REFQUEST: A MULTIPLAYER ON-LINE GAME TO SUPPORT

IDEA CREATION IN INNOVATION PROCESSES

An Ideation Game from the Laboranova Project

Heiko Duin and Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge

BIBA, Hochschulring 20, D-28359 Bremen, Germany

Keywords: Innovation, serious games, innovation gaming.

Abstract: Innovation has become the main source for competitive advantage for European industry in the globalised

economy. Most innovation processes implemented in companies are based on a stage-gate model starting

with an ideation phase. This fuzzy front-end of the innovation process is mostly supported by traditional

methods like co-located brainstorming. This paper presents a new approach for idea generation based on a

multiplayer on-line computer game. The traditional application area of serious gaming – the field of educa-

tion and training – is extended by another application: innovation gaming.

1 INTRODUCTION

Innovation is considered as the key for competitive

advantage of European industry. Companies are

aware of this issue and have implemented innovation

processes which are often based on the stage-gate

model. A common weakness of these models is the

black box of idea generation – sometimes also called

the “fuzzy front-end to innovation”. As the output of

an innovation process depends highly on the input

generated in the early stage of innovation, it is worth

to look at concepts and methods to generate high

quality ideas as input.

Idea generation is often considered as the result

of imagination or inspiration of a single person

(Weisberg, 1993), but, idea generation can also been

seen as an outcome of a work process not necessar-

ily related to an individual but to a group of persons

working together in a network. Very often these

teams are distributed so that there is a need to be

supported by ICT.

Brainstorming is the most commonly known tool

for idea generation, even when other methods like

nominal groups have shown a better performance

considering the number of generated ideas. But, the

number of generated ideas is not the only measure

for success. Other measures are currently under re-

search and might concern novelty, variety, feasibil-

ity, strategic fit to company, and the capability of

company to implement the idea.

Games – especially computer or video games –

have been identified as “serious games” when they

address beside entertainment another, serious objec-

tive. Most serious games address the education.

Known examples are from education in military,

medicine and business management (Stone, 2005).

The application field of serious games are not re-

stricted to these areas. This paper presents a serious

game which is designed to support the idea gene-

ration in the early stage of innovation projects. It is

based on the game concept presented by Baalsrud

Hauge et al (2007).

2 IDEA GENERATION AND

GAMING

The ideation process, also called the “fuzzy front of

innovation” is described to be the process of discov-

ering what to make, for whom, understand why to

make it and define the success criteria including the

development of insights for answering these strate-

gic questions (Rhea, 2005).

Analysing most used methods supporting idea-

tion as well as the processes carried out and looking

at paradigms used for education, it seems to be ob-

vious that constructivism (learning through experi-

encing) has a lot of similarities with the ideation

process. One method used for education based upon

447

Duin H. and Baalsrud Hauge J. (2008).

REFQUEST: A MULTIPLAYER ON-LINE GAME TO SUPPORT IDEA CREATION IN INNOVATION PROCESSES - An Ideation Game from the

Laboranova Project.

In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 447-454

DOI: 10.5220/0001520504470454

 SciTePress

this paradigm and showing a positive learning im-

pact is serious gaming.

In a computer game, players are confronted with

information that they have to interpret and interact

with. Games can easily contain multiple and contra-

dictory knowledge structures. They can be used to

promote discussion and re-framing of the knowledge

gathered in the ideation process. Games built around

a constructivist view of knowledge and learning can

for example have competing, parallel views of inci-

dents. Games focus players’ attention and good

games tend to strengthen concentration and agency.

Often games are hard work but offer engagement by

providing challenge and struggle. At the same time,

games provide incentives to change existing culture,

practices and routines. This is also what is needed

for supporting ideation.

3 STATE-OF-THE-ART

There are only a few innovation games available on

the market. According to Hohmann (2006) inno-

vation games can be fun ways to collaborate with

customers and to better understand their needs.

However, the games presented so far are not com-

puterised games and they need to be played co-

located.

Møller et al (2007) presented a framework for idea-

tion games which distinguishes between two levels:

 Game Frames are an overall process with gen-

eral phases.

 Game Modules are shorter routines utilising

specific methods or sub-games.

The general idea behind this approach is the compo-

sition of game modules into game frames. Modules

may be re-used in different frames. In total, four

different game frames are discussed:

 The Takeover: The general objective of this

frame is a temporary change of perspective.

This can be achieved by assuming that the

company has been taken over by another one

which wants to innovate the products from a

different perspective.

 Idea Swarm: In this frame many people are in-

volved in creating, assessing and further de-

velopment of ideas. Players are rewarded,

when their own ideas are carried forward by

others.

 Idea Evolution: An idea is running through sev-

eral steps of mutation following an evolution

process. The result is a refined idea.

 Reframing the Question: The general objective

of this frame is to provide a structure for the

ideation process. This frame is the basis for

the refQuest game.

All frames together are concepts for disruptive

idea generation. The creativity of the players (idea

generators and transformers) should be stimulated

by disruptive elements.

These disruptive elements are used e.g. by the

Synectics method. Synectics (Gordon, 1961) pro-

vides an approach to creative thinking that depends

on looking at, what appears on the surface as, unre-

lated phenomenon. Its main tools are analogies or

metaphors. The approach, often used in groupwork,

can help innovation workers develop creative re-

sponses to problem solving. It helps users break ex-

isting minds sets and internalize abstract concepts.

4 CONCEPTS OF REFQUEST

One of the identified game frames is the explorative

frame called “reframing the question” (Møller et al.,

2007, p. 208). The central objective behind this

frame is to use games to structure the otherwise un-

clear open-ended early exploration and idea genera-

tion phase of an innovation project. In this game

frame, a number of ideation groups, representing

different innovation perspectives, work together to

develop and reformulate the central innovation topic.

The outcome can be a product idea, a value proposi-

tion, a user need or an area of strategic interest.

Summarising, the refQuest game is designed to

support the following requirements:

 Structuring of the ideation process. refQuest

should provide a structured process for idea

generation, documentation and selection.

 Iteration: Several iterations of the idea genera-

tion process should be possible.

 Interruptiveness: The idea generation of the in-

novation works might be interrupted by a fa-

cilitator, who brings in new information such

as facts or observed trends. This should be in

line with a synectics like style.

5 THE REFQUEST GAME

The refQuest game is an extended version of the

game share (e.g. Schwesig et al., 2005). It is com-

posed as a gaming engine executing a game model

consisting of objects of different gaming classes.

The content of the game can be considered as a set

of objects instantiated from the gaming classes. This

approach ensures the separation of algorithmic proc-

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448

essing and game content which allows the change of

the content without changing the game itself.

The architecture of the simulation game consists

of three layers: the underlying game model, a simu-

lation engine and a user interface, which allows to

examine the model elements and to apply game spe-

cific actions. These parts are described below:

 Game Model: The underlying game model pro-

vides all modelled entities as a formal basis

for the implementation of the simulation

game.

 Simulation Engine: The engine works on the

underlying model and simulates time and

costs, which are the main variables influenced

by the players in taking specific actions. The

simulation engine can be seen as the central

control unit of the game.

 User Interface: The user interface allows to

browse the overall and personal information in

the game and to apply game specific actions.

The business model enables the definition of the

simulation engine. The user interface allows data

input from players as well as displaying game rele-

vant information as illustrated in Figure 1.

5.1 The refQuest Gameplay Concept

The objective of the game is the generation of ideas

embedded in the very beginning of an innovation

process. As an example a fictive telecommunications

products manufacturer is considered. The innovation

topic of this example is to develop a new kind of

mobile phone for a specific target group: disabled

and elderly persons.

User Interface

Game Engine

Game Model (Objects)

Data Display Data Input

Data StorageExecution

Figure 1: Relation between User Interface, Game Engine

and underlying Game Model.

Six persons from the manufacturer are divided

into two groups to generate ideas on the innovation

topic. The process each of the groups has to follow

is shown in Figure 2.

In the first step each group decides the perspec-

tive on the topic. Examples for different perspectives

are: production centric, end-user driven or technol-

ogy oriented. In the second step, each player gener-

ates individual ideas and stores them in an idea

documentation template. During the third step the

players exchange on their individual ideas and de-

fine some in the group commonly agreed ideas. In

the fourth step the three groups present their ideas to

each other in order to be ready to assess the gener-

ated ideas in step five. The sixth step is finally to

complete the idea generation process and to save the

results for further processing. While the players are

running through the process steps, some perform-

ance indicators concerning time costs and quality are

updated accordingly.

Step 1

Choose a Perspective

Step 2

Individual Idea Generation

Step 3

Common Idea Generation

Step 4

Idea Presentation

Step 5

Idea Assessment

Step 6

Complete Idea Generation

Figure 2: The Idea Generation Process in refQuest.

A facilitator is watching and supervising the

groups of players. The facilitator can observe the

results of the players (the content of documents and

actions applied by players) and intervene by setting

some disruptive events, which should influence the

direction of thinking of some of the group members.

The following sub-chapters describe the formal-

ised gaming objects and classes of the game model

to implement the refQuest game. All classes and

their inter-relations are shown in Figure 3.

5.2 The refQuest Gaming Engine

Game and Scenarios

A refQuest game is spread over one or more scenar-

ios, which are played in a sequential order. These

scenarios represent the levels of the game. Associ-

REFQUEST – A MULTIPLAYER ON-LINE GAME TO SUPPORT IDEA CREATION IN INNOVATION PROCESSES

- An Ideation Game from the Laboranova Project

449

ated to each scenario is a topic, which is essentially a

description of the subject under consideration.

In the example, there is only one scenario with

the topic given above.

Players, Groups, Sub-Groups and Roles

In each scenario the players are grouped into groups

and sub-groups, which might represent companies

and departments in real life. Groups and sub-groups

have their own descriptions.

Each player can have a different role in each sub

group, e.g. innovation worker or group leader. Be-

side name, user identifier, password, etc. a character-

istic role description is stored with the player. Such a

description could be: Mrs Kandar is much cost and

result oriented; she knows exactly what she wants

for the company, but do understand the user focus

and partly the interest of the engineers.

In the example there are three groups each hav-

ing one sub-group. The groups represent three dif-

ferent locations (offices) of the company. One loca-

tion is located in Budapest, one in Brussels and one

in Bratislava.

Process Steps

A business process is associated to each group

which is followed by the players to play the game.

The process is further divided into process steps

which need to be completed in a sequential order.

Each of these steps needs to be completed in order to

complete the whole process.

A process step can be either completed by per-

forming some action or by completing a set of

documents.

An exemplary process divided into six steps is

shown in Figure 2. During the first step, one of the

players has to set an action: the decision which view

the whole group wants to follow. During the second

step each player of the group fills out their own idea

generation form (see Figure 4 which shows the

document editing view).

Actions

Some process steps may be completed by applying

an action of a set of actions. Actions are always un-

der control of a specific player. The setting of an

action reveals further information for the player.

Actions can only be set by players – not by the fa-

cilitator.

Game

Scenario

Group

Sub-Group

Role User

Topic

DocumentAction

DocEntry

ProcessStep

ActionPS DocumentPS

Indicator

CostsTime Quality

Event

Message

Figure 3: Conceptual Class Diagram of refQuest Game Classes.

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450

The actions defined for the first step of the proc-

ess of Figure 2 are:

 Choose User Centric View

 Choose Production Centric View

 Choose View of Public Authorities

 Choose Economic View

 Choose View of In-house Competencies

 Choose After Sales View

 Etc.

Events

Events can only be set by the facilitator. The facilita-

tor may choose an event from a predefined list of

events and applies it to a specific group of players.

The players are informed about the occurrence of the

event and get further information about it. Events

can be set in any of the process steps.

Some examples for events in the refQuest game

are:

 New Technology Occurred

 EU or National Directives have Changed

 Production Processes are Updated

 Etc.

Documents

Documents are associated to process steps and play-

ers. A document is a collection of document entries.

Each document entry can be edited by the player

who owns the document. Each document entry has a

type and may have a preset value and a target value.

If there is a target value defined, the objective for the

player is to get as near to the target as possible be-

cause this is affecting the quality performance indi-

cator.

Documents might be visible from the beginning

or they are created when specific process steps are

completed. Players can work on documents when

they are visible until they are freezed (completed).

The associated process step is completed when all

documents associated to this process step are com-

pleted. The owner of a document can manage the

access rights of the document by providing view and

edit rights to other players. The facilitator can view

all documents, but cannot change them.

Figure 4: Player Screen of refQuest.

REFQUEST – A MULTIPLAYER ON-LINE GAME TO SUPPORT IDEA CREATION IN INNOVATION PROCESSES

- An Ideation Game from the Laboranova Project

451

Performance Indicators

There are three different indicators updated while

the players are progressing through their process

steps:

 Time is measured in weeks. The time of an ap-

plication of an action is directly stored with

the respective action. It is up to the game de-

signer to decide, how much time is spent by

applying a specific action. The completion of

documents is measured directly by storing

timestamps from starting and ending a process

step. The duration is calculated from the dif-

ference where each 10 minutes represent a

week in the game time.

 Costs are measured in Kilo-€. The costs for ap-

plying a specific action are stored with the re-

spective action. The costs for completing a

document are calculated based on the duration

for document completion.

 Quality is measured in per cent. At the begin-

ning, quality is at 100%. It may reduces dur-

ing the game down to 0%. Again, the actions

store a value which is subtracted from the cur-

rent quality, when the action is applied. The

reduction of the quality by completing a

document is calculated depending on the goal

values of the document entries.

The completion of a process step, i.e. the appli-

cation of an action or the completion of all docu-

ments belonging to a process step, will update the

indicators as described above. Also the occurrence

of events can influence the values of the perform-

ance indicators.

The performance indicators might be used to

play against a give goal of the game, e.g. fastest

time, least cost or highest quality.

Message Board

The refQuest game also supports the exchange of

short messages between players via a message

board. Also the facilitator can observe the message

board and place messages into it.

Figure 5: Facilitator Screen of refQuest.

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5.3 The refQuest Implementation

The refQuest game is implemented as a browser

game. Players and the facilitator just need an up-to-

date web browser to play the game.

The server software is implemented using JSP

(Java Server Pages) and JSTL (Java Server Pages

Standard Tag Library). The servlets are running un-

der TomCat. The game objects are stored in a rela-

tional database, i.e. MySQL.

Scalability and performance considerations have

currently not been taken into account. It is expected,

that only a few users (less than 100) are active at the

same time. Under these circumstances performance

is not really an issue when the deployment uses suf-

ficient hardware. Currently the web application is

running on a two processor system under Windows

2000 Server.

As the current version of refQuest is based on an

engine developed in another project (see Baalsrud

Hauge et al., 2007), we have not considered chang-

ing the technology when adding new features. But

using JSP results in loading always a whole page

which sometimes results in some flickering of the

screen. A more adequate solution would be the ap-

plication of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and

XML) which is taken into account for upcoming

releases.

Figure 4 shows a players screen of the current

refQuest game. One of the players is entering ideas

in the step of individual idea generation. Figure 5

shows the facilitator’s screen to the game.

6 CRITICAL DISCUSSION

A main difference of using games in the support of

ideation instead of more traditional methods like

brainstorming etc. is that games should be motivat-

ing and to some extent make fun. Another difference

is that games always have a competing element,

which mostly makes it interesting to play.

Up to now, the refQuest game has only been

played by students at the University of Bremen as

well as by research scientists from the Bremer Insti-

tut für Produktion und Logisitk (BIBA). This early

stage validation of the game has shown that the

game seems to support the idea generation, but that

the competing elements needs to be taken more into

account (to make it more a game).

The use of events, momentarily set by the facili-

tator had a positive and motivating aspect at the

game, since it could be applied if the motivation

seemed to decrease as well as in order to help find-

ing a solution. Furthermore, this first step in valida-

tion showed that more work is needed to be carried

out in order to improve the game. Also further

evaluation is necessary.

7 FUTURE PLANS

The refQuest game aims at supporting ideation (idea

generation) at an early stage in the innovation phase.

The current version of the game include an user sce-

nario which is understandable for almost everyone

and is therefore suitable for using the game for pro-

totype discussions as well as for a pre-evaluation of

the game. An implementation in different business

environment requires an adaptable game framework

– as presented in this paper – so that the game re-

flects the running processes in each company. This

will improve the “productivity” of the game as well

as improve the efficiency because the players will

know the environment. At the moment the game

may only be changed by first carrying out a business

process analysis and then change the scripts. This is

very time consuming both for the potential company

as well as for the game designer and the program-

mers. For the future it is intended to build an author-

ing tool which allows an author to manage the game

objects without assistance from the programmer. It

will still require a deep analysis of running proc-

esses.

The game is designed to be used in a workshop

setting, i.e. the players are available at the same

time. This works in quite many companies quite

well, but analysing the process of idea generation

shows that the processes itself is discrete. Future

versions provide the option to play the game either

in a workshop setting in a given timeframe, and then

with time limitation in each step or as a more inte-

grated version which allows each player to carry out

the steps when he has time and he only organises

small discussions when he needs to carry out a task

with someone else. The limitation will then be that

the facilitator is available. The first step in order to

integrate the game into the working environment

will be to connect the DB of the game with the ones

of the companies.

Further more, the experience in using the dem-

onstration game and other games based upon the

same game engine has shown a need for non-linear

processes, as well as to have more generalised,

tasked design process steps. But this is a quite essen-

tial change of the concepts behind the gaming en-

gine. Therefore, when this is realised, it will result in

a major new release and other issues – e.g. the appli-

REFQUEST – A MULTIPLAYER ON-LINE GAME TO SUPPORT IDEA CREATION IN INNOVATION PROCESSES

- An Ideation Game from the Laboranova Project

453

cation of AJAX technology – will also be taken into

account.

8 CONCLUSIONS

The refQuest game allows the implementation dif-

ferent ideation processes due to the separation of

gaming engine and game contents.

The requirements for the game mentioned in

Chapter 4 of this paper are fulfilled. The definition

of a process with its single process steps allows the

structuring of the ideation process. The possibility of

defining several sub-sequent scenarios allows the

iteration of ideation processes. Finally, the imple-

mentation of events realises the required interruptive

element of the game.

The current set-up of refQuest is available as a

prototype implementation. A proof of concept is still

to be done. It is planned to test the prototype within

innovation management courses at the University of

Bremen.

Further applications of refQuest will be per-

formed in the context of the Laboranova project. The

industrial end-users of Laboranova, who are inter-

ested in using this game within their own innovation

projects are the German software company SAP and

the Danish heating manufacturer Danfoss. For these

end-users, the content needs to be adapted to their

specific innovation topics.

The performance indicators time, costs and qual-

ity might not be adequate for the ideation process.

Other indicators need to be investigated and in-

cluded into the game.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank the respective project partners, as

well as the European Commission for all scientific,

organisational and financial support. The Labo-

ranova project is partially funded under contract

number IST-FP6-035262 within the Sixth Frame-

work Programme, Priority IST.

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