Video Gamers Challenge    Challenge:  My husband and I created a website for video gamers in 1996 that is still online today. This  website is a simple forum for gamers to talk about gaming consoles, general gaming, newest  games in the market and so on.    Since the 70's, more than 50 gaming consoles were released and in each year more than 3.000  games are released for the newest gaming consoles in the market (for example: Playstation 4,  xBox One and Nintendo Switch).    We realised with this data that the users from our forum, the gamers, needs an effective way to  keep their collection lists well organized and updated.      Selection​:  Based on module 2, the video with Angela Myer, we decided to use the tool of ​Visualization​ to  initiate a visual thinking process of this challenge. We created some drawings with sticky man  figures to represent a gamer and the vast number of consoles/games and later a gamer able to  organize better his/her own collection.     From this first step into reality, we were able to understand what we needed to do next:  interview gamers and learn if their needs were being fulfilled and how, empathize with their pain  points and maybe reach some insights directly from the interview processes.      Application​:    During the Ethnographic Interview process, we asked the interviewees to draw a simple chart of  how they organize their collection. This kept them from describing it with words, which is always  a little confusing and ​really helped us​ not only to understand what was needed to help solve  their mess problem but how to come up with an initial sketch of the architecture of consoles and  games that were available. It's important to say that some of the interviewees didn't have any  kind of organizational process whatsoever.    After the data was gathered and we found some patterns, we created personas of the  demographic types of gamers out there. The age range were between 10 to over 50 (35 years  old being the average age), 2 out of 5 gamers were female, some of them were casual gamers,  others social gamers, others serious and professional gamers. And, of course, for the personas  we used photographs of real people to help us visualize and empathize better with our future  customers/users. We also created some moodboards of the gamers habits and preferences, to  keep the visual thinking running, while we started to come up with some insights.

Insight​:    This whole process was open-minded: In the midst of interviews, some interviewees reported  that they regularly exchange games with friends and neighbours.     We started with the assumption of creating some kind of games library, but after listening to our  customers/users, we found that not only a library will be really helpful, but some kind of platform  for them to sell, buy and exchange games, turning this project more into a network of game  owners.     Moving forward, we will design wireframes and possibly some rapid prototypes so we can test  them with gamers and see if we need to iterate once more or we can start designing this  platform for real.    Approach​:    Besides using the Visualization tool, we also made use of Mind Mapping, so the data gathered  were right in front of us, stuck in our big wall. That approach made it so much easy to see the  whole spectrum of the challenge, to learn its ups and downs, as well as seeing more clearly new  ideas and having insights.    I think that the mix of Ethnographic Interviews with Visualization and Mind Mapping really made  the big difference to come up with a valuable and useful product for our customers/users.

