HOW?  Identify the stakeholders involved in the design problem and assign those roles to members of the team.

WHY?  By enacting the activities within a real or imagined context the team can trigger empathy for actual users and raise other relevant issues.

(e.g.  Designing a medical device the IDEO team role-played a situation involving a doctor, a nurse, a patient, and an anaesthetist to simulate the interdependent tasks demanded of the operating room staff.)