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

ole characters, Oskari, has fallen down and has been taken to the
hospital. Now, the Player who in turn continues next scenario after
that says: “It has been some time now [...]. While Oskari was in
the hospital, the other residents of the senior house Many Ages have
woken up to the accessibility issues and it has become the best senior
house in Finland. We meet in the corridor, as usual. I [Oskari] will be
there for the first time [after the accident and being in the hospital]
and you will start to introduce all of these great future visions, and
you will speak very highly of them.” (Character Game with KONE,
March 2009, translated from Finnish)
In the above example the symbolic time was employed in two ways: Firstly,
the participants were guided to think ahead three years from now to
give room for re-imagining happenings and technologies but avoiding extremely
futuristic ideas. Also, the scenario building was supported by the
weekly timetables, which presented organised happenings in the senior
house on a weekly base. Secondly, the participants started to follow these
strategies while they were developing the scenarios, as the second script
above illustrates; the first line “it has been some time now” indicates the
leap in time compared to the previous scenarios already played out in the
game. This leap even further into the future justifies the proposition that
“great future visions” have taken place in the senior house, and at the same
time, activates the other group members to think about what those visions
could be, when the player states “you start to introduce these”.
According to Schechner (1988/2003, p 105), “... performances are means
of continually testing the boundaries between play and ‘for real’. [...] ‘Play
frame’ – which most observers note in both human and animal play are signals
that the behaviour taking place within the brackets is ‘only play’”. With
regard to co-design gatherings, it is not only to show the others present
that one is just playing, but, by recognizing it, the player her/himself may
become more open-minded to new things, to tolerate “foolish” behaviour
and to utilise all the creative potential within him/herself (Johnston’s
1998/2005, p 43). In addition, using symbolic time supports envisioning
other realms outside the actual meeting room where the play takes place.
Halse (2008, p 78) has pointed out about envisioning the future that
the “images are evoked that could represent the future. […] It is still a vision,
but through concrete enactment it attains very real properties; if skilfully
performed, it can be experienced through all the senses”. Designers are educated
to imagine non-existing – moving between realities and possibilities
− but when a co-design gathering involves everyday or ordinary people, to
use Sanders’ terms (2001), there is a need to understand the establishment
of time as a “release from the familiar”, as proposed by Halse (2008, p 77).
All the design games developed during the Extreme Design project rehearsed
setting the performances in game realities. The first, the Project
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