skip to main content
10.1145/1011870.1011885acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagespdcConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Facilitating collaboration through design games

Published: 27 July 2004 Publication History

Abstract

In recent years both companies and research communities call for collaborative work practices and user-centered approaches in various design fields. There are several challenges and issues to take into consideration. For instance there is a need to find ways of collaborating across various competences, interests, responsibilities and perhaps professional languages both within one organization, between several organizations and between the organizations and a group of (potential) users. It is necessary to find ways to learn about users and the contexts of use, and to create a common understanding of the development task. This paper presents a set of four design games, which offers solutions to the challenges mentioned. The design games have been developed in the Space Studio during several projects and years. Here experiences are discussed on the basis of two research projects carried out in collaboration with industrial partners and potential users, and use of the games in three educational settings.The overall aim of the design games is to help facilitate a user-centered design process for cross-disciplinary design groups early in the design process. Framing collaborative design activities in a game format, arguably improves idea generation and communication between stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed.

References

[1]
Binder, T: Setting the Stage for Improvised Video Scenarios. CHI99 Conference. 1999.]]
[2]
Brandt, E., and Grunnet, C: Evoking the future: drama and props in user centered design. In Cherkasky, T., Greenbaum, J., Mambrey, P. (Editors), Proceedings of Participatory Design Conference, New York, CPSR, 2000. pp. 11--20.]]
[3]
Bucciarelli, L L: Designing Engineers. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England. 1994.]]
[4]
Buchenau, M. and Suri, J. Fulton: Experience Prototyping. In Proceedings of DIS 2000 conference, Designing Interactive Systems. New York City, USA. ACM Press, 2000. pp. 424--433.]]
[5]
Burns, C., Dishman, E., Verplank, B., and Lassiter, B: Actors, hair-dos and videotape: Informance design. Presented at Presence Forum (Royal College of Art, London, November, 1997). Paper available at http://www.presenceweb.i3net.org/papers/frameset.html]]
[6]
Carroll, J: Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions. MIT Press. 2000.]]
[7]
Ehn P, and Kyng M. Cardboard Computers: Mocking-it-up or hands-on the Future. In `Design at work' edited by Joan Greenbaum and Morten Kyng, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, publishers. 1991.]]
[8]
Ehn P, and Sjögren D: From System Descriptions to Scripts for Action. In `Design at work' edited by Joan Greenbaum and Morten Kyng, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, publishers. 1991.]]
[9]
Finke R. A, Ward, T. B. and Smith, S. M: Creative Cognition -- Theory, Research, and Applications. A Bradford Book. The MIT press. 1992.]]
[10]
Garabet, A., Mann, S., and Fung, J.: Exploring Design through Wearable Computing Art(ifacts). In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Interactive Posters. April 20--25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. ACM Press, 634--635.]]
[11]
Habraken H J and Gross M D: Concept design Games (Book 1 and 2). A report submitted to the National Science Foundation Engineering Directorate, Design Methodology Program. Department of Architecture, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. 1987.]]
[12]
Howard, S., Carroll, J., Murphy, J. and Peck, J. Using `Endowed Props' in Scenario-Based Design. Proceedings of NordiCHI 2002. October 19--23, 2002, Aarhus, Denmark.]]
[13]
Iacucci, G. and Kuutti, K: Everyday Life as a Stage in Creating and Performing Scenarios for Wireless Devices. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 2002, 6:299--306.]]
[14]
Ishii, H. and Ullmer, B: Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms. Proceedings of CHI'97, 1997, pp. 234--241.]]
[15]
Johansson. M., Fröst, P., Brandt, E., Binder, T. and Messeter, J. Partner Engaged Design -- New challenges for workplace design, in Proceedings of Participatory Design Conference (PDC) 2002, Malmö Sweden.]]
[16]
Matthews, B, Buur, J, and Brereton M: Brick Games in Boardrooms: Making Use Context Tangible. In: Lloyd, P Christiaans, H. Designing in Context. Design Thinking Research Symposium, Delft 2001. pp. 187--198.]]
[17]
Nilsson J, Sokoler T, Binder T, Wetcke N: Beyond the control room - mobile devices for spatially distributed interaction on industrial process plants, Proceedings from Second International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing 2000, pp. 30--45.]]
[18]
Messeter J, Brandt E, Halse J, and Johansson M. Contextualizing Mobile IT. To be presented at the DIS'04 conference. Boston 2004.]]
[19]
Oulasvirta, A., Kurvinen, E., and Kankainen, T. Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 2003, 7:125--134.]]
[20]
Papert, S: Mindstorms -- Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. Basic Books Inc. Publishers, New York. 1980.]]
[21]
Sato, S., and Salvador, T: Playacting and Focus Troupes: Theater techniques for creating quick, intense, immersive, and engaging focus group sessions. Interactions, September-October, 1999, pp. 35--41.]]
[22]
Schön, D: The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books. 1983.]]
[23]
Star, Leigh S: The structure of Ill-structures Solutions: Heterogeneous Problem-Solving, Boundary Objects and Distributed Artificial Intelligence. In the Distributed Artificial Intelleigence, Vol. 2. Edited by Kuhns and Gasser, 1989 pp. 37--54), San Mateo, CA, Morgan Kaufman.]]
[24]
Weiser, M: The Computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American, 265 (3), 1991, pp. 94--104.]]
[25]
Wellner, P., Mackay, W., and Gold, R.: Computer Augmented Environments: Back to the Real World. Commun. ACM, Vol. 36, No. 7, July 1993.]]

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Integrating Gamification with BIM for Enhancing Participatory DesignJournal of Computational Design10.53710/jcode.15053095:2(317-344)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Development of a Policy Game Toolkit for Establishing Future Response Strategies and Policies : Design and System Thinking TheoryArchives of Design Research10.15187/adr.2024.05.37.2.35337:2(353-385)Online publication date: 31-May-2024
  • (2024)PD as in Prefigurative Design: A ludic framework beyond participationProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669877(98-106)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Facilitating collaboration through design games

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    PDC 04: Proceedings of the eighth conference on Participatory design: Artful integration: interweaving media, materials and practices - Volume 1
    July 2004
    245 pages
    ISBN:1581138512
    DOI:10.1145/1011870
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 27 July 2004

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. collaborative design
    2. design games
    3. empowerment
    4. stakeholders

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 49 of 289 submissions, 17%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)172
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)18
    Reflects downloads up to 15 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Integrating Gamification with BIM for Enhancing Participatory DesignJournal of Computational Design10.53710/jcode.15053095:2(317-344)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2024
    • (2024)Development of a Policy Game Toolkit for Establishing Future Response Strategies and Policies : Design and System Thinking TheoryArchives of Design Research10.15187/adr.2024.05.37.2.35337:2(353-385)Online publication date: 31-May-2024
    • (2024)PD as in Prefigurative Design: A ludic framework beyond participationProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669877(98-106)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
    • (2024)Consciously drifting: Exploratory design practices that embrace influences from local communityProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669871(60-66)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
    • (2024)Not just power: Exploring transitions as fluidity relationality in Participatory DesignProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669870(52-59)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
    • (2024)Organizing employee‐driven innovation (EDI) through game‐based formats: Understanding participationCreativity and Innovation Management10.1111/caim.1262534:1(47-60)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2024
    • (2023)[WORKSHOP] Augmented Humans: Provocations for collaborative AI system designProceedings of the 26th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3616961.3616969(294-297)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2023
    • (2023)A Card-based Ideation Toolkit to Generate Designs for Tangible Privacy Management ToolsProceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3569009.3572903(1-13)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2023
    • (2023)Exploring the dynamics of architecture with the concept of affordancePhilosophical Psychology10.1080/09515089.2023.227340037:7(1858-1877)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2023
    • (2022)Practice and reflection of participatory design in tableware design for the elderlyWork10.3233/WOR-21006173:2(621-638)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2022
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media