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

action in the Character Game, a special set of material including photos,
quotes from the seniors’ interviews, and character templates was created
to support role-immersion. Especially the weekly timetable and the first
given example set the stage and overall frames for the scenarios and performances
developed during the game.
In the Storytelling Game, on the other hand, the predesigned game
materials were minimized into a white paper with a line drawn to illustrate
the timeline of a customer journey and few images as reminders of
possible service channels. This resulted from the direct user involvement,
as the users who we were interested in were also players; hence the game
was designed to invite them to bring in contextual understanding and
user insights. Initially, when playing the Storytelling Game for the first
time, we had additional design game material to support conversation
and to illustrate events in the story based on our previous experiences.
Providing visual stimulus resulted also from my understanding of design
games at that moment; I thought visual predesigned game material as
“obligatory” for a successful gathering. The material consisted of so-called
service evidence, i.e. marketing brochures, contract forms, and symbols
that illustrate multiple channels, such as mobile phone, computer, office
and letter, related to the banking services. However, in relation to co-constructing
a storyline, they didn’t generate discussion or affect the story and
were not perceived as useful by the participants or by the facilitators.
Accordingly, almost all extra material was dropped from the subsequent
Storytelling Games. Few images were introduced in the game.
These were focused on service opportunities within social media, to illustrate
its various forms, since the context is fairly new and not every participant
would necessarily be familiar or remember all the alternatives
without having been introduced to them in visual terms. As a conclusion,
the game material is not necessary even though helpful in stimulating experiences
and collectively developing future scenarios grounded on participants’
past memories, current perceptions and future dreams. Other
strategies, such as giving boundaries through fixed elements (Johnston
1998/2005) can be used instead.
However, as discussed above, some sort of visual references are relevant:
if not stimulating reactions as in most design games, then illustrating
the progress of a storyline. Therefore, to move from pure verbal means towards
more tangible evidence of the events in the story, the propositions
made by the players during the Storytelling Game were materialized by
the facilitator, who wrote them down to post-it notes and placed them on
the timeline. Compared to the scenario building in the Character Game,
this way every participant contributed material, “building blocks”, for the
common storyline, instead of creating scenarios in turns.
Based on these experiences, I claim that the design game materials are
relevant in co-design gatherings besides being a shared focus of attention
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