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

framework, this theoretical background is transformed into two main
parts with three separate but intertwined components, depending on
how the design games appear to the different people experiencing them.
The design part of the term indicates the practical application context,
whereas the game part refers to a set of play-qualities entailed in most
types of play, games and theatrical performances, which I have found
very useful to embed in design games as well. Based on these two main
parts, and the roles that people have in the design process, they experience
design games differently:
1
2
3
For the product or service designer, design games are a tool for
addressing the three needs of co-design: organising dialogue, supporting
empathic understanding and gaining several contributions
in order to identify, frame and solve design problems.
For the players, design games appear as a mindset that creates an
experience of being in a special game world, a magic circle, which
is a physical and ideal playground with a special ordering of time,
roles and rules that are not bound by the laws of ordinary life.
For the design game designer, design games are a structure with
tangible design game materials, explicit rules or fixed elements,
and performance roles that can be manipulated depending on contextual
needs.
This is a simplified categorization and the amount and type of play-qualities
can be manipulated and stressed according to the particular need
of co-design, such as gaining an empathic understanding through roleplaying.
In other words, not every design game needs to employ all the
play-qualities, but instead they can be adopted according to particular
needs. Thus, game designers need to be sensitive to what works for whom
and where as proposed by Johansson (2005). Since many important decisions
are made during the design phase, I see design game design as part
of co-design. Therefore, unlike the previous literature on design games,
I propose opening up designing the design game to core team members
other than just researchers, for instance to the key partners.
Richard Schechner (2006, p 93) proposes seven interrelated ways
of approaching play and playing as “a strategy for organising the inquiry
into play” which may be utilised with caution in designing co-design:
1) structure (What are the relationships among the events constituting
a play act?); 2) process (How do the strategies of play change when the
game progresses?); 3) experience (What are the feelings and moods of the
players and the observers, and how do these affect playing?); 4) function
(What purposes the play acts serve, and how do they affect individual and
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