Results from Web 2.0 Workshop Card Game

A short while ago I blogged about the creation of a Web 2.0 card game for a workshop. Its purpose was to gain insight into staff perceptions, behaviours and attitudes toward the use of Web 2.0 tools within a corporate environment.

During the start of the workshop exercise individuals showed a preference for Web 2.0 tools. As the exercise progressed, and participants began to work more cooperatively, individual’s tended to retreat from their original choices to a preference for more traditional means of building knowledge and communicating, that is, through use of Word documents, face-to-face meetings, and email. This behaviour is called “Group Norming” and is typical of the social psychology of group dynamics [1].

Essentially, participants adjusted their behaviour to each other and the task by withdrawing from their personal opinions and realigning them to the expected rules, values, professional behaviour, shared methods, and working tools often seen in public sector organisations. Even the taboos, for example, operating in an environment where all material must be vetted and controlled, began to creep into the selection criteria of tools within the workshop activity.

These observations suggest that while there was a readiness to begin to explore Web 2.0 tools with the organisation, the wider organisational culture was not yet ready for these to be used as a standard means of sharing knowledge, communicating or building trust in people and their work-outputs. This observation was reinforced by the final count of the features of the tools selected – a preference for tools that support knowledge first, followed by communication, and those that can be used for enhancing the social aspects of the organisation, trust and team cohesion, were considered a much lower priority.

Ultimately, the cards worked perfectly. I got some great feedback on some cards and have already formulated some ideas on how to improve them.

If you use the cards, please share your own experiences with me (and everyone else) so I can continue to improve them.

M

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[1] Tuckman, B. 2001. Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin 63 (6): 384-99

Apple Tablet rumours abound … again

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about the Apple Tablet rumous. Over the last 2 years it seems that Apple has simply denied that it was ever going to make one because it just wasn’t a viable product given the tablet market is very small. It seems, though, that the Financial Times is now suggesting we’ll get one — and it’s coming for Christmas.

“The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution. The device could be launched alongside the new content deals, including those aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project.”

I do love my Toshiba tablet. And I find the 12″ screen about the right size — not too big (to be portable) and not too small so that you can’t do Photoshop or Axure prototyping work. It might only have an ultra low power Dual Core processor, but it seems to do the job pretty well with Vista. But I did want something sexy and Apple always delivers those goods. The build quality, the design, the aesthetics are all reasons why I bought my Mac Pro Cheese Grater. Now I’m starting to drool over what might be just around the door.

Screen size: “may be up to 10 inches diagonally”, touch sensitive (of course)

Wireless connectivity: Same as the iPod Touch, with the ability to download media through iTunes.Kindle Rival? May provide the ability to read books, creating a rival to Amazon’s Kindle.

Launch date: By Christmas, possibly as early as September.

Will I give up my Toshiba for the Apple? I think we’ll just wait and see whether Apple deliver the goods or not … and then, of course, I’ll just install Windows on it like I did my Mac Pro

M

Web 2.0 Workshop Card Game

I’ve started a web 2.0 strategy with a government department this week and have been asked to interview staff as to their feelings, attitudes, and web 2.0 participatory behaviours (notice I didn’t use the word “engagement”).

Talking to people, though, in a workshop environment has its problems. There are certain people who love to talk and so tend to hijack the conversation. There are those who will tell you their opinion and angst about things that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. And of course there’s the fact that people tend to tell you what is socially acceptable in relation to the group dynamic of the workshop, what they think you want to say, and what they believe you want to hear, rather than what they actually do worts and all.

Rather than just talk to people, though, I thought I would create a workshop game.

I put about 15 people into a workshop and allocate them into one of three groups:

1. project leaders — responsible for its governance
2. project team members — responsible for getting the project done
3. project stakeholders — those political people who are representative of end-users and can make or break the project

I then took the participants through an exercise to create personas for the project that represent end-users.

The next step was to hand out the cards — 30 in total for each group — that represented possibilities for communication, knowledge and information, social factors like trust and group cohesion, and then a third factor for expense (in $$$), that is, not only how much it cost but how much effort is required to manage and maintain.

Each group is then required to purchase $10- worth of cards. 15 minutes later, the groups got together to negotiate the final cards for the whole project, keeping in mind of course, the personas we created on the wall. The essential idea is to get as many points in knowledge (k), communication (c), social factors (c) with the $10.

As with all card sorting exercises, those cards people choose first are the ones that have most meaning, or are most often used by those individuals. People will then tend to lay those cards out on the table from left to right in order of importance from highest to lowest. If they sort down the table the highest value cards are at the top of the table and the lowest value cards are down the bottom.

The point of the exercise is in the doing, not the final result (particularly given the project is a fictitious one in this case), but it gave me a good indication of what web 2.0 social media tools are of most value to the organisation.

If you would like to download the current version of the cards they are available under a  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. They’re not as pretty as the concept card at the top of the blog post, but they’ll certainly still work for your workshops.

M