tessera
FACILITATOR GUIDE

How to run a Tessera workshop.

Tessera is most useful when you treat it as a 30-minute scaffold for a 60-minute conversation. The game produces an artifact; the value lives in what you talk about after.

Before the call

  • Pick a complexityfrom 1–8. Start at 3 if your team hasn't played before; bump to 5–6 once they get the rhythm.
  • Decide on briefs. Library is the safe default. Pick Custom when you want to point the lesson at a specific theme (e.g. swap east/west to talk about how engineering and design see the same thing differently). AI-generated is unpredictable in a good way.
  • Set a video call link and (optionally) a Miro / FigJam board for notes. Tessera doesn't do voice itself — pairs need an external channel.
  • Save your host recovery URL. If you close the tab, that bookmark is your only way back to the dashboard.

At kickoff

  • Share the game code. Players join from the home page; let them choose a display name they're happy seeing in their team's history.
  • Decide whether to let players pick their own role. Builders typically enjoy the hands-on side; guiders are best for verbal communicators. Observers are great for skeptics who want to watch first.
  • Use auto-allocate if you don't care about pairings. Use manual pair when you want to mix functions deliberately (engineer ↔ designer, junior ↔ senior).

While the round is running

Watch the dashboard, not the participants. The right pair to nudge is the one with the lowest accuracy after 60 seconds — they're the ones who've been talking past each other.

  • Frustrated pair? 🔮 Prototype unlock or ✓ Test build relieves ambiguity.
  • Pair too confident?⏱ Time pressure or ✎ Requirement change punctures the assumption that they're close to done.
  • Pair gone silent?📖 Reveal briefs unblocks them — but you're trading away the lesson, so save it for the last few minutes.

Debrief prompts

The game ends; the workshop begins. Try these in order:

  1. “What was your brief?” — read them out loud. The revelation is half the lesson.
  2. “When did you realise the brief was getting in the way?”
  3. “What did you stop asking each other?” — the silences are the data.
  4. “Which of these constraints actually exist on your team today?” — the hardest question; sit with it.

Variations to try

  • Cross-functional pairs.Pair an engineer with a designer; use the “In the third person” brief to surface how each role frames problems.
  • Same-discipline pairs.Pair two engineers; use the “Three words or fewer” brief to surface how much shared context they really lean on.
  • Big group, multiple rounds. Run round 1 at complexity 3 with briefs off; let everyone get the rules. Round 2 with briefs on. Round 3 with one accelerant per pair.