Playful ‘things to think with’ and think about, shared every two weeks..

№ 86 | Assess and Manage Risk, URL Parts, TLDraw Computer, Dark Patterns Detective Game, and Joy Cards (+ Assorted New Years stuff!)

Happy New Year! 🎉 I am back with plenty more ‘playful things to think with’ and the occasional stray commentary. Assess and Manage Risk Here are two visuals related to risk, both from Olina Glindev (aka “The Visual Agile Coach”). The first, is a simple illustration explaining how to assess risk

№ 85 | Wardley Mapping, “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?”, Project Zero’s Thinking Routine Toolbox, Art Therapy Card Deck, The 100-Year Lab, and Seeds of Renewal

This will be the last newsletter until next year. I normally publish Thinking Things every two weeks, which means the next issue would fall on December 29th, except—I’m going to take off some time off over the holidays🎄. Next issue will go out (checking the calendar) Jan 12th.

№ 84 | The StoryTelling Leader, Content Patterns, Defining Transdisciplinary Research, the Serious Games Idea Deck, the Map of Board Games, and Andrew Garfield and Elmo on Grief

The StoryTelling Leader I recently started following David Hutchens on LinkedIn. As it turns out… I already I own two of his books (Circle of the 9 Muses and Outlearning the Wolves) and his card deck (below) 🤪. Anyway, when it comes to narratives—specifically leadership stories—he knows his stuff!

№ 83 | Stop Project 2025 Comics, Future for All: A vision for 2048, eyeConnect Cards, The Rule Book, and the Effects of Geography on Voting

This edition of the newsletter comes a couple days later than usual, but for a wonderful reason—I spent 5 days last week playing board games with my friends at BGG Con. 🎲 🤩 Next issue will resume the normal Sunday schedule! 🥸Reminder: If you're participating in the Create A

№ 82 | Pebble Talk, The Mood Meter, 3 Styles of Play, A Convection Simulation, an Electoral College Simulation, and What If America Had 6 Political Parties?

📍In case you missed it… Throughout November, I’m hosting another Creative Challenge: Create A Real Life Character Sheet. About 15 people have signed up so far, and there’s space for a few more folks—you should join us! Pebble Talk Here’s a way to avoid awkward small

Creative Challenge #3: Create A Real Life Character Sheet

Welcome, new readers. From time to time, I organize “Creative Challenges,” that fit with the whole “playful things to think with” theme. Previously, there was a One Card Serious Game Challenge, followed by the Make a Zine Challenge. I hadn’t planned on doing another Creative Challenge until next year

№ 81 | Scientific Papers as Comic Strips, 52 Things About Cards, Thermodynamics Cards, Collaborative Place Futures Toolkit, and Why The Work is Never Just “The Work”

✉️Look for 2 extra special emails heading your way, later this week! 1/ The promised print-and-play Zombie Leadership cards. 2/ An announcement about our next Creative Challenge… Scientific Papers as Comic Strips Yes! Comics as things to think with. Here’s an interview with Kanaka Rajan, who uses “narrative illustrations

№ 80 | Magical Gatherings, Dixit + A Canvas!, OuiSi Cards, The Hidden Curves of the Gartner Hype Cycle, Threshold Spotting, and Case Studies… with a Twist?!

Designing for Magical Gatherings So, interesting sidenote: I was in a webinar earlier this week where I was asked to reflect on especially memorable or meaningful gatherings I’ve been a part of. The common themes for me were things like adventure, discovery, challenge, fantasy, immersion, and so on. On

№ 79 | Competency Ladders, Cards for Humanity, Unicode Explainer, Spectrum of Influence, Decision Journal, and the Mola Structural Kit

Competency Ladders Here’s a ‘framework to think with’ specific to product teams… Context: The lovely thing about ‘horizontal’ software tools (such as MURAL, AirTable, or Notion) is how people are free to create their own—often unpredictable—ways of using that thing. The challenge of these tools is onboarding

№ 78 | WCAG card deck (+ more!), Tabbed Out on the Oregon Trail, “Who Killed the World?”, “The Year Without Sunshine,” Reflection vs Rumination, and… Dynamicland!

WCAG card deck (and more!) Apparently, this is the week for things to think with related to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)… First, I had this deck of WCAG 2.2 cards (LinkedIn post leading to a Figma file) lined up and ready to share: Then, I stumbled across

№ 77 | Branching Scenarios and eLearning, Surviving Design Projects, Ursula K. Le Guin on Growth, Quests (Not Goals), I’m Voting Postcards, and Levels of Automation

Branching Scenarios and eLearning In 2020, I did a deep dive into how narrative games could be used for learning purposes, which left me with a deep appreciation for (and small collection of) CYOA books, gamebooks, interactive fiction, solo RPGs, and similar experiences with branching paths. Anyway, this post on

№ 76 | Olympic Dataviz, A Strategy Based on The Periodic Table, Dimensionality & Agency, A Shared Commons, The Happiness Workout Deck, and a Sneak Peek at the Zombie Leadership Cards

Two amazing data visualizations from the Olympics I love stumbling across novel, or at least uncommon, ways to represent information. These visualizations from dataviz designer Krisztina Szűcs are 🧑‍🍳🤌💋: First, a multi-tiered cake chart representing the Women's Pole Vault Finals: 0:00 /0:39 1× Then, this fencing (🤺) visualization: