Engineer's Guide to Improv and Art Games

This hybrid engineering manual and improv manual gives practical tips on how to boost design skills and design thinking with improv exercises. It pushes designers to trust their teams, take initiative, focus on the customer, and better transform abstract ideas into reality. Engineers, artists, makers, software developers, and entrepreneurs will find the most benefit from this guide, especially if they work in teams and strive to innovate. Teachers and trainers can also use this guide to supplement their lessons in design. First the guide details a number of selected engineering methods and skills that are both key to the design process and related to improv principles. These methods and skills all relate to the themes of teamwork, creativity and ideation, handling failure, empathy, and design representation. Then the guide details how to play over twenty-five fun and challenging games from the improv and art worlds that have direct applications to design skills. The connection between each game and a design skill is explicitly explained. Questions are also provided to give readers a chance to self-reflect on how a game might apply to them. The author draws on his own experience in engineering education and improv to compile this handy design reference.