Medium Mashup
Welcome to Medium Mashup. Medium mashup is an Innovation Game where you invent a new tool to solve a specific persona's problem using randomly selected mediums and notations. The purpose of medium mashup is to help you move beyond features of a software tool to the underlying mediums and notations.
The Setup
You're a toolsmith. You specialize in building bespoke tools for specialized use cases with arbitrary constraints. You operate as a team under tight timelines, and you (almost) always deliver. I hope you're up for today's challenge!
- Gather materials. You'll need the typical paper prototyping materials: unlined and grid paper, multi-colored sharpies, sticky notes, scissors, tape, highlighters, rulers.
- Form a team. We recommend a team of 3-5 persons.
- Discover the constraints. Draw 3 Medium and/or Notation cards from the Constraints deck. If you want to make it a bit easier, draw 4 cards and discard 1.
- Get to know the client. Draw a Persona card. Read their background.
- Choose a Workflow Goal. Read the client's Workflow Goals aloud together and discuss. Choose one of the Workflow Goals that your team will build a tool for.
- Start building! You and your team have 90 minutes to design a new Tool that satisfies one of your Client's Workflow Goals while utilizing all of the Constraints.
- Present the solution. Give a brief (5-10 minutes?) presentation walking through the tool that your team came up with. Describe the workflow in detail.
Advice for Presenting The Solution
Here are some questions you might want to answer:
- What did you choose to include and why?
- What did you leave out?
- What did you learn about the interactions of the constraints you were given (the mediums and/or notations)?
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Medium Mashup
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Medium Mashup
The Setup
Advice for Presenting The Solution
Feedback