Misusing mobile phones to break the ice: The tabletop game Maze Maestro

Performance of newly-formed project teams is often limited, or at least delayed, when team members refrain from sharing their ideas due to unfamiliarity with their peers. A variety of ice-breaking methods can help overcome this cold start, but mostly they need to be deployed and moderated by experienced facilitators. This setup is rarely an option for most undergrad project courses at university level, typically carried out in small teams. In order to help breaking the ice in this context, we developed Maze Maestro, a collaborative tabletop game in which the board is made up by attaching the displays of the team members' mobile phones to form a large maze. Each member controls a character in the maze, and the whole team has the common goal of leaving the maze together; however, this is only possible with timely communication and much cooperation. While playing, team members are encouraged to confer possible plans and share their ideas, which is the fertile ground for breaking the ice. Play testing has shown that Maze Maestro was perceived as a fun and original collaborative game. So far, results of a preliminary user study are optimistic about the ability of Maze Maestro to break the ice within newly-formed teams, without requiring any facilitator.