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

The purpose of role-immersion, for example through role characters, is
to evoke personal discoveries that can be used in guiding design. When
role-play and personal interests are partly separated in the design game,
participants need to consciously reflect on their own values and experiences
in relation to a particular character’s point of view. In the structure’s
point of view, design games engage everyone in the situation by
transforming participants from mere partakers into sourcers, producers
and performers alike. Participants need to take an active stance and
make statements about the world within the boundaries of the rules and
context of the game. Thus, besides the materials, the roles given by the
design game can be one of the strategies for the facilitator to support
creative collaboration.
Because design games are a combination of agenda, instrument and
competence, organizing co-design through them demands skills both in
design and facilitation. For example, although rules are designed to help
one proceed in a prearranged way, there might be a need to reinterpret
them on the fly, which demands experience from the facilitator. Ehn and
Sjögren (1991, pp 262–263) have described sensitivity to the evolving situation
in the following way: “… we have become more experienced [facilitating
the game] and are better able to improve and change a game as we play.
We have learned to be more supportive of and instructive to the participants,
while knowing when to stop interactions that are not clearly focused, and to
skip parts of the game when appropriate, and to adopt to the situation.”
In other words, besides designing the design games, competence becomes
fundamental in facilitating co-design. Unlike in many traditional
user study methods, in co-design the facilitator often also needs to give it
his/her all instead of, for example, remaining an observer. Consequently,
co-design involves emotional risk both for the facilitator and the participants
alike, similarly with drama workshops, where participants need
courage to enter into the centre and onto the stage if they want to belong
to the group (Johnston 1998/2005, pp 24–52). Although in co-design the
stage may not be physical, it is rather an ideal or a mental stage, one upon
which participants may hesitate, especially in the beginning.
Especially if the design games invite participants to role-play, it may
be a good idea to allow evolving roles from sourcer to producer to performer
and back to producer. Being a producer is needed as the last role
for reflecting on the experiences gained from performing in order to relate
it to the design. Thus, participants do not need to enter into the centre
and onto the stage before they are mentally tuned-in and more ready
for it. It is also not a great failure if someone stays most of the time as
a partaker as long as s/he momentarily takes other roles as well. Being
sensitive to different participants and their aptitude to dynamically alter
between roles are part of the facilitator’s competences, competences that
can only be learned over time.
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