This coming Wednesday night we are going to play Social Mania: Designing Social Interfaces. The Game. We are looking forward to using this to help us imagine and build the best social experience we possibly can. Who says User Experience Architects aren’t a fun loving group.
I am a huge proponent of using games to help people come up with ideas. Work, Games, and Fun are not mutually exclusive.
In Social Mania, players form teams that compete with each other to develop and deliver the best experiences before time runs out. The team that ships products delivering the best experiences over a period of four quarters (20 minutes) will score the most points and win the game! But watch out—the other teams may sabotage your best efforts by playing anti-patterns.
I got a deck of the Social Mania: Designing Social Interfaces, the game right from Erin Malone’s hands. I first learned of the game at the Overlap where Erin and Christian we prototyping the deck and we were real guinea-pigs for what has become an awesome way to get up to speed on design patterns in the social experience space. I’d argue that Erin and Christian in the updated versions have really taken it’s focus beyond social media to be able social business.
She and Christian Crumlish do have a new 3.1 version of the game, but I have the 2nd Edition.
References
Here is the link to the website (and the book)
http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/
Here is the link to the game, $30
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/social-mania-designing-social-interfaces—beta-3