Crafting Playbook: a playful way to more balance and meaning at work

The project partners developed a series of plays on dealing with stress, on resources and pressures at work, on contributing personal strengths and values, as well as on mutual understanding within the team and showing appreciation.

When launching the app, users encounter a stimulating interface, entertaining messages and reminders of plays. Visual communication and game design approaches were used here. For example, a blooming flower shows how often you have played which type of play. Three “superpowers” were assigned to the plays – clarity, insight and confidence, which are gained through playing. Emotions that one might feel towards crafting, such as doubt, uncertainty, overload or resignation, are also addressed.

The playbook is an open project: in addition to the app, a development package is freely available for designing plays. For example, people from universities and the field can work with a company to develop a series of Plays that can be made available to the workforce. Lecturers can use plays to provide short knowledge impulses or encourage students to convey a topic in the form of a play. Researchers can create mini-interventions where the target group plays a series of plays on a topic such as “using strengths”.

After the end of the project, the playbook was set up at the BGM Forum Zurich, which is supported by SUVA, among others.