Safety
Games about trust & safety, governance, risk and compliance.
If you’re building a store, an app, a place to stay or a way to send money, you’re also building all the ways it can be used to hurt someone.
What the words mean
- Trust and safety
- Making sure your thing can’t be used to hurt someone.
- Governance
- Deciding who gets to make which call.
- Risk
- Knowing what could go wrong before it does.
- Compliance
- Following the rules, and being able to show that you did.
Come and play if
- You’re building something that two strangers will both use.
- You keep telling people a rule and they keep skipping it.
- You have to prove you did the right thing, and you can’t.
- Something went wrong and everyone is hunting for who to blame.
- You’re about to add a rule and you don’t know if it’ll work.
- You want to get better at this by doing it.
Start here
- 01
What you can’t see
Meet somebody your software barely knows, see the year it never hears about, then build the check that protects everyone.
Use this to think about what protects everybody, when you know almost nothing about any of them.Play - 02
The next move
Find how one person uses a working feature to reach another, close the step that makes it work, then work out what they do next.
Use this when your product lets one person find or reach another person.Play - 03
What are you actually building?
Read what really happened to a product that shipped and worked, then work out what its team had actually built.
Use this at the start of anything you build, before the shape of it is decided.Play - 04
What the screen said
Read what a product told the people using it, find out what was true, then name the thing only a person could have caught.
Use this when your product is about to tell people something they’ll act on, and a model is doing the telling.Play
Play
For anyone making something.
Whether you’re making an app, a drink, a bakery, a club at school or a whole company.
Come and play if
- You have an idea and you can’t tell yet if anyone wants it.
- You made something, it works, and nobody uses it.
- People keep telling you what they want, and you still don’t know what to build.
- Everyone is busy and the thing still isn’t moving.
- You want to get better at this by doing it.
- You want something to run with your team that isn’t another slide deck.
Pick one
- 01
Cut through the noise
Pick a situation, answer five questions about it, and find out which of your answers actually describe the problem.
Use this when there’s an idea on the table and nobody has agreed what problem it actually solves.Play - 02
The power-up shop
Ask each customer two questions, then sell them the one thing on your shelf that fixes what they just told you.
Use this when you’re thinking about what your team can build, and what powerful thing to put in somebody’s hands.Play - 03
Two truths and a roadmap
Spot the roadmap item that names a thing to build instead of a problem to solve, then rewrite it.
Use this when you’re writing next quarter’s plan and it’s turning into a list of things to build.Play - 04
Faster horses
Interview someone about a product they gave up on, and find the question that gets a real story instead of a wish list.
Use this before you talk to customers, or after a round of conversations that only gave you a wish list.Play - 05
The wrong answer museum
Read what happened to a product that shipped and failed, then work out which of the five questions its team never answered.
Use this on a zero-to-one build or a pivot, while you’re still defining the solution you’ll bring to market.Play
- BuyersShowing a cautious buyer where the product fits in the work they already do
- FeedbackTurning a pile of feedback into a plan the team can explain
- DecisionsGetting decisions moving when they all wait on one person
- AIMaking AI hold up when the buyer’s own leadership asks hard questions