Gamestorming 2.0
Playful visual frameworks to navigate uncertainty and align faster.
Abstract
Building on lessons from years of practice, Gamestorming 2 refines a toolkit of visual frameworks and facilitation moves to help teams explore ambiguity, make sense together, and move from questions to decisions. We will examine how play creates safety for serious work, how to shape constraints to spark insight, and how to flow between divergence and convergence for clear outcomes.
Speaker Bio
Dave Gray
Dave Gray describes himself as a possibilitarian. He helps people and teams realize their creative potential through visual thinking, design, and facilitation. He founded XPLANE, a pioneering visual thinking company, and is the author of several influential books, including Gamestorming (with Sunni Brown), The Connected Company, and Liminal Thinking. After selling XPLANE in 2022, he turned his focus to big life questions—how to make a living while creating a life—through Visual Frameworks and his School of the Possible.
Watch the Session
Session Summary
Dave Gray explored Gamestorming—a structured, collaborative approach to problem-solving and creative work that leverages visual interaction. He framed it as a vital toolkit for modern, distributed teams, centered on “turning thoughts into things” and “making the invisible visible,” using simple tools like sticky notes. Originally designed for in‑person work, Gamestorming now thrives online with virtual whiteboards such as Mural.
Live Demonstration: Showing, Not Telling
- Project Pixels: Participants shared their most exciting creative project—getting people to put their energy into the room from the start.
- Time Zones: The group's global distribution was mapped visually, making logistics tangible.
- AI Clustering: The virtual board's AI rapidly grouped projects into themes (e.g., visual thinking, workshops), revealing patterns from initial chaos.
- I Liked, I Wish, I Wonder: A structured feedback game to close the loop.
Structure and the Edge of Chaos
Gamestorming is about structure—the 90% of a good meeting designed in advance—while skirting the edge of chaos, where the illusion of danger fuels creative adventure. Gray contrasted a Process (repeatable, consistent results) with a Game (designed to never play out the same way twice), the latter being ideal for creative work.
The Three-Act Meeting Flow
- Opening: Orient people and get initial energy and ideas into the space.
- Exploring/Navigation: Surface emergent patterns and develop the story.
- Closing/Convergence: Conclude with decisions or structured feedback.
Q&A Highlights
- Origins: Built to collect distributed knowledge—no single person sees the full end-to-end process.
- Hybrid meetings: Avoid if possible; choose fully remote or fully in-person to prevent remote participants being de-prioritized.
- Online advantage: Space out intense work (e.g., a strategy over a week of 90-minute sessions) to enable reflection and improve outcomes.
- Engagement: If people are distracted, they may be “hostages.” It's the facilitator's job to make the session interesting.
- Tool recommendation: The Empathy Map—a structured canvas for understanding customers/stakeholders (pains, gains, thoughts, feelings).