Playing the Game

Preparing for the Game

You'll need at least two preparation meetings to generate your features. The first meeting is a warm-up meeting where you generate your initial list of outrageous features. This shouldn't take longabout an hour. Start the process by generating a list of features. Some should be normal and could be taken from your existing list of features. Some should be outrageous and will probably require a bit of creativity on the part of your product team. Take a few days' break and then meet again to revise this initial set of features. The break will give your subconscious mind time to become more comfortable with the process, with the result being a richer and more diverse set of normal-to-outrageous features. The result of these two meetings will be a list of potential features, some of which are going to be outrageous.

The biggest preparation challenge when playing this game is creating features that are extreme enough to cause cognitive dissonance, yet not so extreme as to force customers to reject the game. There is no easy way to do this, which is why you'll need at least two preparation meetings for this exercise. For example, although I think a fountain pen with a nib that can cut glass is a bit outrageous, I find myself trying to transform this idea into something useful ("Hey, if it can cut glass, that means it should last a long time, right?") However, I can't possibly imagine using a fountain pen to launch a satellite into a geosynchronous earth orbit. Keep in mind that your goal isn't to generate some perfect set of easily explainable plausible features.

Materials

There are no special materials for this game.