Gamestorming

Gamestorming is a book that every UXer should have in their UX toolkit. Written by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo, this book walks you through the core skills of brainstorming and provides over 80 games that foster ideation, collaboration, and communication among teams.

What’s really nice is this book is a quick weekend read so you can put things into action when you get to the office on Monday.  This book is great for those new to facilitating group sessions, but also seasoned facilitators who are looking for new ways to mix things up.  For each game they define the object of play, number of participants, length of the activity, rules for playing, and the strategy behind the game.

Aside from being a practical guide, Gamestorming goes into the philosophy of game design itself, which is a great way of understanding the process of arriving at solutions to challenges.  Not only is understanding this approach helpful in developing games, but it’s great for tackling challenges in life, too.

The authors also go into how anyone can draw using just 12 glyphs, which seems almost too simple.  But if you try it, you’ll see they’re right.

There is also a companion website called Gamestorming.com, where anyone can read about games submitted by other users or submit your own to share.

Published by O’Reilly and available on Amazon.com, list price: $29.99.