Category: serious-game

An overview of TAP-SWOT in a BOX to help you decide if you want to play it with colleagues.

Transport planning has traditionally sat within the predict and provide paradigm – focused upon a forecast-led approach to addressing car-centric planning. Triple Access Planning (TAP) sits within the decide and provide paradigm – focused upon a vision-led approach to addressing access-centric planning for an uncertain world.

But what is TAP and how might it translate from a theoretical concept into the reality of how planning is approached in practice? We decided to develop a game to help practitioners learn more about TAP and critically examine its merits from their own perspective.

SWOT analysis is a means of critical examination – allowing the Strengths and Weaknesses of the TAP approach to be considered as well as the Opportunities and Threats of the planning setting into which it could be introduced.

We wanted to consolidate our own understanding of SWOT elements in a way that would in turn allow other practitioners to have their own say in a shared learning environment. The idea of TAP-SWOT in a Box was born.

TAP-SWOT in a BOX is a card game for up to five players (up to four players in the digital version). It can be played by multiple teams simultaneously in the same room or online, making it ideal for workshops and conferences.

The deck of cards has four suits – S, W, O and T with ten cards in each suit. There are also blank ‘joker’ cards for players to introduce new SWOT elements if they wish. The aim of the game is to work as a team of players to prioritise the most important cards until only five cards remain. These constitute the ‘elevator pitch’ of reasoning from the team to their (imaginary) boss to support whether or not they recommend TAP be adopted by the organisation concerned.

An overview of the stages of the game is shown below:

Stage 1 involves an eight-minute presentation explaining TAP. While TAP is a process and way of thinking, it can be imagined as a product you are considering buying. The SWOT elements can be viewed as ‘product reviews’. Stage 2 involves players weighing up all of the product reviews. In Stage 3 further shortlisting is done by the team of players. With the five remaining most important cards, each player then decides whether or not to recommend ‘buying’ TAP (i.e. adopting it as an approach). If multiple teams have played the game simultaneously then views between teams ‘across the market’ can be shared and discussed (Stage 5). Stage 6 is an optional natural addition after the game play time to hold a discussion based upon views prompted by playing the game.

The game typically takes around an hour to run but the tempo can be adjusted to suit the time available.

Players learn more about TAP by playing, they learn from each other and we can all learn from people’s experiences of playing TAP-SWOT in a BOX. Why not give it a go yourself? We have created two versions:

• Face to face
• Online

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Downloadable resources you need to be able to play the game for yourselves.

The team who created the game had multiple decks of cards professionally printed as waxed playing cards. An example card is shown below:

We have run the game multiple times at conferences and in practitioner workshops, including with transport authorities considering TAP as an approach for developing new Local Transport Plans or Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).

Unfortunately, we don’t have decks of cards available to order. However, if you are prepared to do some printing and cutting out, you can easily create a deck of cards of your own. We have created a downloadable ‘game pack’. This contains the following:

• Game cards for printing (and cutting out)
• Rules card for printing (and cutting out)
• Game slides and script (a Powerpoint file that you need to use to run the game – starting with the Stage 1 ‘sales pitch’, the script for which is included in the notes pages)
• Video of the Stage 1 ‘sales’ pitch (this can be played in place of using the first 17 slides of the slide deck above)

Download the game pack (89Mb)

If you have queries about running the game yourself using this pack, please feel free to contact Professor Glenn Lyons at Glenn.Lyons@uwe.ac.uk.

We would be delighted if you choose to run the game and even more pleased if you are willing to provide feedback from the experience. We have designed a simple feedback form that includes asking you to upload a file with details (possibly photos included) of the final five cards chosen by players (in each game) with their decision cards and some of the reasoning behind.

Have fun!

Not convinced you want to run the game face-to-face using the resources above? Don’t worry, thanks to a wonderful and hardworking team of games technology students at UWE Bristol a digital version of TAP-SWOT in a BOX has been created.

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Download and run a digital version of the game wherever your other players are located.

Not long after we created the game we dreamt about the prospect of it being available as an online game that could be played by teams of people anywhere. Thanks to the MSc Commercial Games Development course at UWE Bristol (supported by UWE’s entrepreneurship hub called The Foundry), our dream came true.

During 2022/23 the TAP-SWOT in a BOX game creators worked as ‘clients’ with a team of games technology students at UWE Bristol (Shreyas Tembhekar, Vason Maitree and Mohit Pundir) who developed a digital version of the game.

This is not as easy as it might sound with attention needed in addressing not only for the look and feel of the online version but also in ensuring it could run technically in a distributed manner.

After many meetings and tests, the online version is available.

To play the game you will need to download the ‘digital game pack’. This is a 250Mb zip file. Each player needs to do this. Once the zip file is downloaded, unzip into a suitable local directory on your computer. Each player then needs to run the file TapSwot.exe. One player creates a game play room which the others can then join.

While the digital version of TAP-SWOT in a BOX includes an internal chat function, we recommend that the team playing the game do so in a Teams or Zoom (or equivalent) session so that they can communicate. Ideally you would each have two monitors available (one to show the game screen and the other to show the Teams/Zoom session). If you only have one monitor the Teams/Zoom session can run in the background so you can speak to one another while you have the game itself on screen.

The game is self-contained and should provide everything you need to play (including an embedded video for Stage 1 of the game which introduces TAP).

Please note:

• The game does not require installation on your computer – the set of files are unzipped and the .exe file can then be run directly. However, your IT system in your organisation may prohibit doing this or require prior permission to do so. Please check.
• The game requires an active and consistent internet connection to play and hence any disconnection or network malfunction will directly impact the user experience.
• Because the game is running online, when it is coupled with a Teams or Zoom session this can slow down your computer. You should find when the game is closed and the Teams/Zoom session ends your computer returns to normal if you have experienced such a slow-down.
• Your computer’s IP address is used in connecting you to the game but no data is collected or shared with others.
• The creators of TAP-SWOT in a BOX have all tested the digital version of the game themselves on their computers (covering university, consultancy and public sector work environments). However, we welcome feedback from you regarding your own experience of running this digital version of the game.

Download the digital game pack (250Mb)

If you have queries about running the game using this pack, please feel free to contact Professor Glenn Lyons at Glenn.Lyons@uwe.ac.uk.

We would be delighted if you choose to run the game and even more pleased if you are willing to provide feedback from the experience. We have designed a simple feedback form that includes asking you to upload a picture of the final five cards and decision cards from the team who has played the game.

Have fun!

Not convinced you want to run the digital version of the game? Don’t worry, we also provides the resources you need to run the game face to face.

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Downloadable summary of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of TAP.

We are conscious that you may not feel you want to play the game but would like to know what the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Triple Access Planning might be. Or you may have played the game but would also like to have these conveniently summarised.

If so, we are pleased to provide you with a PDF file that tabulates the SWOT elements:

Download the SWOT elements of Triple Access Planning (258Kb)

Please help us spread the word about TAP if you find on balance that it merits being considered and applied as an approach. If you would like to share further comments please contact Professor Glenn Lyons – Glenn.Lyons@uwe.ac.uk.

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Read what others have said about the game having played it.

TAP-SWOT in a BOX has already been played multiple times at conferences and in workshops with practitioners. We recognise that before you consider playing yourself, you may wish to know a little more about what others have thought about the game.

Here are some of the quotes from previous game players:

1. “Enjoyable experience and certainty thought provoking” (Transport Executive, council)
2. “Very engaging way to describe a difficult concept” (Principal Analyst, local government)
3. “Brilliant, imaginative and exactly what conferences need” (Behavioural scientist, academia)
4. “Thanks, well presented, enjoyed the role play scenario played by the presenters” (Senior Transport Planner, consultancy)
5. It would be interesting to involve those that are not transport professionals (Transport Officer, council)
6. “Great!” (Senior Transport Planner, national government)
7. “Nice time pressure for discussions within groups” (Graduate Transport Planner, consultancy)
8. “I would like to try this with local authority planners” (Lecturer, academia)
9. “I would like to consider using this in teaching.” (Senior researcher, academia)

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Other material about TAP-SWOT in a BOX.

We are seeking to publish a paper about TAP-SWOT in a BOX. If and when this is successful the paper will be made available here.

In the meantime, you may also be interested in joining an online ‘community of practice’ for TAP on LinkedIn.

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