Fun and accuracy: Strike the balance with a diverse and empowered team

Quantum computing, meet board games.

Maryam Ashoori’s colleagues call her the Czar of Cool.

A manager in IBM Research, she gravitates toward projects that aim to teach complicated concepts to people of all ages and skill levels in a fun and tangible way. Her most recent directive from her director: make cool stuff related to quantum.

Let’s be honest: How many of us really know how quantum works? Now, measure that against the relevance quantum will gain in Generation Z’s lifetime. Experts predict it will transform our potential to impact everything from climate change to health care through its unique ability to process data.

Who intends on teaching people the fundamentals of quantum? Who qualifies?

“The more you read, the more you’re lost,” Maryam stated matter-of-factly. “And the first question for me [was] like, ‘how are we going to teach quantum to people, when they expect you to teach them what quantum is all about in just a few minutes?’”

She came to the idea of teaching quantum through a board game with her teammate Justin Weisz, who also happens to be her husband. Inspiration struck one weekend while they tried out a new board game.

“It took us like five hours just to figure out how the board game works,” Maryam explained. “And then we spent another two hours playing the game on Sunday. But, at the end of the day I was super happy that we got to play this game. And we actually enjoyed it. And I’m like, wait a second. We spent multiple hours on reading the instructions for playing the board game. What if we leveraged that to teach people about quantum?”

This was the genesis of Entanglion, a board game that immerses players in the principles of quantum. Justin said they realized early on that they needed to enlist the help of quantum scientists.

“We wanted to build something that was educational, and we wanted to build something that was scientifically accurate,” he explained.

At the very beginning of the project, the quantum scientists worked closely with the design team to create the parameters. Quantum scientist Jerry Chow said that to scope the game, they had to set conditions. In setting those conditions, they had to calculate how quantum accurately played out within them.

Quantum scientist Lev Bishop, for example, calculated the number of planets (they set the game in outer space, by the way) Entanglion needed to correctly reflect the quantum boundaries they put in place.

While accuracy was the highest priority for the scientists, designers focused on fun. The balance of the various perspectives and expertise was crucial to the project’s original mission.

Once the team established the basic structure of the game, the quantum scientists took a less active role in developing the game. From there, most of their involvement came in the form of play sessions. The design team brought them low-fidelity prototypes of the game — mostly made of cardboard and paper — to test it in action. The team could make and change their ideas without spending a ton of time and money manufacturing the “real thing” before they got it right.

Along with the scientists, industrial designer Aaron Cox said their manufacturer helped root them in reality.

“None of us had ever had a board game manufactured before,” Aaron pointed out.

He believes establishing fluid and constant communication with their manufacturer from the beginning contributed to their success on that front. The instinct to experiment on the immediate team birthed ideas that proved difficult to execute.

“You could come up with the best design in the world, but if a factory can’t make it, it’s not the best design in the world,” Aaron said.

The manufacturer didn’t just manage expectations. They also found creative ways to execute on logistically challenging ideas Aaron brought to them. The team wanted to include a voucher in every Entanglion box for access to an online Quantum Experience, and Aaron said they relied heavily on the manufacturer’s expertise to bring this idea to life.

The harmony and transparency between all parts of the team — the manufacturer, the designers, and the quantum scientists — embody the spirit of diverse and empowered teams. A team committed to diversity allows for all types of different voices to enter the room. A team committed to empowerment ensures that everyone hears those voices.

When asked why he thought people with such different perspectives served the product well together, Aaron said, “we all trusted each other in our own domains.”

But did they accomplish their goal? As of now, signs point to yes.

A quantum scientist they interviewed said, “I was pleasantly surprised at the correspondence between the game board and the physics of a 2-qubit system,” while a physiologist recalled Entanglion as “a very playful way to get into a quantum mindset, especially for people like me who have little background in the area.”

The Entanglion team harnessed the powers of a multidisciplinarity and rapid prototyping to turn something complicated into something simple. In the struggle to create a game both accurate and fun, advocates from both camps were heard for the better.

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