of the games from the Gamestorming wiki. But we need your help. We want each card to look beautiful, with a picture of the game being described. And to do that we need great photos like this one from Brynn Evans.

If we use your photo to illustrate a game then you will get a promo code that will let you download the app, pre-release, for free, as our way of saying thank you.

Here’s how to submit a photo:

1. Find a game on the Gamestorming wiki that doesn’t have a color photo at the top of the page. That is, a page like this one (which has no image at the top), or this one (which has only a black-and-white diagram such as those in the book). That’s because we want the cards to have beautiful color photos of the game in action, like this bodystorming photo by Christian Crumlish, not just a dry black-and-white diagram.

2. Join the Gamestorming flickr group and submit your photo to the group. Make sure you give the photo a Creative Commons, Attribution-only license. The title of the photo should match the game you are submitting it for.

3. Send us an email at gogamestorm (at) gmail (dot) com with a link to the photo.

If we choose your photo, you’ll get the app for free and also the bragging rights that your image is in the iPhone app. Whenever someone pulls up the Gamestorming app on an iPhone, you’ll be able to pull up your “game card” and say “I took that photo.”

We look forward to seeing your photos, and thanks in advance for your help!