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

ative was a story about an archaeologist, who finds a piece of ancient pottery
and then has a task to create a digital three-dimensional replica of it. The
participants were asked to take the role of the archaeologist and envision a
way they would reach the goal. According to Diaz-Kommonen et al. (ibid.),
performance, supported by the script given in the beginning, forced the participants
to take different standpoints. In this case, the unfamiliar roles didn’t
prevent the participants from creating interesting future visions.
This example shows how drama-inspired co-design mixes reality and
fiction in order to produce novel solutions. To improve role-taking, Seland
(2009) proposes paying attention to psychologist Yardley-Matwiejczuk’s
(1997) framework for role-play in which the central principles are
particularization, presencing and personalization. According to Seland,
particularization means defining and explicating all objects in the roleplay,
so that if a prop is used in the play, all those involved would know
the meaning for what it is used for. However, my experiences speak to the
contrary. As I discussed in relation to “Co-design as embodied practice”,
when props are utilised in idea generation instead of, for example, evaluation,
they may not have predefined meaning – they gain the meaning in
action. This happened, for instance, when the meaning of the mood board
was attached to postcards, and later when the same postcards were used
as material sample in the design dialogue between the participants.
I do agree that new meanings given to the props during the enactment
need to be explicated either verbally or through action, so that every participant
becomes aware of them. For example in the situation mentioned
above, the new meaning attached to postcards is clarified to the design
partner by saying: “this is not different pictures; this is the mood board
now” (Vaajakallio 2009). Brandt (2006) has noticed in design games that
ambiguous and open-ended props, game pieces and the game board force
the players to be explicit in describing how they understand and interpret
them. In co-design, this openness may be considered as strength of
the method, since discussion about differing interpretations is part of the
building of a common language. I will return to this topic in the section
focusing on tangible props.
According to Seland (2009, p 917), presencing means emphasizing the
present time when guiding the participants to create the scene, for example,
by saying “this is a waiting room, and you are waiting for the physician”
instead of saying “imagine that this is the waiting room, and act as
if you are waiting for the physician”. Personalization is used to improve
participants’ engagement by letting them to construct and introduce particularized
objects into the play (ibid.).
In the Situated Make Tools study users’ everyday situations and practices
worked as the base for scenarios. The users were the experts and
were able to give important insights for concept design (Vaajakallio &
Mattelmäki 2007). Particularization, presencing and personalization, as
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