Vikas Joshi is passionate about making lives more effective through interactivity. His vision has inspired a global market for interactivity software. As founder, Chairman and Managing Director at the Harbinger Group, he leads an international organization building cutting-edge technology products and services.
By Vikas Joshi
Published on February 22, 2010
When someone is addressing a group, a yawn serves two purposes. One, it tells the speaker - the rare one who cares to notice it - that someone is bored. Two, it produces more yawns, which in turn tell the speaker... well, you get the picture.
Where Did YawnBuster Come from?
When someone is addressing a group, a yawn serves two
purposes. One, it tells the speaker - the rare one who cares to notice it -
that someone is bored. Two, it produces more yawns, which in turn tell the
speaker... well, you get the picture.
I was fortunate to be part of the innovation process that led to YawnBuster,
and in this post I'll try to capture some of it.
When one person speaks and others listen in a moderate size group, one thing
that often breaks down is two-way communication.
Suppose you are in the audience. If you let this person go on rambling, you get
one-way monologue. If you interrupt too many times, the speaker may lose the
thread and everyone ends up in a mess.
Now let's see this from the speaker's perspective. If I talk non-stop, I may
end up getting bored of my own voice. If I encourage people to talk, someone
could easily go off on a tangent.
Clearly, what is needed is a way to present, where four conditions are
satisfied.
The speaker can control the amount of interaction
The interaction serves a specific purpose: energizes
the audience, creates fun, provides a breather and so on
Everyone has a way to participate
The interaction is organized and guided by some kind of
a structure. (Sometimes, stating it negatively is more emphatic. So let's
just say: No chaos.)
These conditions point to a non-trivial problem.
One needs a concept that helps us put our heads around this problem. One such
concept is a Group Activity.
A Group Activity is initiated by the speaker: "Okay, let's play a game of
Bingo!" The design of the activity is based on its purpose: "We're
going to get you thinking with this brainstorming session", or "We
will cool off a bit with this trivia game". Everyone can participate - directly,
or indirectly : "Let's have a show of hands". The Group Activity's
structure guides what happens next: "Now, it's Group B's turn." A
certain order prevails, even as people participate: "Your time is
up", or "Let's put together all the key takeaways now".
With the idea of Group Activity at the center, a framework for group activity
facilitation evolved. The facilitation framework minimizes the speaker's
workload, by doing many of the things that involve keeping the audience on
track.