If you’re “designing for thriving,” you’re going to need some tools. But if the concept of digital thriving is new to you, which should you use? We’ve put together a list of design tools that we consider essential, and we invite you to explore them all!
The basics
Like many disciplines, the design work of digital thriving may involve pens, paper, markers, and whiteboards, as well as software tools for graphics, spreadsheets, prototyping, and more. Since you probably are already aware of these, let’s move on to tools more specific to the Playbook.
There are two basic categories of design tools for digital thriving:
- Off-the-shelf — Tools that are ready to be used immediately.
- Do-it-yourself — Tools that you customize for every project (though they can begin as templates).
For convenience, we have marked each tool by their category.
1. Design frameworks (off-the-shelf and do-it-yourself)
Design frameworks are a structured way to put principles into practice. Three of the most important for digital thriving (so far) are the following:
- CGI — An off-the-shelf framework that helps you think and develop comprehensively about digital thriving. Short for “community, group, individual.”
- ECE — An off-the-shelf framework that helps you create a structure for building healthy online communities. Short for “environment, consequences, encouragement.”
- Player typologies — A do-it-yourself method for developing your own frameworks, player typologies help you examine your game through different lenses in order to solve problems.
More design frameworks will undoubtedly be developed and added to the Playbook. We recommend you check back often to see what’s new.
2. Social maps (do-it-yourself)
Social maps help you get a complete picture of everything that’s influencing social experiences in your game. They are custom-created and include the following types:
- Social experience maps
- Parallel wireflows
- Dynamic journeys
- Multi-perspective prototypes
See the Comparison of Methods for Mapping Social Experiences for more details on each of these types.
Developing social maps is often made easier when using other tools such as design checklists, risk registers, and cognitive bias lenses.
3. Design checklists (off-the-shelf)
Design checklists help streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve quality. Checklists for digital thriving include:
Digital thriving checklists are particularly useful when developing social maps.
4. Risk registers (do-it-yourself)
Risk registers are documents that help identify, assess, and prioritize risks. Furthermore, they provide a framework for outlining how you will eliminate, mitigate, or accept those risks.
Risk registers can be used independently or to inform social mapping exercises.
5. Cognitive bias lenses (do-it-yourself… but we wish they weren’t!)
A cognitive bias is a mental shortcut our brains use to simplify dealing with a complex world. While sometimes helpful, these can often work against us by unconsciously and systematically distorting and negatively influencing our views and judgments. Over 180 cognitive biases have been identified so far.
Cognitive bias lenses are short summaries of these biases. We can use these summations to compensate for the negative effects of cognitive biases on social experiences in our games. Like design checklists and risk registers, cognitive bias lenses can be used independently or to inform social maps.
Unfortunately, no off-the-shelf versions of cognitive bias lenses are available in physical or digital form. At least for now, we all have to create our own — sorry!
6. The Digital Thriving Playbook
Perhaps it’s cheating, but the most important design tool for digital thriving is the Digital Thriving Playbook itself! In addition to what has been described above, the Playbook provides a growing, categorized selection of methods, guides, and other tools to help you in your work.
Learn more about these categories in Getting Started with Digital Thriving.
Now what?
Now that you understand the essential design tools of digital thriving, explore the Methods section for other grok-and-go options!
