Building a mobile product is a hot topic, as everyone struggles to be the next Angry Birds.  But in the mad rush to ship a product everyone loves, we often forget to think through the user experience and what is necessary for a great user journey.

That’s where the Innovation Game ‘Product Box‘ comes in. At our August session, Luke Chambers introduced us to the game and said we were going to work on a mobile variation.

For the digital crowd, ‘Design the box’ takes us back to our software roots when software was packaged in boxes. It also builds on decades of consumer packaging to work out what is important to get a user to buy this cereal or gadget.

The object of the game is to take a real life physcial box and decorate it to represent the product. What are the features? Benefits? System requirements? Logos and taglines?

The physical box is both fun and important because there is limited real estate, different viewpoints and it becomes a tangible thing for the team to discuss.

Luke led us through the user experience journey and common pitfalls in the mobile space.

We were then challenged. We needed to create a fitness app. Easy! That required no user input. Hmmmm…

One group, Simplifit, aimed to allow users without any energy to create fitness goals and compete with their friends – and to aim low mysteriously.

iCoach brough Skynet to life as an exercise app

Pole Position was a bio sensor that tracked your movments, gave feedback on your technique and naturally compared against your friends.

Finally we had to sell the box. A representative from each team would explain the features of the app and how they designed the outside of the box to suit.

Prizes were awarded to the Pole Position team; Matt, George, Nadia and Steve.

Overall we had a great time and people were keen to take this technique back to their teams to help clarify the vision and purpose of the products we are managing.

We would like to thank Luke from UX Mastery for leading the fantastic session and inspiring the participants.