Awkward Moment at Work

2014
board game
published by Resonym

The Story | Game Play | Research

The Story

We’ve all been there. Embarrassing slips of the tongue, wardrobe malfunctions, secret (and not-so-secret) workplace romances, accidental emails, bathroom mishaps, copy room shenanigans. Awkward Moment at Work is the party game that helps you play out those all-too-familiar moments — and show them who’s boss!

Game Play

Each turn, players try to impress “the Decider” by submitting the best reaction to the awkward moment from their hands of cards.

Awkward Moment at Work is the adult version of our award-winning card game Awkward Moment. While the game’s awkward workplace situations may be unfamiliar to kids and teens, the game is family friendly (contains nothing you wouldn’t see in a PG-13 movie).

Research

Awkward Moment at Work was developed as part of a National Science Foundation-funded project called “Transforming Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) For Women and Girls: Reworking Stereotypes & Bias.” The grant has allowed Tiltfactor, with additional assistance from the National Girls Collaborative Project, to research and create a number of games, with designs informed by psychological theory and research, aimed at reducing gender bias and broadening participation in STEM. Research on Awkward Moment at Work suggests that the game has the greatest impact on players’ motivation to acknowledge and overcome bias when it “intermixes” bias-related and neutral moments, but arouses psychological resistance (and thus has the least efficacy) when it presents an imbalanced majority of bias-related moments.