Training Future Leaders with Game Design
Client: Hasbro
Role: Project Lead, Game Designer
DESIGN CHALLENGE
What if there was a better, more immersive way to train future Fortune 500 leaders?
How might we create a game-based learning experience that enables business leaders to visualize the impact of their decisions, and that encourages smarter, more courageous, and bolder leadership practices?
RESEARCH + DESIGN PROCESS
As project lead, I crafted the design program and led workshops to align on scope of work with the client.
I was then responsible for leading a team of designers through 2 loops of research and design to create a new kind of leadership training experience - an immersive game that challenged players to take on the real strategic dynamics, opportunities, and crises facing their industry.
As both the PL and relationship owner, I was doubly responsible for making sure the work exceeded clients expectations, and that the client team was well set up for success when taking the concept forward into production.
The research and design program for this work was designed to get the team designing, building, and learning as quickly as possible in order to reach the level of learning value and complexity desired by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks.
One of our biggest challenges with this work was to strike the right balance between listening and building - we had a short 8 week timeline and a nimble team of 3 designers to deliver a fully playable strategy game that would realistically simulate complex market dynamics, and feel believable to toy-industry veterans and leaders alike.
In order to achieve this, we started designing and workshoping our game prototypes with Hasbro leadership in the very first weeks of our process, and were able to quickly get alignment behind our core game mechanics at during a playtest with the CEO in the third week of our development.
OUTCOME + IMPACT
Our human-centered designs enabled Hasbro to deliver a live, real time game based training experience to their top leadership for feedback.
The game experience was then green lit by leadership for further development and then rolled out to the rest of the company to be used as part of leadership training experiences, as well as for recruiting experiences at nearby universities and MBA programs.
The story of Toy Tycoon has been picked up by the Wall Street Journal - learn more here!
Big thanks to the team, and everyone at IDEO who contributed to bringing this work to life!
