Multiple Realities | Mixed Perspectives: Neighborhood Exchange by architekturinformatik

Exchange NBH Begüm SARAL Chair of Architectural Informatics Technical University of Munich

2 Exchange NBH Chair of Architectural Informatics Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Petzold Multiple Realities | Mixed Perspectives Sarah Jenney, Ivan Bratoev, Nick Förster Begüm 03685246SARAL

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EveryIntroductiondaywefacesmallissuesinanurban

The mobile game “Exchange NBH” is created to exactly focus on this collaboration problem and communal empathy, while creating a platform to find ideas and proposals for day to day urban issues.

context. These issues may seem big or small, making us wonder if they are significant enough that anyone else would care. At this point, ‘Stadt-Bezirk’s come into the picture, these smaller city district governances concern themselves with the small community problems. While bringing these urban queries into the district councils is very effective, lack of selfreflectance and empathy might result in the safe-guarding only individual privileges and arise issues within the community. Under these circumstances, discussing urban issues in the community within new rules to collectively find solutions by compromising from individual preferences can help the empathy in between and bring the community together. And what else can create better empathy than roleplaying as your fellow community members?

To understand the definition of the “gamification”, we should also understand the difference between the game (Ludus) and play (Paidia). An interesting point here is that these are two different words in English, while in German it’s a single word: Spielen. Playing is a broader and looser category connected to experimenting and creating innovative solutions, while gaming strives towards goals, supported by rule systems and competition. An important step for a successful design is to implement these concepts in a game in a balanced and purposeful way.

WeResearchhavestartedourresearch with the concept of gamification and its implementation in urban contexts. The term “gamification” is a new term that came into discussion in the last decade. While there are still discussions going on about the exact definition, the definition by Deterding is generally accepted: „use of game design elements characteristic for games in non-game contexts to motivate and increase user activity and retention”. Our purpose for this project was similar: using game design elements in an urban context to initiate urban participation and democracy. Turning collective reflection and civic learning into a fun activity that people engage in for the sake of urban engagement itself but not the sole objective of safeguarding individual privileges. This idea of a collective civic engagement has opened up many ideas about discussion and urban democracy for myself in the future design of my game.

7 “Gamification” between game and play, whole and parts (Deterding et al., 2013)

Mechanics - Design - Aesthetics (MDA) is one of the important frameworks for game design. A designer would have direct control over the mechanics of the game, which are the direct rules. These mechanics generate dynamics by working together. Dynamics are the run time behaviour of the game, generating the aesthetics, which is the experience of the player. Therefore, there is only indirect control of the player‘s experience by the designer. I have tried to hold this concept of „secondorder design“ in mind throughout the design of my game.

Other perspectives to define gamification also exists through various descriptive frameworks. Especially from a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Interface (UX) perspective, many methods have been recently developed. While UX tests focus on identifying issues related to usability, ergonomics, cognitive load, and affective experiences, gamification is concerned with understanding and fostering the user’s motivation to use a product, system, or service. Thus, gamification methods rely on motivational psychology research, such as self-determination theory (SDT), to understand human motivation. While some of these frameworks like MDA are designed for games in general, there are some frameworks such as HEXAD and Gameful Design Heuristics that aim to describe gamification through user experience interfaces and types. These frameworks allow a good evaluation set up for gamified designs to improvise people’s lives. I believe this research was also quite helpful to understand user behaviour and game structures, while gamifying non-game related concepts such as urban participation.

One point that is very important to add into the description of gamification, however, is the core incentive. As mentioned by many scholars, a gamified app should improve a section of the player’s lives as a core motivation to keep them engaged. If the designer fails to do so, the player who had an intrinsic motivation for the act before might lose the overall interest, and the design has an adverse effect on the user. Therefore, developing a meaningful game design is important for all parties. Hollow and nonchalant use of gamification has led to its criticism as only a digital marketing tool. This has led to some authors to prefer the use of the term “gameful design” instead of “gamification” to avoid the negative annotation detached to it. I have kept this question in mind during the project development to avoid such complications by a well-structured design as a developer.

on this general idea, I have created a game that community members can join the discussion of an urban issue behind the faces of different roles related to this issue. Community members can report issues that they face and submit their role related to these issues. These issues can range from reckless biking to empty plots in the town. Later on, roles will be exchanged, and players can discuss the issue over mobile chatting from the perspective of another roleplayer. Overall, at the end of the discussion, a solution is found collectively. This is repeated for all sorts of urban issues.

AsIdeationweknow,oneofthemain

This was the initial core idea behind the mobile game „Exchange NBH“. Of course, over with the concept phase, a better-detailed game structure was established to control player behaviour and implement participation in its best shape.

paths that go to urban democracy and participation is the discussion among community members. However, a discussion might not always be collaborative, as many of the collaborators may show a tendency to give priority to their individual virtues. Therefore, empathy might be missing from some sides, and the discussion can fall into a unilateral position. In these community discussions, understanding each other is, hence, essential. I believe, at this point, roleplaying might rise to the occasion. Positive or negative, trying to put yourself into someone else‘s shoes and defending oneself in the context of discussion may result in a mutual understanding and the production of creative and unprecedented Basedideas.

In the first storyboard for Exchange NBH, how urban issues are submitted by community members and discussed after the roles related to the topic are exchanged is told from the perspective of a young community member.

One of these ways is players caring for the outcome of the game. This has been established in the game by earning participation points by winning proposals, contributing to tasks, or earning votes. By earning more points, a player is encouraged to participate even further, and have more options while choosing tasks and roles to play or moderate. This function keeps the focus of the game inside while creating encouragement and accomplishment. Another point is the tension between individual utility vs. team utility. In our case, while trying to come up with a proposal that will earn you points and roleplaying coherently are individual profits, selecting a good session proposal will return higher benefit in the later phases of the game. This creates a tension of behaviour for the players, that can lead to more creative ways of interaction. Another way of pushing more creative communication is to restrict some types of communication while supporting others to change the nature of the game. Also, bestowing different abilities and responsibilities upon the players. I believe, implementing these functions has changed the orientation of the game drastically. Before a more complicated chat function, the communication was a simple chat between the players that did not initiate a discussion very well.

This idea of a new form of community discussion through roleplaying has directed me to emergent social games, including social deduction games. Social deduction games are a sub-genre of roleplaying games, where a balance between roleplaying and an aim is established in various ways. I have also tried to implement these ways in our game design to create a balanced roleplay.

NBH” is relying on the contribution of community members in discussing urban tasks and issues submitted by their district Bezirks. However, this sort of communication has to be conceptualized and controlled to be effective. Otherwise, it can fall into a dead-end standard discussion without any restrictions or management.

TheConceptmobilegame“Exchange

ROLE 2 ROLE 1 ROLE 3 ROLE 4 ROLE 5 PROPOSAL 1A PROPOSAL 1B INTERACTIVE MAP Break Chat 1 Break Chat 2 ROLE 1 PROPOSAL 1A chose RRQ Q RQ RRQ Q 1st TOPIC

In order to implement these functions, the concept has partially changed. The chat discussion has been divided into two, furthering the communication restrictions. The proposers in the break chats are not aware of what is going on in the other break chat, while both coming up with their respective proposals. This creates a mystery and competition between two chats and initiates creativeness. Furthermore, during the five discussion days, every combination of roles meets in break chats, allowing collaboration and competition at the same time between the players. Also, different responsibilities are bestowed upon players through the different functions between the counter roleplayer and the proposer roleplayers. While in one discussion, players have different responsibilities, they get to experience all of them within different Onediscussions.otherpoint that we can discuss is the time table. Each discussion is live between players, therefore everyone must be there at the same time. Both to elaborate a fastthinking session and not to bore the players, the discussion time limit is held at 15 minutes. Also, a player can decide to play in only a few discussions, or all of them throughout the session, which is sorted out by the pointing system.

Maxvorstadt, however, the application is expandable to all districts in any city. The game consists of three phases: make, play, and vote; each realized with the contribution of community members. Each phase lasts for about a month for one urban task, totalling three months, while different urban tasks run in different phases simultaneously. This allows continuous gameplay, while always staying up-to-date.

Each month one urban task is submitted from the Bezirk and gets ready to be played through the „make“ phase with the contribution of the community. After a month, when the task is ready to be played, it enters the „play“ phase. During this phase, many play sessions are played by different players. One play session consists of five topic discussions, and a final round. Through the play session, players come up with proposals each day while roleplaying and bonding through roles, and eventually select one proposal to be the winner of the session in the final round. Final proposals from multiple sessions go to a pool to be voted by a greater audience in the „vote“ phase. At the end of all, the urban proposal, that is collectively achieved from the urban task, goes back to the Bezirk, establishing a think-tank program.

ThePrototypingprototypeisbasedonthecitydistrict

But what is an urban task, discussion topic, role, or urban proposal? The urban task is an urban issue from daily life or an open urban question to collect ideas. The urban task is what is discussed in a Bezirk council, a question for the community and the governors. Discussion topics, on the other hand, are specific points to be discussed about this urban task. These are submitted by the community members during the „make“ phase, and gets discussed during the topic discussions one by one. During the „make“ phase, a role related to each topic is submitted as well. This role must be related firmly to the topic, so that the topic discussed will be in relevance. Each urban task ends up having 5 topics and 5 related roles to it. 5 urban proposals come out from each of the 5 discussion topics and get voted out in the final round. These terms play an important role in the system of the game.

Make - Play - Vote are the main three phases for the collaborative development of a proposal. In „play“ phase, there are 5 topic discussions with roles finding proposals in break chats.

Final Implementation

The „make“ phase starts with the assignment of an urban task by the Bezirk. Community members contribute by submitting discussion topics and roles. Open questions for these roles are also submitted by the players for a better roleplay. With each submission the player earns participation points, and badges for good submissions. Later, these submissions are reviewed by the moderator team and the Bezirk members leading up to the „play” phase.

The „play” phase consists of many play sessions during a month. Each session lasts for a week and consists of five topic discussions and a final round, resulting in a final proposal. After choosing a session to play in, the player waits for the first topic discussion’s time that all the five players are in and ready to chat. Each player gets assigned a role, one of them being related to the topic of the day. This role is the ‚counter‘ and actively chats in two break-chats while defending itself and giving ideas. Rest of the four role-players are divided into two break-chats and discuss for 15 minutes while trying to come up with a proposal coherent with their roles. Before the chat starts, each role-player is also asked to answer the questions related to their roles that were submitted in the „make“ phase, for a better understanding of their role. At the end of the chat, the counter role-player chooses one of the proposals as the winner of the topic discussion. The players rate each other regarding their coherence with their role. These result in the addition and submission of pp‘s. Discussions repeat four other times, collecting in a total of 5 proposals at the end of the session. On the final round, every counter role-player defends their proposal from before and votes for another one. Eventually, the proposal with most votes comes out of session as the winner.

Each community member owns an account, as well as participation points and badges. One earns pp‘s by contributing in the „make” phase, making proposals in the „play” phase, and earning votes in the „vote” phase, and spends them by participating in the play sessions or by being in a moderator team.

In the very final „vote” phase, the general audience votes from the pool of proposals from various play sessions. Finally, one proposal bears the bell, and it goes back to the Bezirk, completing the circle of the thinkOntank.the side, you can see the main menu for a typical player. The main menu shows the 3D map of the city district for the application. For each of the urban tasks related to a location, the map will zoom in when selected. Map also shows the street names, city squares, metro stations, and important landmarks for a better understanding of urban tasks. On the main menu, you can see the account for the community members right above. Below there is „contribute urban task“ for contributing with topics, roles, and questions for the „make“ phase. Below the map, there is the ever-changing „choose a session“ button, which is to choose a session, play discussion topics, and attend the final round for the „play“ phase. On its right, there is the „vote proposal“ button for the proposals at the final phase. With all these functions set up, we are ready to play!

Under the „Contribute Urban Task“ button lies the „make“ phase. Player can contribute with topics, roles, or questions to earn pp‘s. Participation points are spent by the player by choosing urban tasks to play and setting dates and roles as desired.

Players discuss under their roles in the chat for 15 minutes while coming up for proposals for the topic.

The chosen urban task and the roles that will be discussing the urban topic are shown before the discussion starts.

The counter roleplayer chooses one of the proposals that are submitted by two break chats as the winner of the topic. Players rate each other according to the coherence between their roleplay and proposals. This effects the pointing system drastically.

After all of the 5 topic discussions, 5 proposals that came out of them are voted in between the players, and one is chosen to be the winner of the session. After many sessions are played, the end results go to a pool to be reviewed by a general audience in the „vote“ phase.

MyDiscussionprojecthasstartedwiththeidea of how we can use roleplaying for creating empathy and more efficient discussions in an urban context. This has guided me to a detailly structured game that is based on social interaction and discussion. I wanted to create a game without direct rules, but rather rules that naturally get implemented through the flow of the game. I believe, while I sometimes succeeded with that aim, sometimes I have failed to accomplish it. One of the main challenges was to implement the roleplaying into the proposal makings. While in theory, it worked perfectly, there was always the risk of players not taking the roleplaying seriously. Or they could prefer to roleplay over coming up with proposals that make sense. This is still a question to be discovered during the testing phase. However, at this point, some of the functions of the game is trying to prevent this indirectly. For instance, a roleplayer might decide to ignore their role and make proposals according to their preferences. Even if their proposal wins the discussion, the other players will rate their roleplaying low, since their proposal is not coherent with their role, and they will not receive any pp‘s. Another behaviour of the player might be taking their role seriously, while not coming up with creative proposals. This will result in having a few points from roleplaying, however since their proposal will be chosen out from neither the discussion, nor session, nor the voting phase, they won‘t be earning a lot of points. Eventually, the algorithm of the game will eliminate the bad players indirectly through the pointing system.

Surely, still many points about this application are open to debate. Not many users may start to play right in the beginning, therefore may be an approach to develop the game through time would be wiser. Nevertheless, this sort of a social behaviour game in urban participation might be thought-provoking to research upon in the future.

Another discussion topic for the Exchange NBH is its contribution to urban democracy. While we theorize that this sort of application will help the inclusion of groups that were not participating in the urban issues before, there is also the risk of excluding others. Since the number of people using the application cannot be controlled, it is wiser to see this game as an advisory tool for the district council discussions. Hence, the fact that only one proposal getting selected at the final vote phase can be contradictory with this idea. In order to prevent such a situation, I believe the best will be to send all the proposals in the pool of the „vote“ phase to the Bezirk with their popularity rankings. This will give the Bezirks more honest idea about the thoughts of the community members.

IOutlookbelieve,throughtheprototyping

of this game, I got the chance to show the concept, the initialization, and the interface of the application very well. However, Exchange NBH is definitely a social game, hence its effectiveness will be measured through testing with active players. This will help us understand the social effects on the players, as well as its performance in collectively developing ideas. Through this testing, we can observe the behavioural patterns, and adapt the rules for a better roleplaying experience, and collective thinking. In order to realize the project for the testing phase, there are still multiple things to do. While previously there was an attempt for a server-client system for the chat feature, it could not be completely implemented due to its complicated nature. In this case, the next step should be implementing the chat properly, and arranging the background system to match this function. I believe as these features are implemented, the basic play session, as exhibited in the prototype, can be tested with real players and can be improved through feedback.

After a testing period for the play session, Exchange NBH can be discussed to actually implement into district governance. This could allow us to see if a roleplaying think-tank game can actually function with a larger audience. I hope this sort of experimentation with gamification of social roles and collective thinking can open debate regarding different forms of social interaction and urban democracy.

Civic engagement in urban issues, questions, and tasks on your mobile phone.

26 Contact Begüm Master03685246SARALofArts, 2nd Semester