MockUps Game

These cards are a great tool for getting your students, employees, and/or team thinking creatively. Because it's not clear from the product listing how these are used, I'm including a set of the rules. I've found it beneficial to just flip through a few series of cards myself each morning to get my own brain running before jumping into work. If you're a teacher or otherwise lead a team, I highly recommend having a set of these around.

I use this in my design thinking classes. It's great as an ice-breaker and also as a warm up to a design sprint challenge. I also use it when I sense my students energy level is low in late afternoon classes.There are 3 types of cards in the deck. First are target users (eg firemen, ancient egyptians, angry old men). You get a team to select from this cards first. The second set presents a challenge of problem to solve (eg save water, get to school). The teams will look at their respective cards and solve the challenge (eg help angry old men get to school or help ancient egyptians save water). In the next round, you present the 3rd set of cards that pose a constraint on their solution or additional challenge (eg solution has to be responsive, high above ground). Teams then revise their solution to work around this new constraint impose upon them. For example, angry old men can get to school by using a device hanging from their necks that could be used to call uber and other services by voice. The ease of use will make them less angry. My students came up with this in a 10 minute frantic group brainstorming. Pit teams against each other with the whole class rating each creative solution. Or make up your own rules. Great fun and students love the randomness of it. It encourages them to think outside the box.

I bought this game to use as a teen game in a public library. The game was a little confusing at first because there aren't many rules. I had to play with the wording a little .For instance, when I pulled witch, a way to save the whales, and waterproof I switched the order of the cards to say " Build a waterproof product that witches can use to save whales" . Since I was using with a younger age group ( who were not design students) I gave them 5 minutes to build their 3D mockup rather than 1. Also, I provided a lot of supplies (they do not provide a list) such as paper, markers, scissors, tape, tissue paper, pom poms, pipecleaners, recycled boxes, egg cartons, paper towel rolls. Enjoy.

These cards are really fantastic for brainstorming sessions and helping people think creatively about user centered design. I've really enjoyed using these for a middle school summer camp on design thinking and look forward to using them with my university students as well!

Thought this would be a fun family game but I dont think it's well thought out. Draw 3 cards, angry old men, need a way to protest, covered in mushrooms. Really? Now make that out if popsicle sticks, paperclips, and some string. Oh and you have 2 minutes. We tried without the building part, with teams, and with only 2 cards but it just was never any fun. I'm sure there us a way to make it work but not using the makers instructions.

I first encountered this product at a Stanford d.school program, and I've been really pleased with the print quality and range of "customers" and such in the deck. I use the deck to help introduce students to idea generation techniques, the value of low-cost rapid prototyping efforts and other topics important for entrepreneurs. Very pleased overall!

As a middle school teacher during distance learning, I have used this product with a variety of students at all academic levels. I have recommended it to colleagues. It is very simple, and it is amazing to see what the kids come up with. I found it easy to modify the way I used it to not only reinforce and encourage creativity, but to also enhance my students collaboration and revision skills. My biggest concern was the fact that it took awhile for me to be able to get it because it was out of stock.

Awesome game for teamwork! Played it for hours and even kept middle schoolers entertained. They didn't want to stop playing!

Good for idea generation but it takes hard work.