urbAn gaming tooL kit Redesigning the design process for more creative output (for participants and designers)
The Urban Gaming Toolkit amplifies collaborative design through the creation of games. This toolkit is intended for designers wanting to make a codesign process focused on finding novel opportunities with stakeholders in difficult situations. Engaging through play can generate the unexpected outcomes needed for stalemate conditions.
You have a problem that you cannot just ‘fix’. Where does design come in? Embracing codesign means recognising that architectural and urban issues cannot be solved by individual designers operating in isolation. Cities are complex, involving an overwhelming number of conflicts and unknowns. Rather than ‘fixing’ a problem, designers can help create the productive spaces which support the social activities needed for change. The Urban Gaming Toolkit explores the use of games as collaborative artefacts designers can situate in codesign activities. The toolkit will help you design ‘productive lab space’, letting designers and participants move away from existing conceptions around a problem to creating something new.
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How can design move me away from existing assumptions? Traditional design techniques such as architectural renders are representational, meaning designers produce a description of traits already known. Games, on the other hand, are based on an alternative structure known as simulation. Simulations allow designers and stakeholders to interact with a dynamic system. By making productive lab spaces with games, problems can be constructed in a way that lets both stakeholders and designers explore and test. Well-designed games move stakeholders away from being passive participants in a design process to active players. Outcomes resulting from the creation of active players may be the production of knowledge or ideas; a reduction of ignorance; or collaboration between previously hostile stakeholders.
How should this toolkit be used? How can designers design the unknown? This toolkit will help you. The Urban Gaming Toolkit will give you strategies for three phases of a workshop: activating, levelling and then need generation. You’ll have to consider the experiences, values and emotions stakeholders will be bringing to the workshop. How can games be made immersive so stakeholders can experience the new perspectives you are showing them, yet still be flexible to encourage players to contribute things themselves? Though you design the artefacts creating a simulation, the experiences participants gain; and the output these artefacts make; are unknown. How will your design process respond effectively to the novel experiences generated from your games? This metagame must also be designed. You’ll need to select your sites; physical (where will the workshop be held?) virtual (what simulations will I create?) and hybrid (what artefacts do I need to design?). You’ll want to record the ‘output’ your lab produces. This output is not made once at the end but rather actively created throughout the workshop. You’ll need effective data generation methods so you can capture this output for future use.
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What the Urban Gaming Toolkit won't do Don’t expect your workshop participants to come up with immediately implementable ideas through your design games – that’s not their job.
Instead, the Urban Gaming Toolkit creates spaces where you can generate unexpected outcomes, challenging both you and stakeholders. This lets you design change in participants. It’s then up to you as a designer to use this change effectively.
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Challenges and omissions The Urban Gaming Toolkit is a prototype; a limited ‘taste’ of how urban gaming can be applied to the design process. The toolkit is to be expanded; modified and critiqued. Due to time constraints, the toolkit was developed through a limited amount of testing (primarily through one workshop event with stakeholders who mostly knew each other). Each time a workshop is run, knowledge is gained not just around the issue to be explored but about the urban gaming codesign process itself. Lessons learnt from running this workshop will be applied to future urban gaming labs; which then generate new strategies for the toolkit. Using games for more focused idea generation, and testing the processes on more diverse stakeholders are areas to be explored in future urban gaming workshops.
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set up
mind sets
Players, not participants An activated audience is critical for success. Research shows when people are ‘activated,’ they are likely to be bolder, sweep aside inhibitions, challenge the status quo and propose new ideas. Specifically, you want to create these mindsets in participants: Surprise Focus Legitimacy Reflection Competition
Unproductive attitudes: Interactive activities are powerful. However, specific design strategies should be implemented to avoid the following mindsets, which create less productive spaces: Intimidation Conflict Disinterest 15
sites
The physical
Where will I hold my workshop? All workshops occur in spaces. Most occur in rooms. When using design games, ensure spaces do more than just accommodate group activates. Run activities in places large enough to be divided into multiple areas; allow plenty of room to bleed activities into each other. This allows multiple activities to be run in parallel. You will use more space than you think. Physical space should facilitate your activities, not fight them. Adequate light and low background noise is crucial for better data capture. Consider comfort in participants: too hot a space and participants will quickly tire and disengage. Refreshments (pizza, beer, etc) are great bribes for concentration. Physical space can also be employed to reengage an audience. Use of multiple spaces, (eg moving rooms, inside and outside) can be an effective strategy to break up activities, giving participants a chance to engage in micro-discussions, reshuffle and refresh themselves.
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The Virtual
What games will I create? Electronic games enable participants to explore any site in the safety and comfort of a workshop setting. Sites where familiarity with the location is unevenly distributed across participants, or sites that are dangerous, or even difficult to access, all can easily be interrogated through games. Gameplay needs to be easily broken up so it is flexible for your activities and for participants. Multiple short periods of play are more suited for use in workshops than long unstructured play/s Many participants will be unfamiliar with games, making it even more important that virtual spaces are made approachable for all. They should not rely on gaming conventions that may be obvious to you, but unclear to a non-gamer. Menus, HUDs (heads up displays) and complex controls should be avoided. To ensure non-gaming participants can actively contribute to activities, have strategies available to assist these participants (Participatory Navigation, Self-Reporting). The interactivity of electronic games means as a designer, you have less control of your artefacts than in representational design. Trial games consistently on a diverse set of people. You will need a constant supply of test players who have never played your game to ensure the experience of playing for the first time (‘getting used to the game’) won’t be an unsurmountable barrier.
Hybrid
What artefacts do I need to design? Virtual sites work best when they are considered situated games in physical space. Participants do not ‘play’ your simulations directly. Rather, they interact with the tangible artefacts you design. Through artefacts, you design the conditions of play. Consider the physical experience of all games. Paper props are easily blown away, or mixed up and lost. Electronic props may intimidate participants.
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(Simulation)
sim UL AT ION
simulation type
All games are simulations. Simulation is a process of simplifying. A scenario is broken down into a designed set of rules and starting conditions that react to player ‘input’ to producing new things (output). By defining a scenario as a set of rules, participants approach a messy, complex problem through a clear, structured framework of a game. By playing the game, players can experimentally interact with a dynamic system to produce novel experiences. This means though a designer creates the conditions of a simulation, she only indirectly shapes a player’s experience of it. This indirect design is a useful tool for generating unexpected outcomes.
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Electronic simulations Electronic simulations are videogames. They are often high fidelity, and immersive, describing experiences much more explicitly than cardboard simulation. In the context of this toolkit, electronic simulations are best used when there is a need to explore a site in real-time, or when participant input needs an immediate response. For example, electronic simulations are useful in exploring problems arising through contrasting speeds different stakeholders navigate through an area.
EXAMPLE Performance Chunking Performance chunking is a simulation approach that breaks down a site into the series of tasks, or processes, that operate / are experienced in it. Consider a simulation of cycling. A designer can break down a scenario into the tasks needed to ride: movement, navigation, hazard avoidance, infrastructure detection. By playing the game, players can explore the impacts of these tasks. Performance chunking lets a designer draw attention to the relationships between objects, rather than just the physical objects themselves. Nested Performance Chunking also be used as a participatory technique itself – (see Participatory Navigation).
Cardboard computing Cardboard computing creates simulation out of physical props. Cardboard simulations can be effective strategies in their own right, rather than being considered mock-ups of future electronic simulations. Card games and board games all run through cardboard computing. Through ‘cardboard’ props, run-time conditions are created (a game’s rules), ‘input’ is processed (how someone plays the game) and ‘output’ generated (the consequences of a player’s action). For the purpose of this toolkit, all non-electronic games are considered ‘cardboard’. In urban gaming, mock interviews, roleplays etc often are augmented with card-based props. Cardboard simulation is less immersive than electronic (cards are a much more abstract representation than a videogame’s world) but are very quick to create and extend.
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EXAMPLE:Block Chunking Block chunking breaks a scenario down into a series of discrete concept ‘blocks’. These blocks can physically be made through paper cards for players to interact with (see Cards). There are two parts of a block: the element of the situation the block represents, as well as how it can influence other blocks. Continuing the example of cycling, blocks can create a simulation of riding. This framework would include a rider block (a character, for example, Mark), a setting block (a risky ride) and a series of moment blocks on the ride (images of experiences of cycling). Important in block chunking is ensuring concept blocks are interoperable with each other. This lets participants test out new combinations. Various blocks can create the starting conditions of the simulation (‘character’ and ‘ride scenario’ blocks) which players must satisfy with other blocks (a string of ‘moment blocks’ creating a ride meeting these conditions). Block chunking is an effective strategy for unifying a series of separate concepts into a framework where participants can combine them into something new. For example, cycling moments from separate physical locations can be made into personal ‘journeys’ that combine different cycling infrastructure in interesting/novel ways.
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simulation taxonomy
The following parameters define the conditions of your simulation. Optimising your games with these in mind will create conditions that have the most chance of producing useful results.
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Fidelity
How many defined rules are there in the simulation? This determines a game’s fidelity. While fidelity does not necessarily produce complexity (is chess less complex than Counterstrike?), higher fidelity simulations are usually required for more immersive experiences. Lower fidelity simulations abstract and simplify. The higher the fidelity of a simulation, the more effort its design requires, as the creation of many more rules is necessary.
Flexibility
How flexible are the ‘rules’ governing the game to participants at run-time? More rigid games have defined rules that cannot be changed by players. Rigid simulations generate responses mostly known by the designer, while flexible simulations are more open to player interpretation, and so generate a diverse range of potentially unforseen outcomes. Flexibility allows a simulation to be modified at run-time (when a game/simulation is ‘played’). This allows rules to be tweaked if the elements are found too difficult by participants. Rigid simulations cannot be modified, and so cannot be ‘updated’ as easily.
Immersion How much ‘computing’ does a simulation undertake for participants at run-time? Videogames are immersive simulations, where most of the experience of playing one is offloaded to the computer and so does not need to be considered by the player. In codesign games, this ‘offloading’ defines immersion, not how realistic a simulation is. Enacted scenarios are less immersive simulations; participants ‘generate’ runtime conditions themselves. Immersive simulations can be employed to explore complex environments, as the game takes care of much of the complexity for participants. This ‘offloading to the computer’ means immersive simulations are of a higher fidelity and are usually more rigid (rules being less discretionary by participants) unless explicitly designed as flexible (see sandbox games such as Minecraft). Immersive yet flexible simulations require large amounts of time to create as singular games (all the flexible conditions must be described in rules designed before the simulation is run) and are usually outside the scope of design games.
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Authority
Does the game’s design create an experience that empowers participants to challenge assumptions made in the simulation’s creation? An example of an authoritative simulation is traffic modelling, frequently used as evidence. Realism in games often conveys authority to participants. In codesign gaming, simulations should be authoritative enough to generate believable outcomes by participants, but still encourage critique and debate.
Responsiveness How responsive is a game to participant input? Immediate consequences to player interaction give participants a vested interest in paying close attention to the game. Responsiveness enables players to focus and run ideas through the rules of the game (simple, fun, achievable), while not being overwhelmed by the complexities and requirements of the real world. Where consequences in a simulation are too high, players may fear failure, and participant contribution is negatively impacted.
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(Methods)
me th OD S
activat ing
Methods for activivating a workshop audience An activated audience is imporant for any codesign activity. Research shows when people engage with an issue they become ‘activated’: becoming bolder, sweeping aside inhibitions, and challenging the status quo. Each game should have the higher goal of making a collaborative, engaged environment for discussion and idea generation.
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Glimpses
People are naturally cautious. In order for participants to productively engage in design games, they need to be warmed up. Your first activities should make participants feel comfortable in the space, readying them for more interesting (and perhaps radical, or confrontational) activities. One method you can use is ‘glimpses’: short, structured introductions to the virtual environments you’ll be using later on. This exposes participants to complexity without forcing them to interact with it. Warm up games can strategically introduce your interactive experience through traditional representational means (images from game, sounds used). Warm up games should have minimal barriers for participation.
EXAMPLE: IDENTIFICATION QUIZ If codesign games represent a real world place participants know, a quiz can be made from in-game screenshots that participants must identify. This establishes a link between the virtual world, real world and the workshop, and begins to create a common workshop frame.
Mock Interviews
Use mock interviews as a framework for stakeholders to get to know each other. Mock interviews establish a collaborative framework to be developed between participants from a diverse set of backgrounds. Divide workshop members into small groups and direct participants to ask specific questions about their partner. This gives participants a basis for beginning a conversation with their fellow workshop members.
Vested Interests as collective framing creates conditions for collaboration.
Scoring is an easy way to create vested interest. The workshop group can be scored as a collective, or as individuals. This shifts participant focus away from themselves, and towards the introductory activity, through good-natured collaboration and competition.
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level ling
Methods for leveling stakeholders through simulation Integrating stakeholders with varying backgrounds, values and competencies participatory processes can be difficult. Games can help.
Breaking down complexity
Simulation is an effective way to reduce ignorance in stakeholders. Games create a simplified version of reality readily approachable by participants. The interactive nature of simulation means participants can explore the interlinked elements of an issue through a structured framework. Simulations are ‘labs’ where participants can both understand parameters and see consequences at run time. Design issues that need a systems or ecology based approach (assemblages of many interlinked elements) are well suited for simulation.
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Feedback mechanisms Feedback mechanisms make Magic circles Artificial systems of cause and effect in games create a protective space for participants. Players can concentrate on the rules and consequences of the game, rather than focusing on (and becoming intimidated by) the issue in reality. This is known as the ‘magic circle’, a protective space where players are spared the physical consequences of their actions. By making magic circles, designers create safe spaces where participants can test out ideas without worrying about failure. This testing allows participants to engage in selfdiscovery, finding out new things themselves rather than passively being told. This personal learning is effective at challenging preconceived ideas in participants.
Collective framing Play creates collective framing. Through the creation of magic circles, play makes an issue non-serious and seem surmountable. Using play in codesign activities creates a shared frame of reference in participants. Stakeholders become players, only needing to learn the rules of the game to make active contribution (magic circles). Play creates a common language participants can use, letting stakeholders with different backgrounds, values and experiences work productively together.
Competition = Triangulation
Competition = TriangulationGames allow opposing stakeholders to engage with each other in a non-confrontational manner. Playful competition in workshop activities lets stakeholders interact with each other in a structured, safe framework. Participant focus can be drawn away from personal gripes with other stakeholders, to engaging with the rules of the game. Designing readily describable results (see Quantified Outcomes) make this play collaborative. Participants triangulate on comparing results of their play, rather than focusing directly on each other. 43
INCOM PLETE GAMING
Methods for Metagaming: creating participant needs through incomplete gaming: Metagaming is the codesign process a game is embedded in. Situating games in a responsive design process allows the novel experiences your games create to be made into a productive process of need generation. Needs aren’t simply ‘found’ by a designer. They must be actively imagined and created by stakeholders. Without a process of need creation, stakeholders may simply repeat characteristics of the environment they already know, rather than imagine new things.
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Games as assemblage Games as part of an assemblage of codesign A single perfect game does not have to achieve everything in a workshop. Instead, use fidelity to your advantage. Simulation can be made with varying degrees of fidelity. Aim to use a combination of low and high fidelity activities/artefacts to efficiently generate desired outcomes. High fidelity games have advantages in terms of the immersive and complex experiences they support. However, designing high fidelity games takes effort and technical skill. Low fidelity games are easy to create and are flexible. Rather than using games as discrete objects to be playtested, embed them in codesign activities. Consider games part of a ‘constellation’ of artefacts that augment each other. A lower fidelity cardboard computing game (refer Cardboard computing) can make participants aware of the breadth of experiences around an issue. A subsequent higher fidelity electronic game enables participants to explore a segment of it in detail. In further cardboard activities, participants can apply the knowledge they have gained to a broader range of areas.
Nesting Nesting games to create contingent, immersive experiences Nesting extends the concept of embedding game artefacts by ‘inserting’ one game (a high fidelity game, electronic) into another (a lower fidelity game, cardboard). Through nesting, designers and participants can insert new rules for play in the electronic game through a cardboard game. This allows an electronic game to be extended with minimal effort. For example, participants can be directed via instruction cards to play a videogame like a specific person, or with a certain attitude. The electronic game is then made more contingents. New rules can be inserted into the videogame, participant attention can be drawn to particular elements of simulation, all without modifying code. Through nesting, participants can even ‘mod’ the game itself (creating new conditions for play, etc).
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Participatory Navigation Use Participatory Navigation to collectively play a one player simulation Participatory Navigation nests a videogame (Game One) into a cardboard computing game (Game Two). The ‘player’, a participant more confident in gaming, plays a high fidelity simulation on a large screen. The rest of workshop participants spectate. This is Game One. Game One is then ‘nested’ into a card game, Game Two. Spectators each receive a ‘Brain’ card instructing them in a task they must do. Each task is an element of playing Game One: navigation, speed, setting risk level. The ‘player’ then must play Game One following the instructions of the group ‘Brain’ (Game Two). Participatory Navigation is effective strategy for exposing participants to more difficult simulations.
Metagaming through Playful simulation
Use playful simulation as a design method to generate informed debate A playful simulation exposes value judgements made in a game as non-natural (that is, decided by the designer) and fallible. Parameters often hidden from the player in the black box of a simulation are highlighted as artificial through exaggerated, nonrealistic representation. At the same time, these simulations still project the confidence needed for participants to explore ideas in an immersive experience. This critique can be used as a method for exploring an issue without the need for a game that ‘covers’ everything. Further activities – ‘the metagame’ - can use the informed debate generated from playful simulations as input.
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(Artifacts)
Art IFA CTS
thing props
‘Thing’ props are physical parts of a game. These can be made from cardboard with scissors or with sophisticated digital tools.
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Premade Cards
Premade cards are great devices to make a quick framework for a game. They let a designer provoke: exposing participants to new ideas, giving them something to react to and starting conversations. More importantly, cards give designers a tool to make tangible ‘blocks’ of a concept readily approachable. Participants can then interact with these ‘blocks,’ an easy way to create a low fidelity simulation. As these ‘blocks’ are interoperable (cards can easily be placed next to each other), different sets of cards can be combined for more sophisticated analysis. For example, a ‘scenario’ card and a ‘location’ card can establish a game’s starting conditions. Players can ‘play’ the simulation by stringing subsequent ‘event’ cards together to react to these initial conditions. Card based simulations are flexible and easily extended by simply printing more pieces of paper.
Blank Cards Blank cards that participants fill out personalise a cardboard simulation. Participants can write their own conditions/rules that can be inserted into the game. This helps make a contingent simulation that moves away from a designer’s preconceived, initial ideas.
Virtual Virtual props are the objects creating the videogame. Through interacting with these objects, participants ‘experience’ a scenario in real-time. This can be useful for allowing one set of stakeholders to discover what a situation is like for another set of stakeholders, or in describing an environment that is different (speed/time/scales) to the workshop setting.
Smartphones
Smartphones are now powerful enough to support immersive game worlds; running even inefficient ones made by amateur coders. The devices are useful for ‘situating’ virtual space in the physical room of a workshop. Phones are plentiful and already familiar to participants, and allow videogames to be inserted into workshop activities with lots of flexibility (Refer 3.8).
Projection By projecting a participant playing a smartphone game onto a larger screen, an individual mobile game can be transformed into a group play activity (Refer Set Two: Participatory Navigation).
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Do props
‘Do’ props are strategies for interaction you as a designer can deploy in activities. They are the rules and conditions that define the emergent outcomes of playing your game.
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Quantified outcomes Outcomes emerge from participants playing your game. They are a game’s response to participant input. In electronic simulations, there will be millions of outcomes generated each second. Quantified outcomes are the responses you deem important to show a participant. These occur both during play (ie. scoring and health) and after play. For example, a game may assess a participant’s play as ‘safe’ or ‘dangerous.’ As they are calculated based on a participant interaction, quantified outcomes are personal and engaging. They give participants a method for assessing play, encouraging the trial of novel strategies. The discrete assessment units created allow participants to compare their inputs in a game. Quantified outcomes encourage participants to think about certain aspects of an issue. Through humour and provocation, a designer can design outcomes to prompt participants to recognise how a game has challenged them. This is a useful resource for codesign activities.
Scores Scores are the most basic of quantified outcomes. Scoring is stackable and dynamically adjusted, giving players a real time method of assessing play. The ‘gameness’ inherent in high scores creates a non-confrontational vector for participants to compare and collaborate outcomes.
Warnings Warnings are audio/visual game responses triggered by participant input. Warnings let a simulation guide a player, informing them of the desired method of play. This serves a practical purpose, partially relieving you of having to manage each participant’s interaction with the game. Warnings can be explicit (a flashing graphic appearing on-screen) or implicit (a change in the tone of music, a sound effect). Warnings do not have to be fair or authoritative. A game can force a participant down a particular path and berate them for ending there, demonstrating unfair situations from real life. Warnings do not have to influence gameplay – a sudden overload of them can simulate social pressure, or sensory overload.
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DATA
Data collection methods influence the data you will generate. There are lots of traditional methods for collecting data in participatory activities, most in the form of questionnaires undertaken after the fact. While these are certainly useful for analysis, surveys can also be limiting. Questionnaires can be too rigid, or vague, for participants to answer insightfully. Responses will also be biased; participants want to give you the answers they think you want to hear. This makes it harder for you to gauge the real effects of your activities.
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Data is generated Don’t think of data as being passively collected. Instead, think of it being generated. Your activities are trying to create unexpected outcomes; so too should your data generation. Below are some methods that aim to generate unfiltered, immediate data for you to use. These methods do not replace, but rather augment, more traditional data collection methods.
Record everything Though many of your activities will have individual goals and data collection methods, game artefacts generate debate. Rather then relying on participant reflection as your primary source of data, these immediate and unfiltered reactions, comments and quips are incredibly useful for later analysis. This discussion will bleed through discrete workshop activities. Set up a camera in a corner of the room than can record the entire workshop so these spontaneous reactions, debates and ideas can be captured.
Roving cameras Employ helpers with additional cameras ready to zoom in on interesting moments in activities. Some parts of the workshop will be more useful than other parts. A certain group may produce interesting outcomes in one activity, while a second may have really interesting responses in another. If activities have been planned well, you won’t know what will emerge. Getting someone else to be in charge of capturing interesting bits allows you to concentrate on running the workshop. Have a camera/phone at hand ready to record things yourself though. Your helpers take the base-load effort of recording off you, but they may occasionally miss something.
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Prompt reactions More immediate data can also be gathered by employing helpers to interview participants throughout the workshop. Your activities will be fun and strange; it can be illuminating hearing participant thoughts moments after they have played your games. Prep your helpers before the workshop about the goals of each activity you plan to run. They’ll then be more informed and confident in asking participants questions. Don’t, however, make these interviews too formal. Helpers should encourage immediate, off-the-cuff remarks from participants. Questions like ‘I know, how weird are these activities? I just got roped in’ generate interesting and insightful responses from participants.
Situating reports Filling out reports/surveys should be considered as a strategy for actively creating conditions in activities, rather than just as passive data gathering. Reports can be used to define metagame conditions. One participant can ‘assess’ another participant’s play in a guided structure by filling out a report you have designed. The questionnaire isn’t the end product – rather the collaborative focus and debate generated from this assessment is what is interesting.
Combine your data By merging less-interesting pieces of data together, you can gain insights from data you otherwise might discard. For example, data generated in game such as scores may not be useful on its own, but is very insightful when compared with stakeholder background (ie.seeing how each type of participant plays your game). Think of these ‘synergies’ beforehand so you are ready to collect them.
Follow ups Workshop activities don’t just effect participants on the day. Check in on individuals at a later date to see any longer lasting impacts the workshop may have had on them. Stakeholder participants will have had time to reflect and compare their experience in the workshop with their view on the design problem in reality. Comparing responses from the night to reflections even only a week later can reveal interesting things.
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now it's up to you
By creating a workshop lab space, you’ve hopefully generated some unexpected outcomes that you didn’t know before. Your workshop participants won’t generate immediately implementable ideas – that’s not their job. Instead, these outcomes can be fed back into your design process (ie. new methods for reducing conflict in stakeholders can be developed, strategies to respond to novel needs that were identified made). One urban gaming workshop won’t be enough. As you’re looking to create the unexpected, you’ll have learnt many things you could do better next time simply having run the workshop. Feed this new knowledge back into your urban games. You now know what parameters need tweaking to make an even more productive space in your next workshop.
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