Dave, I'm glad I saw your video. I want to write to you about my “twelve questions” http://www.12questions.org I think they can be a “lightweight” version of what John Caswell is doing with Structured Visual Thinking. Each question stands on its own and they also work together.

I made notes of your talk which I share here.
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Dave Gray, coauthor (along with Sunni Brown and James Macanoufo) of “Knowledge Games: The Visual Thinking Playbook”. Talk at Interaction 10, February 4-7, Georgia.

The design philosophy is that of the Kalashnikov AK-47.
Designed in 1947 for combat at 300 meters, between the ranges of a rifle and a pistol. It has killled more people than any other weapon. He did not have a technical education and so he had to learn everything from experience. To make something simple is a thousand times harder than to make something complicated. You can drop it in a lake, bury it in your backyard, in the desert, it will still work. It is:
* simple (8 moving parts)
* rugged (unbreakable)
* reliable (never jams)
* lightweight (a 12 year old can carry it, learn in one hour, easy to manufacture, can be made in a machine shop).
You can take it apart with gloves in heavy winter and put it back together again.

Design is a weapon that can be used for good or for bad. A powerful tool for change. Simple enough for a CEO to use. Good for any conditions. Don't have to carry a lot of stuff with you.

Compare with 3 days, all your senior team on an island.

What can you do in 5 minutes? Design for total chaos.

What if you want to go from A to B and you don't know how? You need creativity and innovation.

A game is a structure around a process. You don't know what the process might be.

Some things are linear (Ford) and some are non-linear (Edison). But they can still be friends.

Business process: consistent, repeatable, predictable results.
Game: new, unpredictable, surprising results.

Game world: Boundaries in time and space, rules, players, artifacts, goals.

How do you define a goal if you don't know what it is? Fuzzy goals. Voyages of discovery. Initial fuzzy goal, but you find another goal, an adjusted goal, you find some gems around the way. You find more and more gems. Prospecting. Goals should be emotional (generate momentum), sensory (tangible artifacts), progressive (advance in steps).

True for any game:
* Open the way into the world, set the stage, develop the themes.
* Explore the world, examine, experiment, ask questions.
* Close the game, conclusions, decisions.

Mountaineers: Ten Essentials. What you need to bring with you when you go into the wilderness in case you run into trouble. Designing for total chaos, for the oppressed, for the masses. Open space, BarCamp are knowledge games.

Building Blocks.

1. Opening and closing. Rhythm: diverging – emerging – converging. Evolution of ideas – lots of babies, give them a chance, kill them off, a few will survive. This happens on many different levels, as in Scrabble: the whole game, a player's turn, a single round.
* Never open and close at the same time.
* Always close what you open.

2. Fire-starting. A flaming arrow. Getting people excited, enthusiastic. The art of asking good questions: Get in touch with your ignorance. Five kinds of questions:
* Opening, such as: What has been keeping you up at night? How would you describe this challenge?
* Examing, drilling down, analyzing, such as: What is it? How does it work? Can you give me an example? What does the data indicate?
* Experimenting, moving up, think about opportunities, think laterally: If we worked in a restaurant, how would we go about solving this? What are we missing? What if all the barriers were all removed? What if we tried to create this problem?
* Navigating: Did I understand you correctly? Is there some tension around this topic? How about a short break?
* Closing: How would you prioritize these? in terms of actions? What's feasible in the next two weeks? Who is going to take responsbility for this?

3. Artifacts. Usually portable, embued with meaning, can carry meaning around. Put meaning into motion, as in chess. A board makes it easier to think rather than have it all in your own mind, so you don't have to track it. Flip charts, sticky notes, table top items, play money, counters and tokens, index cards. Lightweight tools anchor a meeting. Red card – green card = agree, disagree.

4. Node generation. Anything thought of as part of a larger network, like a sticky note. Go deep. List everything you can. Opening stage of design exercise and are brainstorming, want to generate as many nodes as possible. Ask people questions, write answers on sticky notes and post them up.

5. Meaningful space. Think upside the box. What is the right kind of container for this stuff? We're in information silos and we don't know what everybody else is doing. There are no artifacts or meaningful space. Instead: the wall-sized display. Piles of index cards and clusters. Links and connect them. Test for meaningful space: If you could turn it over and it means pretty much the same thing, then it's not very meaningful. Whereas a chess board or a map has meaning. We can draw borders between things – pro and con – in and out – left and right. Axes. Space has meaning when you put something in and positions relative to each other. Line things up. Circles and targets. Grids. Landscapes and maps. David Sibbets' Graphic Gameplan. Metaphor (such as a tree that can be drawn).

6. Sketching and models. There is no try, you must do. There is no excuse that you can't draw. Drawing is the motor skills you need to draw the alphabet, stars, arrows, clouds, then putting shapes together to draw what's around you to convey ideas.

7. Randomness. Shake things up. Mix things up. Shuffle card decks.

8. Improvisation. Live it. A comedy sketch is a way to live the experience. Model making and improvisation work well together. Storytelling exercises. Acting out.

9. Selection. Make hard decisions. Choose well. Be critical, careful. Closing. Kill your darlings. Using grids, sticky notes. Keeping the ones you like.

10. Try something new. Keep it alive, keep it fresh. Don't get bored.

When you think of discovery? Columbus thought he was going to Japan. He had a map. Sea monsters. The estimate compared with the actual. He was wrong. The lesson is: Be wrong! Just do something. You will discover things.

You find things that you're not looking for when you're out looking. But you won't find anything if you don't look for something.

Do things. Don't overthink it.

The book is one-third theory and two-thirds practical games.

@davegray knowledegames.net #kgames