Creative but Logical

A couple of years ago I had gone through the interview process of Kanbay (Now Capgemini) which I ultimately didn't crack. But I consider their process to be the best I have gone through till now. They initially sent me a questionnaire with some interesting questions to answer and then a face to face interview from which I actually garnered a lot of knowledge. I didn't get through the interview but the place left a great impression about the potential work environment they would have offered me.

One of the sections in the questionnaire (i had saved it in my comp an dug it out some time back) was a lateral thinking questions part where I had to give three similarities between a pair of objects. I think I kinda did well in the first point but freaked out towards the 3rd one :-) Thought of sharing them here... just for fun...

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Write down 3 similarities between the following pairs of objects.
Note: This is a Lateral Thinking question. Provide creative but logical answers.

- Mirror and pencil
(Example: Both mirror and pencil communicate feelings)

a) Both mirror and pencil have corrective features; we look at the mirror to correct ourselves of some flaw in our grooming. Anything written with pencil can be erased and corrected if something written goes wrong.
b) Co-Existence - A mirror’s main part is the glass and a pencil’s is the lead. Both are not useful in this context unless a silver coat on one side or wood covers them respectively.
c) Both mirror and pencil helps to gauge one’s persona; by the way one has presented himself and also from his hand writing skills.


- Chocolate and telephone

a) Both chocolate and telephone are used to communicate our feelings to someone, especially love.
b) Too much of both won’t do any good. One would run into health problems due to too many chocolates and with too many phone calls one would run into billing problems.
c) Telephone was invented by Graham bell whereas chocolate is from the land of cow bell.


- Chair and clock

a) Both chair and clock is closely related to the concept of waiting
b) When hands are the main parts of a clock, legs are the main parts of a chair
c) Being in the chair gives a sense of responsibility, and looking at the clock reminds me those responsibilities

What an irony!

The Google Map Image Cutter is an application using which large images can be published on the web in a format that allows the user to pan and zoom using the standard Google Maps interface. I downloaded it and thought of storing it in my Gmail. But Gmail simply didn't trust the file and declined to attach.

Sigh :-(

Gmail filter rules

I send screen shots, conversations, story links to my Gmail whenever I discover them so that I can later use them here on my blog posts. Most of the time this happens when I’m at work and I send out these mails from my work outlook. Then later when I get onto Gmail I select these mails and label them whitespace and make them easy discoverable later when I sit down to write things. Lot of work. I basically dont like working.

I was wondering if I could just send these mails out and then forget about them till I’m really in need of them. After a bit of googling for help, I created a filter in Gmail which says any mail received which has umesh.gopinath+whitespace@gmail.com in it’s TO address field should be labeled as whitespace and be archived.

There it goes. Now when I send out those mails from outlook, I send it to umesh.gopinath+whitespace@gmail.com and Gmail labels them whitespace and archives them so that it’s less work for me and I can catch up with other good things in life.

Office Treasure Hunt Game Plan - Part 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

We really didn’t have a treasure which was exciting enough for the team to find. We had thought of giving the winning team a bottle of champagne but when Vandana went to buy the bottle she had an idea of getting miniature liquor bottles instead. She also brought the miniatures to office in a gold colored gunny bag so that no one would see what it was. When we saw it in the morning we had an idea to make that as the treasure. We also added some ferrero rocher chocolates into the bag and packed it in such a way that it looked like a treasure bag.

But how would the team find it?

Last minute changes had to happen keeping all the other plans intact.

The plan was to keep the treasure in a cupboard which will be locked and the key would be kept in the toy tram. The key would have a note which says where it belonged to.

And this time we had got everything perfect.

We were afraid that if the teams would find the clues impossible to crack. So we decided that all of us will hang around with the teams and if we found them not able to crack the codes we would help them by giving out hints etc. Also we had printouts of every team’s path with all the clues so that if any of the clues go missing, we could still help them out.

The game was a true sell out super hit among the team as they enjoyed the activities and the thrill of finding the clues which led to the other. We still had to help some of the teams to crack the clues and there were instances when some of the clues went missing. We could still help them out thanks to the fallback options but they had to miss out on the complete set of clues to form the final puzzle. Finally one of the teams cracked the big code and found the treasure amongst an extremely upbeat crowd. It was a roaring success and everyone had only good things to say about the event. It was a very well deserved break for us also to move away from the mundane job to something more interesting, challenging and brain teasing. It was also a best example on how team work works well in solving problems and designing something interesting and setting up the logistics.


The treasure hunt game in a nutshell

• The teams would go to the basement to count the number of pillars there and sms us. 
• The first team which smsed us would get the first clue ie. a small piece of random shaped card which had a part of the picture puzzle on one side and a cryptic description of the next location, pasted on to the “colored coded” other side. 
• At some points it would also ask them to open a url on their phone or sms a code to a number to receive the next location. 
• After collecting the 7th clue from the 6th location they would have to keep all the clues together to form the picture puzzle. The team had to figure that out on their own as the last clue would only tell them to contact the person in the puzzle (One team actually got all the clues but missed out the puzzle part. They didn’t know that the other side of the clue was a part of a bigger picture). 
• After recognizing the person they would have to go to him/her who would hand over a folded picture of the toy tram. 
• The team would guess the location of the toy and find it. 
• A key would be kept inside the tram which would have the word ‘pantry’ written on it. 
• The team would then have to go to the pantry, find and unlock the closet to find the treasure.
  

Simple ;-)

Office Treasure Hunt Game Plan - Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

Abhishek and Bhavna identified 35 locations from which 30 were picked by me to create the cryptic clues. I made the clues by following a similar pattern so that once a team gets hold of the pattern, they would be able to crack others comparitively easier. Some of them were

1. 'Dual door food box' to safeguard against bacteria (fridge)
   
2. ‘Ground zero makeup galore’ for a ‘race made of Adam's rib’ (ladies restroom)
   
3. Look behind the ‘robot who makes stimulant beverage out of seeds’ from Ethiopia which made the goats dance (coffee machine)
   
4. Table which supports injurious activities (smoking area table)
   
5. They live among boxes and racks and are always ready to lend a hand (helpdesk)
   

Once the locations were fixed, Bhavna and Abhishek started working on the hunt path for the teams. It consisted of the locations and the things the team will have to do to retrieve the next clue. It was decided that for a team if clue 1 is kept at one end of the office, clue 2 will be kept at the other end, so that lot of chaotic movements happen. We also made sure that at one given point of time two teams won’t be present at a single location searching for clues.

We got 5 of our really tough to recognize teenage pictures printed, pasted them onto 5 different color papers and then cut them into pieces to make the color coded puzzle. The location clues were then pasted on to the pieces. As some of the steps in the path would ask the team to open a url or send a code to a number to get the next clue, mobile friendly web pages were made with the clues in it and also sent out the clues to the phones of our team members with which they were supposed to reply, when they receive the codes as sms. Abhishek also came up with an interesting way of folding the toy tram picture which was our final clue to be handed over by the mystery person in the puzzle. We also managed to keep all the clues at the designated locations when there was no one around and also do a dry run, hours before the game began.

We were all set to start the game, but there was still something missing.

To be continued...

Part 4

Office Treasure Hunt Game Plan - Part 2

Part 1

Problem 1

As we said that each team would have their own path to find the treasure, what if team A find clues of team B and follow them?

This was quite possible as there were 10 players in one team and they could virtually sweep the whole area to find clues and picking up the other team’s clue would mar the other team’s quest too. Also if the last clue gave away the treasure then what if the teams somehow (thanks to the sweeping nature) get the last clue well in advance?

We decided that a team picking up another team’s clue should have no use to them and we will also say this upfront as a rule. For that we decided that every step would have 2 things – One which will give them an idea of the final treasure and the second the clue of the location where the next set of clue was. The clue which would give an idea of the treasure would be of different kinds for every team i.e. if Team A gets a part of a map of where the treasure was kept, Team B would get a part of the picture of the treasure which they had to ultimately join together to know what/where the treasure was. The treasure would be the most unassuming thing which was always there in the open in the office. Like this we said we can make Team A’s clues unusable for Team B.

But we couldnt come up with 5 different ways of expressing the treasure. Vandana pulled us out of this problem.

“What if at every step they get a part of a picture of one of us?” she asked.

Team A would be actually searching for Person A and Team B would search for Person B, by collecting parts of his/her picture from all the locations. After the 6th clue they would have to bring all the parts together to make the bigger picture puzzle to identify the person and then contact him/her for the final clue for the treasure. This way we also resolved the problem of someone getting the last clue well in advance. It would still be unusable till they find the other pieces. We zeroed in on a toy tram kept at Vandana’s work station as the “unassuming” treasure.


Problem 2

Team A knows that picking up Team B’s clue is not going to help them. But what if they pick it up by mistake?

We decided to color code the teams and their clues. Teams A, B, C, D and E became Blue, Red, Green, Yellow and Brown and they were supposed to only pick up clues which were of their color.


Problem 3

What if the team identifies the person after one or two clues?

We would use our tough to recognize teenage pictures so that its not that easy. It would also add an element of fun.


Problem 4

It was tough to come up with 5 practical activities for the teams to do at every step to get the next location clue.

So we stuck to only two activities

1. To open a url on the mobile phone
   
2. To send a keyword to a number to receive reply with the clue
   

These activities would repeat for every team at different intervals with different urls, keywords and numbers to receive their location clues. This way we brought in the mobile usage part for all the teams.


Problem 5

How can we come up with the final clue for the toy tram at Vandana’s desk which had to be exactly pointed out?

The final clue for the treasure which had to be handed over by the person in the puzzle, would be a close up picture of the toy which would pin point the treasure but wouldn't give out the exact location. The team would have to guess the location of the treasure.


Problem 6

How would the game kick off?

We didn’t want to just give out the first clues to the teams once they were formed. The teams would have to feel that they earned the chance to get the first clue to make it more challenging. We thought of a time based activity for the teams and the early the team finishes the task the early they get their first clue. We came up with a task of making the teams count the pillars at the basement car park. As the basement car park was in a huge circular area we were sure that to count the pillars there would not be an easy task. The teams would have to sms us the correct number along with their team color and then come to us to collect the clue. The sms was to avoid arguments among the team regarding who had come first etc and also to keep the number a secret.

To be continued...

Part 3
Part 4

Office Treasure Hunt Game Plan - Part 1

Everyone in the User Experience Team was super excited when I suggested that we would organize a treasure hunt game for the monthly team building event at work though the only thing we knew about a treasure hunt at the point was that it would have some clues which would lead the players to a treasure. It was our team which had to host the event this time and we wanted to do something which no other team had done before. As our 8 member team was kicked about the idea, the task of designing the game was given to the three interaction designers in the team. The requirement for the game we agreed upon was to make the game challenging and interesting for the players, but also easy for them to crack the clues once they get the hold of it. We also decided that it should have elements of mobile technology thrown in and also encourage team management by bringing in team activities.

Abhishek, Bhavna and I, the interaction designers, who were entrusted with the game design job did couple of brain storming sessions to bring in a shape to our scattered ideas. We pulled in Vandana our manager as a sounding board of ours to look at our ideas from a different perspective. She was also a great help in helping us manage the logistics.

The first thing we did was to group the office strength into 5 teams of 10 players each. We were aware that a 10 member team would be tough to manage when the game is on but we didn’t want to have more than 5 teams as each team would have their own separate path to the treasure. We had to create 5 paths each comprising of 6 steps which meant we had to come up with 30 different clues which lead to the treasure. All 30 clues would be kept at that many different locations which we had to be identified in our comparatively modest office space. Abhishek agreed to identify the locations for me to make the clues. To bring in the technology/mobile aspect we decided that at every step we will ask the team to do something with their mobile phone to get the next location clue. Bhavna agreed to come up with the activities. This was just the framework of the game but that’s when we came across different problems.

To be continued...

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4