Image credit: qisur

Lord Byron said about card games that “one can game ten times longer than one can do anything else.” But what could card games do in the planning of online services?

Cards, if not really in a game-like manner, have been used to help plan the information architecture for websites for a long time. The exercise known as card sorting involves potential users sorting cards representing the content on the site into groups that make the most sense to them. The results of the exercise can then be used as the basis of the sitemap, or to test the effectiveness of the navigation structure of an existing site.

But with the rapid emerge of social tools, user experience designers have started to develop card games for planning entire digital products.

A couple weeks ago at the Idea09 conference, a gathering of information architects, social media strategists and user experience designers in Toronto, conference-goers gathered to play Social Mania, a game developed by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone, both long-time UXD experts who have worked together at Yahoo!

In the game, people work in teams to develop a digital product around an object for a specific audience delivered in a specific way. There are cards that represent different demographics, and others that represent social objects and delivery tactics with a “plus” score for all of them, and cards that represent risks or anti-social patterns with a “minus” score.

The game is still in beta testing and, having played it myself at the conference, still needs work to make the rules easier to follow. But it’s a fun idea that has potential to become a real, effective tool for planning.

Fun idea are also these Mental Notes cards. They’re a set of cards that bring together 50 insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to the design of websites and software applications. Like the Social Mania game, the Mental Notes cards are currently in development and should be out and available to UX designers and everyone else interested in spring 2010.

Karri Ojanen