Win Conditions Before Brainstorming
Write the short list of things the finished thing must do, or you will stay in brainstorming mode forever.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
This is the counterweight to the zero effect: brainstorm without a target, but do not evaluate without one. Elan's worked example is Hurry Up Chicken Butt, designed with his four-year-old daughter, for which he wrote three conditions before they began. The game had to be as much fun for him to play as for her; she had to be able to beat him without him letting her win; and the game could not have any losers, though it could have a winner. His daughter fired off design after design and he ran each against the list. His stated reason for writing the list at all is that unless he knows what success looks like, he will stay in brainstorming mode forever.
Origin
When Elan's daughter turned four they bought all the available children's games and he hated them — they were boring and he hated playing. Rather than tolerate them, they designed their own, and the three-criterion list came from asking what would have to be true for him, as the parent doing the buying, to want the game on his own shelf.
Core principles
- 01Unless you know what success looks like, you will stay in brainstorming mode forever.
- 02The criteria must be written before the idea generation, not extracted from a favourite idea afterwards.
- 03Three hard criteria beat twenty soft preferences, because the list has to be usable as a kill switch.
- 04The best criteria are painful — Elan's second rule killed most of the designs he and his daughter came up with.
- 05Write them from the perspective of the person who has to say yes, not the person who has to design.
- 06Constraints are not merely critical; they are additive, which feels like a contradiction and is not.
- 07Hitting every criterion is necessary but not sufficient — a passing design is the start of the second half of the work, not the end.
How to run it
- 1
Ask what would make you buy it
Elan's list is written from the parent's perspective — the things he needed to know were in the game in order for him, as a parent, to buy it for his kid. Frame the criteria as the purchase decision, not the design ambition.
Pro tip The gatekeeper and the end user are often different people; write for the gatekeeper.
- 2
Write three hard conditions
Elan's were: the game has to be as much fun for me to play as it is for my daughter; my daughter has to be able to beat me even though I am not letting her win; and the game cannot have any losers, though it can have a winner.
Pro tip He calls these his guiding lights — three checkboxes that had to be ticked for the game to be good.
Watch out Criteria you can satisfy with your existing favourite idea are not criteria; they are a rationalisation.
- 3
Let the criteria do the killing
Elan says the second criterion alone killed most of the designs they came up with. His daughter would simply respond with another one — you don't like this one, here's another — and keep firing them off.
Pro tip A collaborator who is not attached to individual ideas is worth more than one with better ideas.
Watch out Softening a criterion to save a design you like empties the whole list of authority.
- 4
Run generation and evaluation as separate modes
Generate under the zero effect — anything, no target — and evaluate under the list. Elan and his daughter worked through what he calls a hundred million designs before one hit all three conditions.
Pro tip Never evaluate mid-generation; batch the two activities.
Watch out Mixing the modes reinstates the 'I must find X' filter that stalls brainstorming in the first place.
- 5
Treat a pass as necessary but not sufficient
When they finally hit all three, Elan's own comment is that this is only half the battle — the design half. Tim names it: necessary but not sufficient. Naming, packaging and distribution are the other half.
Pro tip Schedule the second half before you celebrate the first.
Watch out Teams that stop at a passing design ship a good product nobody encounters.
In the wild
Elan designed Hurry Up Chicken Butt with his four-year-old daughter, who did most of the design work, against his three written criteria. The result is a game they play every single night, that she beats him at regularly while he is trying his absolute hardest to win. Up until the previous year, Exploding Kittens was the top-selling game in the world; the thing Elan says he is even prouder of is that it is now number two.
→ Hurry Up Chicken Butt became the world's number one selling game, moving roughly one copy every four seconds.
The second condition — his daughter has to be able to beat him even though he is not letting her win — is the one Elan flags as brutally hard. It rules out every design where adult skill dominates, and by his account it killed most of the designs the two of them came up with. It also connects directly to Coyote's attack cards, which exist so that the player in last place can sabotage the player in first.
→ A single hard criterion that forced the design toward mechanics where the underdog has real leverage.
Common mistakes
Brainstorming without a stopping rule
Elan's explicit reason for writing the list is that unless he knows what success looks like, he will just stay in brainstorming mode forever. Idea supply is rarely the constraint; the missing piece is a definition of done.
Writing criteria that are easy to satisfy
A list every candidate passes is decoration. The value came from the criterion that eliminated most of the designs, which is precisely the one a designer is tempted to soften.
Treating a criteria-passing design as finished
Elan is emphatic that a great design is only half the battle. He follows the passing design straight into naming, box design and the sales meeting, because a design that meets its criteria and never reaches a shelf has produced nothing.
Is it for you?
Best for
Creative or product work with a generous idea supply and no clear definition of done.
Not ideal for
Pure exploratory research where premature criteria would foreclose the discovery you are actually looking for.
From the transcript
“the game has to be as much fun for me to play as it is for my daughter”
“my daughter has to be able to beat me at this game even though i'm not letting her win”
“unless i know what what success looks like, i'll just stay in brainstorming mode forever”
“that, as i said earlier, is only half the battle”
From the episode
#821: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens