Play UX Games with Your Stakeholders, Win Empathy
By: Workday Design
Tags: Personas, Empathy, Ux Games, Stakeholder Relationship, Ux Workshop

As a UX Researcher, developing empathy for users is my stock-in-trade. I’m expected to be the voice of the user in conversations with strategists, product managers, developers, and other stakeholders on the subjects of new features, enhancements, and so on. But there’s a limitation here: I can only be in so many conversations with so many people. Products get built whether I’m there or not. So my task as a researcher is not only to develop empathy with my users; I must imbue that same empathy in everyone who touches the product.

Researchers can use various techniques to build this empathy bridge: we bring stakeholders to live research sessions so they can witness the experiences of the user firsthand, we cut highlight reels from usability test sessions to give weight to their recommendations, and we develop persona artifacts to help others relate to the user. My team recently decided to experiment with a new approach to generating empathy for our user among product stakeholders, and it started with a UX game.

Beyond the Traditional Persona

We had invested significant time in developing a new persona artifact for our primary user, replacing one that was years old and absent of many insights collected since its development. The merits of personas as a tool for generating user empathy are debated just about anywhere that UX is written about, and while that’s not the purpose of this article, I’m willing to concede 1 point raised by persona detractors: it is a challenge to get people to care about them. In past lives, I’ve delivered personas that were well received but, ultimately, used little beyond decorating someone’s desk drawer. What I’ve learned from the experience is this: the effort put into socializing your persona artifact must be equal to or greater than the effort that went into making it in the first place.

The team began to talk about how we might achieve our goal of making our new persona resonate. That is, how we would imbue our stakeholders with empathy for our user. In our early conversations, one adjective kept recurring: engaging. We would not get anywhere through blunt-force trauma, and neither us nor our stakeholders would enjoy the experience. That’s when our designer, Helen, came up with the idea of building empathy through game design.

The premise was straightforward: by playing our game, stakeholders would live a day in the life of our user. The mechanics of the game would ensure that they experienced both the highs and the lows. Developing those game mechanics was a trickier proposition. We applied the same product design principles we used day-to-day on our game concept. After we’d done a thorough review of our research to establish which elements of our user’s life we wanted to represent in the game, Helen began with some low-fidelity sketches.

When we had a workable prototype, we began testing with colleagues, which proved as valuable in game design as it is in product design. We were surprised by how quickly our test participants zipped through the game, completing in under ten minutes what we’d hoped would take over 30 minutes. We introduced additional gameplay elements to increase the time it would take to play. Happily, those elements would turn out to be the heart and soul of the game, a gratifying reward for having taken the time to iterate.

Game Mechanics

Here, then, is an overview of our game, titled You’re the Recruiter! The eponymous Recruiter is the primary user of the product we work on, and for whom we wanted to generate empathy among our stakeholders.

As such, we tried to mirror the recruiting process in our game. The primary component, the game board, reflected the recruiting “pipeline” (that is, the stages of the process that candidates pass through over time).

Image by Michael O’Loughlin

Teams of two competed to journey through the pipeline and be the first to fill the job requisition. Along the way, they would carry out some of the tasks that a recruiter would have to do at different points of the process. An element of chance was present throughout all stages. A team’s journey might be made easier or more difficult depending on external factors. For example, a recruiter’s workload is characterized by dependencies. Approvals are needed to green-light job requisitions; she needs timely feedback from the hiring manager at different stages; candidate availability affects the speed with which the requisition can be closed. In the game, one team might find fate smiling upon them, while the other is hobbled in their attempts to find the right candidate.

Image by Michael O’Loughlin

The gameplay element introduced to extend the running time was referred to as the wildcard. On certain squares of the board, the team had to stop and carry out a special challenge related to the world of the recruiter. Wildcards were split into Pictionary-style drawing prompts and anagram cards. Not only did the wildcards inject more energy and fun into the game, but it was another avenue through which we could educate the players about recruiting phenomena.

The Payoff

We’ve now facilitated the game with several groups of stakeholders. Having done so, we consider this confluence of product research and gamification a success. Our main objective was to build empathy among stakeholders for our primary user; our secondary objective was to have fun. But the indication of success was the same for both: players of the UX game expressed, in turn, feelings of elation, frustration, and competitiveness. They were both absorbed in the game and expressing emotions that we’ve observed in our users. Teams got stuck on a space because there were delays in scheduling on-site interviews with a candidate. Others had to revisit a previous stage, perhaps because the role was proving hard to fill, or because contract negotiations with a candidate broke down. These moments of frustration made the moments of elation all the more pronounced: straightforward approval chains, or instant feedback from a hiring manager, allowed the player to progress through the pipeline without delay. But the happiest moment of all for players was the feeling of filling the requisition, and being rewarded with a time-to-fill bonus.

We’ve now run 3 game workshops, attended by dozens of stakeholders. We’ve been delighted with the response from attendees, many of whom have told us that they feel a deeper connection to the user than they did before. They’ve even asked us how they can bring some of this knowledge into their day-to-day work. As a researcher, this request was music to my ears, and I adjusted the workshop to dedicate some time to that very issue.

Our journey with the game is not over yet. The initial investment of effort was significant, but with every session we run — and they require less effort each time we do — that investment is paid back with a little more interest. We’ll continue to invite stakeholders to new sessions, and iterate our game workshop with every piece of feedback we receive.

How are you generating user empathy among your stakeholders? I hope that this story inspires you to think outside the box of conventional artifacts. Let us know; we’d love to keep the conversation going.