Design Games == UOCD

True.

Or at least substantially true. Boxes and arrows, a design blog, recently posted about design games. My favorite game is easily "Design the Box." The idea is that the team, well, designs the box.

In this game, individuals or teams create a box, as if the project is going to be sold at retail. Small groups work together to answer key packaging questions: What’s the tone? The name, the tagline, the short hook on the front to entice a consumer to pick it up? What are the features and functions, the details that connect this product to some real need? Those go on the back of the box. What about system requirements?
...
Even though it’s a playful output, it’s highly practical; one client kept a box on his shelf for six months, and would toss it over anytime someone asked what his team was doing with the new intranet. People understood the core of the product immediately, and enjoyed the break from reading yet another document describing an initiative.

Our UOCD (User Oriented Collaborative Design) teachers would be happy to see this sort of thing out there. This sort of thing allows you to get a better grasp on your project than mere specifications ever would. Now they need to start talking to the end users in parallel to playing these creative, big picture games - design will owe a lot to any movement of this kind.

I was a bit saddened by one of the comments:

...Of course, as Jess said in the article, just don’t call it a “game”! That’s the kiss of death for any game technique.

It's quite sad that people doing design today can't handle the concept of furthering knowledge through gameplay instead of work. Arbitrary labels have so much meaning.

Interestingly, the dude who's trying to get s'more publicity seems to have it right - or at least more UOCDish.

I’d also like to stress that there is a fairly substantial difference between the “Design the Box” exercise you describe (and it’s variants) and the Innovation Game® Product Box. In Product Box, the focus is external, on your customer. What do they want? How do they design the box? What images do they use?. In “Design the Box”, the focus is internal, on the internal product team. What does the internal team want? How does the internal team design the box? What images do the internal team choose?

I don't really see "Design the Box" as confining you to ignoring the end user, but I'm still happy to see it explicitly mentioned.