Design games as a tool, a mindset and a structure Kirsikka Vaajakallio

addition, the stories described situations and incidents where alternative
ways of acting could be introduced by OPK, for example by taking a more
proactive stance when considering people’s changing needs over time.
Since the core team from OPK and Palmu took part in the co-design
gathering, mutual learning was immediate. Stories and ideas were written
down after the session to enable their recall later on. One concern
stated by the designers from Palmu was the way the OPK development
team members seemed to take the user insights as truth without a need
for interpretation about what provoked those stories and consideration
over how they could – or should – be incorporated to the future services.
Strong commitment and emotional responses are often seen as the
strength of face-to-face meetings with users. However, for those to
whom user-centred design is new, the complexity of user studies and
their meaning beyond factual information may be confusing or unclear.
As has been pointed out, the design games discussed in this dissertation
build on the idea of user data as fragmented glimpses of the users’ world
that needs to be reconstructed into new representations, to make sense
of it in a particular context and design process. Even if indirect and direct
user involvement is used to bring in the users’ perspectives, they are
not the whole truth to be followed without questioning. The stance taken
by the OPK development team and the designers from Palmu may have
resulted from shortcomings in explaining the meanings of user insights
gained through such an innovative method. Hence, I propose that in further
studies more attention should be given to explaining the attitude and
aims embedded in particular design games.
The third case study was shorter than the two previous ones: the active
collaboration lasted only a couple of weeks. That indicates that there are
opportunities for utilizing co-design gatherings as source of inspiration
and information also in short-term projects. The main partner was Palmu
Inc., the same design consultancy that was working for OPK in our previous
case study. Palmu Inc. is “a service design agency which creates innovate
new services and improves the current ones.” (Palmu Inc. web pages
14.09.2010). 17
Being the last of the three cases, the focus for the actual case was left
open in the beginning of the Extreme Design project. The idea was to let
the knowledge from the previous cases influence its direction. This resulted
also from the fact that Palmu did not know their clients and their needs
when the Extreme Design project began. At the start of the case study,
Palmu had a project in progress with Itella, a company that delivers mail
4.3.3
Case
Palmu:
Exploring
social
media
as
source
of
novel
design
openings
17 Palmu Inc. was established in the beginning of 2009. www.palmuinc.fi
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