Good morning everyone. Thank you for having me here today.Let’s quickly go over our agenda for the next hour or soI’ll give you a qucik overview of the Games, why they work, and how to use themThen Andrea Brady from MyFearZapper will join us to explain a little about her product and how we would like to use one of the games to solve a challenge she is havingThen we get to play a gameSound good?
Good morning everyone. Thank you for having me here today.Let’s quickly go over our agenda for the next hour or soI’ll give you a qucik overview of the Games, why they work, and how to use themThen Andrea Brady from MyFearZapper will join us to explain a little about her product and how we would like to use one of the games to solve a challenge she is havingThen we get to play a gameSound good?
My goal for today is to provide some case histories on how I have used the gamesand how can tap into the creativity of your customers to improve your product or service offering.
Just a quick history lesson here…The Innovation Games were created by Luke Hohmann about 7 years ago. Luke utilizes his background in marketing, product management and product development experience, as well as his longtime study of human psychology to use and re-engineer, and create new games. I first learned of Luke through the QRCA and the PDMA where he had spoken at both of their national conferences. I brought Luke to Cincinnati back in 2007 for a two day facilitator training session.Premise behind the games is very simple…human being are hardwired to learn through playing games. I know this firsthand since I have a 11 month old baby boy at home.
In the product development process how do you figure out what features and benefits to build into your product or service?Well, you could just take a very direct approach and just ask your customers what they want. The problem, of course, is that with most truly breakthrough innovations, current and potential customers don’t actually know what they want before they see it. I would say the iPod falls into this category. If you just try to deliver what they already want, you’ll never truly innovate. Customers already had MP3 players.Even worse, traditional market research practices prove that often, customers have trouble articulating what, exactly, they want in the first place.
Here are some of the ways in which the Game can be used to uncover what customer really want.Customers through the games define success, in their own words (not yours)If you have an existing product you can use the games to uncover the how and why they use your product or serviceAnd…you can see how your product fits into their gameplan
Today we are going to play a game in which we are going to ask you what you don’t like about Andrea’s MyFearZapper product.In a nice way, we hope you will be gentle with her and she can leverage her empathy for your feelings!Lastly, IG can really be used to uncover unspoken needs and help you create breakthrough, truly innovative products or services.
Here is a listing of many of the games. There are many more that have been created since Luke first wrote the book. We don’t have the time to go through all of them, just the ones I have bolded here. Then, after Andrea tells us a little about MyFearZapper, we will play the Speed Boat game. Innovation Games Company works with all industries, tech, non-profit, manufacturing,consumerproducts -theyhave found in consumer product research that participants really enjoyed playing online games and that you can imagine all kinds of consumer oriented companies looking at games as the next powerful tool in consumer oriented research - whether trying to create a particular product, looking to improve product presentation and in-store experience or looking to improve post-sale support. Just as you seen in social media, consumers like to talk with one another. The online game playing I have facilitated, consumers said they really loved it and wanted to play again.
Let’s start of with Spider Web. When I started working with a new client, Unit Building Services, a design-build construction management company,I did a half day session with them and started with the Spider Web game. You place their name/logo in the center of the web, the first set of connections are first tier connections they have within their environment – as you can see – customers, vendors, tenants, bank, attorneys. The next ring represents less than direct connections, then you begin to look at how everyone is interrelated. In the end, they have a living picture of what their environment looks like.
Here’s what they said about the game and some insights and comments they made.For example, some of their subcontractors can become customers and referral sources – they had to re-think their relationships with them.They wanted to use this exercise to paint a picture for customers how complex their job is and how difficult it would be for them to manage projects on their own.
The next game I wanted to tell you about is called Prune the Product Tree. Just as gardeners prune trees to control their growth, sometimes the pruning is artistic, and we end up with shrubs shaped like animals or interesting abstract shapes. Much of the time the pruning is designed to build a balanced tree that yields high quality fruit. The process isn’t about “cutting” – it is about “shaping.” Use this metaphor to help create the product that your customers desire. With this game, we ask your customers to place desired features around the tree, defining the next phase of its growth. Do they structure a tree that is growing in a balanced manner? Does one branch – perhaps a core feature of the product – get the bulk of the growth? Does an underutilized aspect of the tree become stronger? We know that the roots of a tree (your support and customer care infrastructure) need to extend at least as far as your canopy. Do yours?
We tend to want to put our efforts behind the most important features – those features that provide the greatest value to customers. The Prune The Product Tree game provides your customers with a way to provide input into the decision making process by looking at the set of features that comprise the product in a holistic manner. They (customers that is) are forced to consider feature sets and help decide what is necessary now and what can be put off until future versions.
Ask your customers to imagine that they’re selling your product at a tradeshow, retail outlet, or public market. Give them a few cardboard boxes and ask them to literally design a product box that they would buy. The box should have the key marketing slogans that they find interesting, features and benefits they desire, and prices the are willing to pay. When finished, pretend that you’re a skeptical prospect and ask your customerto use their box to sell your product back to you.
Why does it work?Regardless of what we tell them, customers want to believe that the product or service that they’re buying is going to solve their problems. Not just the problems that we told them they have during the sales process, but the real problems that are driving their purchase. In some cases, these may match. In others, customers, even during the sale, may not be able to fully understand, much less articulate, the problems that are driving the sale. Product Box gives customers a way to tap into these deep needs and express them when they are selling their product back to us.Although your customer is trying to sell you, they will also be selling to the other customers in the room. Watching the interaction among customers is often where you can identify the most important and useful information. Who nods in agreement? Who shakes their head? When? Who asks questions? About what? What messages resonate with other customers? (Here is where the design of the games with customers is vitally important – you have a main facilitator, then for each customer tam playing the game, you will want to have someone from your team as a “helper” to listen I on side conversations, take notes. Frequently, when possible you could have a videographer or photographers capture the game play.One of the more common challenges faced by product teams is focusing on benefits instead of features. The advantage of selling the box is that even if your customer has written a feature on their box chances are good that they will sell it by promoting the benefits.
Here’s an example of a product box created during a commercialization workshop I was involved in and presenting to.I asked trams to design a product box for a coffeemaker – it could have features they wanted, they had to come up with a name for the product, the selling price, how the product would be differentiated in the marketplace.
Next let’s talk about Speed Boat. Draw a boat on a whiteboard or sheet of butcher paper. The boat is your system (your product or service).You’d like the boat to really move fast. Unfortunately, the boat has a few anchors holding it backand the features that your customers don’t like are its anchors. Customers write what they don’t like on an anchor. They can also estimate how much faster the boat would go when that anchor was cut. Estimates of speed are really estimates of pain. When customers are finished posting their anchors, review each one, carefully confirming your understanding of what they want to see changed in the system.
Many people don’t feel comfortable expressing their frustrations verbally. Giving them a chance to write things down contributes to a “safer”process. It also helps give them an opportunity to reflect on what is genuinely most important. The opportunity to reflect is especially important for those customers that just seem to be somewhat unhappy people (you know, the ones who complain a lot about the little details). Asking customers to verbalize their issues, especially in writing, motivates them to think about these issues. Many of them will self-identify trivial issues as just that: trivial issues, and, in the process, focus on the truly big issues. Thus, they end up getting to voice their complaints, but they’re put into perspective, and when they get used to THINKING about their complaints, especially quantifying what the impact is, they are more reasonable and contribute more to success – theirs and yours.That said, there are products where the sheer number of seemingly trivial complaints adds up to one truly large complaint: the product or service offering is just not that good. In this case, Speed Boat works because we don’t restrict participants to the size, shape, weight, or number of anchors that they add to the boat.While most customers have complaints, few customers are genuinely “against” you or your product. Even if they express extreme frustration, the reality is that they want to succeed in using your product. Giving them a way to express their frustration without letting a group mentality or a single person dominate the discussion is what most customers want. My friend John Fox (expert market reseracher) can probably tell us a few horror stories about focus groups gone haywire! Speed Boat create a ‘safe’ environment where customers can tell you what’s wrong.