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Related work and methods Our game-based methodology involves rethinking the design process in terms of the means and techniques available for exploring the design space and involving new participants. While guided by certain principles from game and play theory, we have been greatly inspired by performance techniques, which tend to have a great many of the concerns and even mechanisms of games in common. Sharing, for instance, a discourse about the suspension of disbelief, performance offers techniques such as Stanislavskij’s ‘magic if’ and Boal’s Forum Theatre that have been well explored in the design domain [3, 4]. We have found performance to be particularly well-developed in regards to design practice and methodologies – for example in participatory and experience design – and thus highly relevant as inspiration and examples of applied theoretical principals. Game and performance genres provide techniques for imagining and evolving concepts as well as the means for coordinating a complex activity involving reflection both in action and in context. They provide sets of rules and expectations that structure participation in an activity while supporting imagination and play. Techniques such as enactment, narrative, and improvisation support immersion in characterizations and situations, structured evolution of concepts, and frameworks for inventing new possibilities. Through the application of temporal and physical formats, such as procedures and props, they structure participation and interaction, effectively creating a separate safe space and time for participants to engage in imagination, play, and creative activity. Enactment and participant engagement Game and performance methods are used by designers to immerse themselves in and expand design possibilities. In Burns et al., informance and bodystorming techniques were applied by designers in the studio, and functioned as a bridge between user observations, idea generation, and as a means of communicating concepts to outsiders [6]. In the experience prototyping practice at IDEO, they have built full-scale ‘sets’ of use contexts (for instance, airplane interiors) and designers have personally adopted user ailments (such as simulated heart defibrillation) [5]. The focus troupe, discussed by Sato and Salvador, is a method for involving designers, actors, and potential customers in playacting, debate formats, and problem-solving design concepts [20, 21]. In all of these approaches, techniques involving participation through enactment enabled empathy among designers, increased immersion in the design space, creation of a common conceptual ground, and emotional investment. Other approaches, frequently inspired by participatory design, take such techniques out of the design or research studio in order to involve users and usage contexts more directly in the evolution of design concepts. Iacucci and Kuutti discuss their method for situated and participative enactment of scenarios, which involves shadowing users while they act out scenarios in contexts of use in daily life [13, 14]. Howard et al. take theatrical performance and workshops in the streets, where scenarios are acted out with collections of props [10]. These approaches apply new techniques to involve more factors and a new spectrum of participation – including users as participants, incidental users in their natural environment, and accidental spectators.  |
Rules, roles, and activity
formats Inevitably, these approaches require the coordination of more factors – not only are there scenarios and props, new participants and roles, and the unpredictable experiential factors of everyday lives and real life contexts. Games, performance techniques, and participatory processes offer techniques for coordinating and sequencing such factors during such a design session. For instance, the focus troupe borrows the ‘six hat’ method to create distinct roles for people involved in the process and the participatory board game method structures turn-taking and a clear start and finish to the activity. In participatory design, design games are an established technique for structuring interaction between designers, users of a system, and concepts. Ehn and Sjögren apply what they call ‘design-by-playing’ as a physical format (in the form of a board and card game) and temporal format (clearly structured by a beginning, middle, and end) for guiding participatory sessions [9]. Murray’s work in interactive narrative suggests mechanisms such as masquerade, dialog or language, and the use of objects. She defines three techniques for inducing immersion: structuring participation as a visit, the use of masks or avatars, and seamless interaction with objects and others [17]. All of these approaches apply carefully crafted formats in order to continually focus attention, guide participation, and evolve the discussion through the duration of the activity. Props and Imagination Embedded in these new and hybrid formats, artifacts and props take on new definitions and roles. Typically, design process incorporate prototypes to explore aspects of the final system though they can take extremely different forms, including paper prototypes, materials and texture samples, and throw-away models. Such low or no-tech objects can be a valuable means of creating common ground among stakeholders, providing a shared language and conceptual references, and a starting point for hands-on form exploration during participatory sessions [11,16]. Besides objects intended to represent a possible outcome, props are applied in the design process to spark imagination, guide discussion, and support an activity structure, as exemplified in Ehn and Sjögren’s use of cards and physical game boards in their participatory sessions. In much of the work described here, props are tightly embedded within scenario and enactment activities. In such approaches, aesthetic and formal choices are not necessarily (or not at all) representative of a possible outcome but function as a support to the design activity itself – for instance, to guide the enactment of a scenario. Howard et al. describe the evolution of the physical props during a single design session, where functional capabilities and physical properties of multiple props are chosen and added at specifically programmed points during enactment by users [10]. Brandt and Grunnet describe the use of three distinct types of physical props applied on particular occasions during a design process. These included not only the typical mockups of product models, but found objects representing symbolic functionality and generic cardboard shapes as narrative props around which a drama could be performed. So-called ‘fairy tale’ props facilitated the design process through metaphor, clearly setting a fictional space for users to interact with objects [4]. Similarly, ‘magic things’ in the work of Iaccuci and Kuutii are props for envisioning future scenarios [14]. Such objects evoke the use of form in conceptual design, as discussed by Dunne, where formal abstraction allows objects to be significant in the world of imagination rather than the world of production [8]. |
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| Examples from our previous work We have been involved in several projects prior to this that apply certain principles and methods from games and performance genres. This work has been the impetus for developing and refining the specific methodology based on game play that we describe in this paper. Two projects, created previously and in different research contexts, Faraway [2] and Mixers [15], are examples in the evolution and application of the methodology we are currently applying in Underdogs & Superheroes. References: |
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[2] Andersen, K., Jacobs, M. and Polazzi, L. (2003) Playing Games in the Emotional Space. In Funology: from usability to enjoyment. Blythe, M.A et al., ed.s. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. [3] Boal, A. (1974/1992). Games for actors and non-actors London: Routledge. [4] Brandt, E., and Grunnet, C. (2000) Evoking the future: Drama and props in user centered design. In Proceedings of PDC 2000. New York: CPSR. [5] Buchenau, M., and Suri, J. (2000) Experience Prototyping. In Proceedings of DIS '00. [6] Burns, C., Dishman, E., Verplank, B., and Lassiter B. (1994) Actors, hair-dos and videotape: Informance design. In Proceedings of CHI ‘94, ACM Press. [8] Dunne, T. and Raby, F. (2001) Design Noir: the Secret Life of Electronic Objects London: August/Birkhäuser. [9] Ehn, P., and Sjögren, D. (1991). From system descriptions to scripts for action. In J. Greenbaum & M. Kyng (Eds.), Design at work: Cooperative design of computer systems. Hillsdale NJ USA: Erlbaum. [10] Howard, S., Carroll, Jennie., Murphy, J., and Peck, J. (2002) Endowed props in scenario based design. In Proceedings of NordiCH ’02. [11] Houde, S., Hill, C. (1997) What do Prototypes Prototype? In Handbook of Human Computer Interaction, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. |
[13] Iacucci, G. Iacucci, C & Kuutti, K. (2002) Imaging and Experiencing in Design – the Role of Performances. In Proceedings of NordiCHI ’02. [14] Iacucci, G., Kuutti, K., Ranta, M., (2000) On the Move with a Magic Thing: Role Playing in the Design of Mobile Services and Devices, In Proceeding of the DIS ’00. [15] Mazé, R., and Bueno, M. (2002) Mixers: A participatory approach to design prototyping. In Proceedings of DIS ’02, ACM Press. [16] Muller, M. et al. (1993) Taxonomy of PD Practices: A Brief Practitioners Guide, In Communications of the ACM, June 1993, vol. 36, no. 4. [17] Murray, J. (1998). Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [20] Salvador, T., and Howells, K. (1998). Focus Troupe: Using drama to create common context for new product concept end-user evaluations." In Proceedings of CHI '98. [21] Salvador, T., and Sato, S. (1999). Playacting and focus troupes: theater techniques for creating quick, intense, immersive, and engaging focus group sessions, In interactions 6(5). |
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Underdogs & Superheroes is a project within the Public Play Spaces research platform at the RE:FORM & PLAY studios, Interactive Institute.
Project team:
Margot Jacobs + Ramia Mazé
Anna Dahlberg + Anna Götesson