Gray, Brown & Macanufo (2010); Design Council (2004); d.school
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The Source
D. Gray, Sunni Brown & James Macanufo — Gamestorming (2010)
My Takeaway
Most people involved in co-design know the double diamond. What I find useful about Gray's Gamestorming framing is that it gives the same idea a dramatic structure — and drama, it turns out, is a really useful way to think about what facilitators are actually managing.
A session has three acts:
- Act 1 — Open (Divergent): Set the stage. Surface information, open up the space of ideas. The point is breadth, not resolution.
- Act 2 — Explore (Emergent): This is the messy middle. Examine, experiment, let things collide and combine. Emergence happens here — ideas that nobody planned for.
- Act 3 — Close (Convergent): Move toward conclusions, decisions, action. The space narrows intentionally.
What the right-hand page of my sketch captures is something even more interesting — the string games. Not all sessions run cleanly from A to B. Some split early and reconverge. Some branch into multiple parallel streams. Some lose their thread entirely in the middle and have to be caught. The break (or lunch) can function as a structural reset.
This matters for co-design because we often design sessions as if they'll proceed linearly. They won't. The three-act frame gives you a macro-structure to hold onto when things get non-linear — you always know roughly where you are: are we still opening? Have we started converging too soon? Do we need to reopen?
For me, this sits right at the heart of what I mean by creative collaboration mechanics — the procedural structures that shape how a group moves through cognitive territory together.
Connected Ideas
🔗 Divergence — the opening act is structurally about expanding the solution space
🔗 Convergence — closing is the necessary counterpart; without it, exploration doesn't become action
🔗 Reframing — emergence in Act 2 often involves shifting how the problem is understood altogether