№ 43 | Hexaflexagons, Mr. Rogers, ChatGPT Teaching Board Games, Dimensional Design Cards, and Allbirds M0.0NSHOTS Playbook

№ 43 | Hexaflexagons, Mr. Rogers, ChatGPT Teaching Board Games, Dimensional Design Cards, and Allbirds M0.0NSHOTS Playbook

Hexaflexagons!

Mind. Blown. 🤯

Drop what you’re doing and watch these two videos about hexaflexagons:

  1. Hexaflexagons
  2. Hexaflexagons 2

In geometry, flexagons are flat models, usually constructed by folding strips of paper, that can be flexed or folded in certain ways to reveal faces besides the two that were originally on the back and front.

The video format is wildly entertaining, as is the subject matter. And a bit of history to boot! There’s also a bit in part 2 where ‘Feynman’ insists on creating a diagram to make sense of this puzzle… perfection!

So why am I sharing hexaflexagons with a community centered around playful things to think with? Narrative possibilites. It’s definitely a playful thing. But, add content that is either narrative in nature or challenges someone to shift perspectives, and this is an interesting, creative medium/format to play with! At least, that's the story I'm telling myself.

The radical theology of Mr. Rogers

You know Mr. Rogers is one of my personal heroes, right? Anyway, here's a great overview the man, with a number of interesting details that were new to me.

I especially love this passage, on how to  discuss difficult topics with children

Better they should know, in an age-appropriate way, and be given the tools to cope, than to be left out in the cold, as he put it, “at the mercy of their own imaginations.”

Again, naming true things and simply holding space to let children deal with them--rather than trying to hide or minimize or gaslight because it seems too hard.

I love the idea of both naming things and holding space. In a similar fashion,  I’ve witnessed first hand the power of giving names to common team frustrations. For example, rather than ask a team why they don't feel autonomous, I can—at the outset of a workshop—list 6 or 7 known reasons teams aren’t more autonomous (many having very little to do with the team itself!). Seeing a felt frustration given a name legitimizes that for people, and holds space for people to say ‘yes, I’ve experienced that.’

I taught ChatGPT to teach me board games, and now I won’t ever go back”

So yes, someone has “taught ChatGPT to teach me board games.”

I’m kind of bullish on the whole LLMs are just stochastic parrots—they’re not thinking machines. I’ve mentioned this before.

However…

I’m quite intrigued by the ChatGPT plus the ChatWithPDF plugin, that lets you “talk” to your PDF documents.

If this combo can actually  serve up useful and accurate information, and more critically information localized to the content of a specific PDF file… possibillities!

Dimensional Design cards

A deck of cards that help you appreciate how your existing consumers would react based on triggering some system-level dimensions.

This set of cards (a free PnP version) goes along with Board of Innovation's Dimensional Design framework. (Think customer DNA? Or more modern take on segmentation?)

M0.0NSHOTS Playbook

Allbirds just announced an exciting new shoe: ”M0.0NSHOT: The World’s First Net Zero Carbon Shoe”

Cool. Cool.

Even cooler is the little bit at the bottom of the page, where they're “open-sourcing the toolkit that took it to zero [PDF], and inviting our friends in the industry to follow in our footsteps.” Knowledge sharing FTW.

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

№ 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

By Stephen P. Anderson
№ 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

№ 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

By Stephen P. Anderson