Finds

№ 126 | People’s Emergency Briefing Action Cards, The Neuroinclusive Design Toolkit, System & Self Deck, Disagree Differently, Izdihar, Books in Space, The ETHIC Framework, and Believe and Be Like Cards

Stephen P. Anderson

Stephen P. Anderson

— 8 min read
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№ 126 | People’s Emergency Briefing Action Cards, The Neuroinclusive Design Toolkit, System & Self Deck, Disagree Differently, Izdihar, Books in Space, The ETHIC Framework, and Believe and Be Like Cards

Welcome to another edition of Thinking Things, your increasingly irregular roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and things to think about!

This edition of Thinking Things features cards, Cards, and more CARDS! (And a few non-card and card-adjacent things! 😉)

People’s Emergency Briefing Action Cards

Here’s a simple reminder that even the most basic use of cards can make a big difference—in places we might not expect.

Context:
Various communities in the UK are hosting screenings of the People’s Emergency Briefing, a 50-minute public information and documentary film campaign focused on the realities of the climate and nature crisis. Through a curious turn of events, John V Willshire ends up being asked to host one of the screenings. While there is a facilitator’s guide to go along with the screening, John felt that the discussion afterwards could benefit from a wee bit more…

I had previously attended two other screenings, and felt that we needed a different way to end in which we can inspire local commitment and action.

In response, John created a small set of 9 cards, each narrowly focused on a key area presented in the film, with:

  • relevant facts on the front side, and
  • “How might we…” questions for reflection on the back side.

Following the screening, folks broke into smaller groups to discuss what they’d just seen, with the cards as tools for this conversation.

Four people seated around a table at a community screening, leaning in and pointing at a spread of colored discussion cards and printed handouts, with a plate of biscuits to the side.
Three people seated around a table at a community screening, leaning in and pointing at a spread of colored discussion cards and printed handouts, with a plate of biscuits to the side.

Why cards?

Firstly, even in the 50 minute film version, there is a lot going on.
Asking the audience in a local screening to react to all of it makes some pretty big assumptions about what they’ve managed to retain. Having simple summaries in front of them is a useful prompt for discussion.

Secondly, having these prompts as cards allows people to move around and prioritise, making informed judgements on which go where when making a rough map of the priorities as they see them.

For this prioritization, John used the Diamond Nine technique, a simple way for groups to produce a general sequence of priorities.

And… the pièce de résistance that ties this all together? A “tenth” Commitment Card, which simply asks each person to answer “We should…” and “So I will…” statements.

🤩

Close-up of two people at a table; one writes with a marker on a “Commitment card” printed with the prompts “We should…” and “So I will…,” adding a handwritten response. More People’s Emergency Briefing cards lie nearby.

As with the We Wunt Be Druv cards mentioned previously (see Issue № 120), I continue to be inspired by how John is using his unique skills and expertise to benefit local communities.

The People’s Emergency Briefing Cards are freely available for download, use, and remix.

Speaking of simple card decks…

The Neuroinclusive Design Toolkit

Here’s a classic case of taking your existing ideas, and translating them into a card format to make them more accessible (and engaging!)

Clocking in at just 10 cards (plus the 11th index card), The Neuroinclusive Design Toolkit represents 10 heuristics to consider when designing train experiences (e.g. lighting, colors, signage) for diverse cognitive needs.

These heuristics draw upon guidance from the built environment (BS 8300-2:2018, BS 8300-1:2018, and PAS 6463), have been adapted specifically for the rail environment…

Each card approaches the design from a different angle, containing a series of prompts that encourage the design team to evaluate the impact of the current design and question how it could be improved. The cards serve as prompts for the Human Factors team, as well as collaborative artefacts that can be shared with a diverse range of stakeholders.
The DCA Neuroinclusive Design Toolkit: a small boxed card deck beside an icon index card and four sample cards, each pairing a bold icon with a heuristic and prompts — green “Environment” cards for Noise and Lighting, and blue “Communication” cards for Colour coding and Digital signage.


You can read more about these heuristics in this post “All aboard for neuroinclusive train design.” For a discussion of the content, check out the comments in this LinkedIn post.

System & Self Deck

This next find came to me by way of the Cardstock community, where Regina exclaimed “Finally, an agenda agnostic futures deck… very handy for provoking proper questions at q&a events.”

As the name suggests, the System & Self deck contains two suits of cards (cards for reflecting on the system and cards for reflecting on the self) that you pull into a forced pairing. The goal is to “help you surface tensions, challenge assumptions and see a situation from a different perspective.”

Two cards from the System & Self deck (Futur.ade) side by side: a purple “System” card labeled “Time & Space” reading “Distance arrives in many forms,” and a blue “Self” card labeled “Orientation” reading “Refuse movement without meaning.”

Like tarot cards, which these seem inspired by (the creator of this deck, Tracey Follows, has a series of “readings” for different card pairings), meaning depends on your (or a group’s) prior associations and what you project into the cards.

Disagree Differently

I often think about the arguments that result from critical differences in opinion, belief, or perception, and… how a card and/or board game might facilitate healthy dialogue (admittedly one of my more ambitious projects!). Naturally, I was thrilled to stumble across the Disagree Differently card game (thank you Deb!).

Disagree Differently is a trail guide that helps two people stay close and feel heard through any disagreement. Start silly. Get confident. Bring up what matters, without fear.
The Disagree Differently box standing on a table — yellow, with a hand-drawn illustration of two hikers climbing toward a summit, the tagline “A trail guide for tough talks,” and a “Designed with Purpose” badge. Large white letters spelling “TALKING IS LOVE” frame the scene, with a family softly blurred in the background.


Using the analogy of a trail you’ll hike together, players first prepare for their hike:

Choose a topic (silly, serious, or your own), set shared goals, agree on communication styles, and define clear boundaries.

Then, you hit the trail…

Tak[e] turns speaking and truly listening. Each turn follows four guiding questions. After listening, you summarize what you heard in your own words. Your trailmate decides if they feel heard. If they do, switch roles and keep climbing.

And the win condition? Reaching the summit together. But, this only happens when you both feel genuinely heard.

Research shows you can't learn it just by reading or watching, only by practicing.
This game gives you a structured way to practice staying close while you disagree

This structure is what you see in the photo below:

The Disagree Differently card game laid out on a table. Across the top: a step card (Step 16, “Then…”) beside four category decks — Tough Topics (black), Shared Goals (purple), Communication Styles (magenta), and Boundaries (orange), each with an icon (map, compass, walkie-talkies, whistle). Below, sample cards drawn from each: a Topic card (“Easy — the fear of farting in front of others”), a Shared Goals card (“Understand Before You Disagree”), Communication Styles cards (“I engage actively”), and Boundaries cards (“No Sarcasm, Passive-Aggression, or Mockery”).

We have our steps in the upper right corner, our draw pile to the left. Below all this are the topic, our shared goals, communication styles, and shared boundaries. Aside from scaffolding to practice healthy dialogue, this tableau—from a cognitive perspective—serves as a persistent record of information, your shared agreements and the current state of your journey together.

At the heart of this deck are the 28 steps, which draw from “dozens of research fields (couples therapy, conflict mediation, behavioral science, communication research) rather than one theory, translating what works into a simple framework anyone can follow.”

But, there’s another layer to all this.

Disagree Differently is the outcome of research focused on serious games more broadly and the creator’s “Designed with Purpose” method, an approach to designing serious games that “begins with a documented societal problem and works backward to the artifact best suited to address it.” For more details on this, and findings from playtesting Disagree Differently, we have a proper white paper: Designed with Purpose: Putting Behavioral Science Upstream in Serious Game Design [PDF].

Next up, not strictly a card deck, but it uses cards…

Izdihar (serious game)

Izdihar is a playful way to “teach sustainable business development in Syria”—using a board game, of course. 😀 Not a lot to go on, other than what’s on the game’s webpage:

Izdihar is a cooperative board game we developed for the renowned Czech NGO People in Need. In Izdihar, players represent local businesses – over the course of 8 rounds, they have to grow their business and implement policies while protecting natural resources and environment.

The game is based on a situated research: it models real-world situations and proposes cooperation and adaptation as ways to solve climate challenges without hindering business growth.

A game of cooperative resource management? A way to simulate present and practical concerns? Yes!

Four people playing the cooperative board game Izdihar around a table covered with illustrated player boards, cards, and colored wooden cubes; their faces are hidden behind cartoon clock, sun, and snowflake stickers. Research posters hang on the wall behind them.

[Books in Space]

J. Elise Keith is the queen of meetings. THE expert on all things meetings. A meeting guru. All that.

Naturally, she’s built up an extensive collection of books on the topic of… you guessed it… meetings!

What I’m sharing here has very little to do with meetings. Or books. Or books about meetings.

Rather, this brief post from J, Elise Keith [LI] stood out to me for one very simple reason: It’s about using space to hold meaning. Using the floor as a surface upon which to organize a specific category of books along a specific and singular spectrum: how positively or negatively the book frames the topic of meetings.

Roughly three dozen books about business meetings arranged in a grid on a patterned oriental rug, sorted vertically by valence — positively framed titles at the top, negative ones at the bottom. Near the top: upbeat titles like “Magical Meetings,” “Your Best Meeting Ever,” “Glad We Met,” “Leading Great Meetings,” and “Making Meetings Matter.” Through the middle sit more neutral and academic volumes, including “The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science,” “The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities,” “Meeting by Design,” and “Meeting Design.” At the bottom: the gloomy end of the spectrum — “Let’s Stop Meeting Like This,” “Meetings Kinda Suck,” “Meetings Suck,” “Surviving the Horror of Online Meetings,” and “Death by Meeting.”
I pulled all the books specifically about business meetings off my shelves. I arranged them by valence—positively framed titles at the top, negative ones at the bottom.

When I teach about the spatial arrangement of objects to hold and convey meaning, I often reference real world examples: Preparing a complex recipe with lots of ingredients, organizing a pantry, organizing books… I love that this simple example uses physical objects (the books) but organizes them along an implicit concept (valence).

This also brings to mind John V Willshire’s thoughts on “What is a library?” and how he reorganized his bookshelves:

The ETHIC Framework: Designing Ethical Gamification That Actually Works

Setting aside hangups with the “gamification” label, there’s a lot to get out of this post from Sam Liberty on “The ETHIC Framework: Designing Ethical Gamification That Actually Works.”

Two ideas here that stood out for me:

First, the point of the post, the ETHIC framework itself. At first glance, this looks solid. I’ll have to see how this folds into my growing catalog of playful and gamelike approaches to playful learning, before I can offer a more critical take.

A slide headed “Design Principles for Ethical Gamification” posing two steps — “1. What do users want to do? 2. Then make sure…” — followed by the ETHIC acronym spelled down the side: Empowering (“They can do it”), Transparent (“It’s clear how”), Holistic (“They get it all at once”), Intrinsically Motivating (“They do it because they enjoy it”), and Customizable (“They control it”).


Second, and the bit I find more interesting here, is the “problem framing” section on what makes gamification predatory:

What Makes Gamification Predatory?
Before diving into what makes gamification ethical, let’s identify the warning signs that your gamification might be heading into dark territory:Compulsion, Not MotivationOpaque EconomiesDiscomfort as a LeverCollection TreadmillsLack of Control

Wow. This is such a clear articulation of the problems I see and feel with everything from loyalty programs to mobile games to “gamified” workout and learning apps. Seeing these deceptive design patterns articulated and named makes them easier to spot.

Oh, and then there’s this philosophical bit that aligns with my own views:

“The most powerful engagement doesn’t come from psychological manipulation but from genuine value creation.”

Beautiful.

And let’s wrap up things with… another card deck!

Believe and Be Like cards

Also for a community event (yes universe, I hear you!), Alastair Somerville created this small deck of cards as a way for people to explore “what they think about an issue and how they act when chatting.”

Two small printed decks on a wooden surface, each card bordered by a simple gray frame: a “Be-Lieve” deck (“What you think about the issue”) and a “Be Like” deck (“What your attitude is when chatting”).

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