The origin of the “How’s The Water” game
12 June, 2024
We didn’t set out to build a card game. Our first product was a “shared journaling” mobile app that helps you stay connected with teammates, workmates, family and friends. This is the story of how a tech product led us down a very different path.
It was a cold, dark November night driving east towards Germany. I was supposed to meet Laura Barrosso at eight o’clock at the Rundsporthalle Bochum, home of the AstroStars. This big, round, closed structure was built around a series of basketball courts, one of those typical 1970’s multifunctional sports arenas scattered around Germany. We met through sports psychologist Theresa Holst, who’s been an incredible partner on our journey! As a semi-pro team, they had an amazing last season, coming in 2nd in the Zweite Bundesliga, but not without its challenges. As a friends-first team with competitive ambitions, they were keen to forge a stronger bond, on and off the pitch.
After circling the building and looking pretty lost, Laura found me, showed me inside, and introduced me to the team. We were there to test a new feature in the app called a ‘group check-in’ – a creative way to gauge if everyone in the group is doing “okay”. In order to demonstrate the power of the feature, the group was going to have to be vulnerable. I was struggling to figure out how to invite a group to open up emotionally, not just towards a stranger but also towards each other. On the way over, I was brainstorming an idea with Scott for an icebreaker – a way to create a connection between the physical, psychological, and emotional aspects, strongly linked to social circumstances. We landed on ‘goosebumps,’ a weird evolutionary leftover triggered by both physical and emotional experiences.
I kicked off the group session by asking everyone to share when they last had goosebumps. There were funny stories, but also heartfelt experiences—things the ladies didn’t know about each other. It helped deepen their bond. And it made experiencing the new feature in the app a success. After talking about my experience that night with several expert coaches and psychologists, I learned that the goosebump experience is not uncommon for helping groups open up. Given the right prompt and experience, people felt free to share their emotions. Almost longed for it. It was as if they’d finally been given a chance to show that part of themselves to people they cared about. They just needed an ‘excuse.’
Fast forward a month,, and we were still struggling to push the app into production. This left me in a bit of a holding pattern, while still feeling pressure to move forward, and discover how we could unlock more soulfulness. This led serendipitously to the connection of two separate things: a debrief with Laura, where she expressed a keen interest in doing another sharing session, and prompt cards on my shelf made by the School of Life that I had checked out six months earlier in my group journaling research.
We decided to print the features in the app (group check-ins, celebrations, and reflections) onto cards with questions that unlocked the type of responses we’d hope to see in the app. But we also knew that if this was going to be fun to play, we’d need to figure out the ‘rules of the game’ as we played it. Amazingly, Laura and the team were totally up for that. And so I set out east again on another cold, dark evening, but this time with 50 home-designed cards.
The first time playing was a lot of fun, but it revealed that just flipping and responding to a card wasn’t fun enough. It needed rounds, maybe three or four? What also became obvious was that for a group bonding activity, it needed more group-focused activity. So we had the group “check-in” at the start of a round. Also, sometimes it was hard to answer a prompt question—not because someone didn’t want to share an emotional story or didn’t know how to, but because they couldn’t think of an example on the spot. And so a joker, which would later become a Tribute card, was born.
As we talked about this experience with friends and family, more people became interested in helping us develop the game further. And so we played it with Xavier’s team at the City of Amsterdam (his team had gone through a series of burnouts they hadn’t seen coming), Tom’s team at Funxtion (having gone through a big reorg, they needed reconnecting), and Leo’s team at the Arnhem School of Applied Sciences (moving into a new Hydrogen lab, their team was primed for connecting). And of course, we played it with our family and friends and learned things about each other that hadn’t been revealed before or were overdue reiterating.
Every iteration revealed new serendipitous discoveries that made the game better. To name a few: a last-minute decision to print out a (companion) card with a coaching-tested way to answer (based on Non-Violent Communication and other research) allowed all players to adopt a technique to invite follow-up questions to the person sharing their story. Could every player now be a ‘coach’? Or a spontaneous use of the prompt ‘What do you appreciate in one or more teammates?’ where a group started sharing what they appreciated about the team became a foundational element of the game.
Each time people played, they asked if they could keep the game to play it again. Considering that meant spending a day in a print shop printing and cutting a new deck for each group, it wasn’t always possible. Those that kept the game played it often, even on the road in the bus to an away game. And now we were all curious about the long term effects. While it has only been a couple of months since the first gameplay, the feedback has been that this game achieved a level of bonding in hours that otherwise would have taken months or years to achieve:
“Without doubt, the single best investment that we have made in the past year to bring our team closer together!” Danny (Chief Commercial Officer at Funxtion).
“The outcome can only be more ‘team spirit’ and mutual understanding! But above all, it’s fun and calming.” Xavier (Senior Manager at PMB, City of Amsterdam)
As we iterated, more positive feedback kept coming in. Building on this beautiful journey of serendipity, a game was born. It just needed a visual identity and a name. But that’s for another story.
Onward we go...