Serious Play Forum

[Alan McShane]

Hi all,

I am working on a workshop to explore group creativity. I have lots of ideas but one of the exercises I was thinking of trying is the Imagination Exercise (Jones Go-Kart). I have to admit I have never tried it and I also admit that it didn’t convince me 100% in the facilitator training (but that may just be my analytical side taking over!). That said I would like to run an exercise that shows our natural creative tendencies and would be interested to hear a) do you have any feedback on the imagination exercise and b) any nice alternatives?

Regards,

Alan.

[Patricia Kistenmacher]

hi Alan,

sharing my own experience during my training, I have to admit the final step surprised me. It was the time to create whatever we wanted, and most people re-created a car.

So it made me think that we need to be careful when giving instructions and working references, in order to prevent us from directing the participant’s work in one direction or another.

I would suggest that you try “next year’s super car”, and then move directly to “from the transport market to new fields”, proposing a creative set of options to inspire their work.

Hope it helps. I’d love to know the results of your work, afterwards.
regards,
Patricia

[Alan McShane]

Thanks for this insight Patricia.

Yes it does have to be delivered well. In my case it was delivered well – in stages but I think I found the question at the end asking which one we found most intuitive to be too open. I am playing with a couple of ideas to see if I can make the differences in styles apparent via models. I am also trying to match creative output with Foursight creative thinking profiles (http://www.foursightonline.com/about.html). Session is on 18th June so I will follow up with results!

Alan.

[Omar Cesar BERMUDEZ]

Hello Alan,

I work a lot with Agile teams and creativity and think out of the box are needed. Something I did with my teams and I got very good results (one alternative to go-go cart and snow company). You will see concepts from agile, but nothing you could not adapt.
**Sprint = Iteration or round
**Definition of done = What the team needs to accomplish at the end of the sprint

Story creation:
Here is the game rules:
*Team needs to come up whit one personage, it could be a very known personage, it could be a carton, or it could be a film personage.
*Team needs to come up with an object and on color.
*Team will rum 3 sprints, 12min each one (2 min plan + 7 min build + 3 min review)
*For one team of 3 people, in this retrospective, I decided to ask for 4 scenes, they needed to be sure that the history had one start, one end, and the history needed to be based in the story goal

Definition of “Done”:
*The team need to add one action at least in each scene
*One picture per scene

Normally I do between 3 or 4 round and depending of the number of person and your rules, it could take between 30 and 60 min. The result I got is very good.

Here is the original game for agiles teams : http://tastycupcakes.org/2012/10/once-upon-a-time-in-legoland/
Here is one link with the the experience and some adaptations: http://www.agilecafe.org/retrospective-and-creativity-with-lego/

I hope this help you.
Omar

[Alan McShane]

Thanks for this Omar! This is more food for thought and I like the approach a lot! Going to see what I can do with it.

Agile I have only touched on but the more I read and see, the more I like it.

Regards,

Alan.

[Jesus Salas]

I will be doing a creativity development workshop for the Hotel’s Association in Guanajuato Mexico. What I just read seems perfect to try on this workshop. Thank you all of you.

[Omar Cesar BERMUDEZ]

@Jesus, I will be more than happy to get your feedback/comments/tweaks after you run it.
good luck,
Omar

[Jesus Salas]

For sure, I will get back with some feedback Omar.
I just fllowed you on twetter.
Do you speak spanish?

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