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

Sensitising in empathic design often goes beyond the co-design event,
covering a longer time span. As proposed by Sleeswijk Visser (2009;
Kouprie & Sleeswijk Visser 2009), reaching the state of feeling empathy
towards others’ experience is a process of discovery, immersion,
connection and detachment. To simplify, these phases are: entering to
the user’s world, taking the user’s point of reference, resonating with
users through one’s own experiences, and design with the user perspective
in mind (Sleeswijk Visser 2009, p 192). Based on this model,
to reach empathic understanding needs time in two ways: firstly, those
people that are invited to become short-term design partners may need
to be tuned-in to the topic and to become sensitive towards their own
experiences and wishes in regard to that; secondly, empathy towards
users needs time and effort from the researchers and designers, who
should go through the four steps presented above.
For the first purpose, a co-design gathering may precede the tuningin
activities, for example in the form of a sensitizing package, similar to
probes, that is given to the co-design partners approximately a week before
the gathering (Sleeswijk Visser et al. 2005). We utilized a similar approach,
for instance in the “Co-designing University”, where the participants
were given a pre-task so that they would be better prepared when
entering the co-design. The pre-task was a package of images of widely
known characters also utilised in the Value Game (see Figure 7 in page 37).
The task was to “envision the values and spirit of Design Factory through
the provided characters and persons. Who could be the ancestor of Design
Factory: the one whose values guide new family members in their practices,
create spirits for it, and whose genes the new family members share? (You
do not have to stick with the characters provided; you can also bring new
members to the family). Be prepared to briefly introduce your choice for others
in the first workshop.” Most participants came to the session prepared
and ready to present the ancestor that illustrated the desired values for
Design Factory.
Actually, in many cases co-design gatherings precede several meetings
between researchers and users. There are various actions, from
probes to interviews and observations, that all, in their part, tune the codesigners
in the right mood and help them to become aware of personal
wishes and perceptions. Sometimes, co-design events can be considered
as a “backbone” of joint research efforts in the stream of collaborative
inquiry (Binder & Brandt 2008). Related to that notion, Binder (2010, p
19) has stated: “Instead of seeing the individual workshop as just one among
several ways to conduct design research, we began to see the entire innovation
process as structured by a series of workshops.”
Binder’s (ibid.) notion turns our attention to the whole design process
in relation to one-off co-design gatherings as “event-driven process”
(Brandt 2001), where the iterative development process culminates into
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