In november 2016 I was invited to talk at the Design week in Rio de Janeiro. This is thanks to Clarissa Biolchini and Laje, from their reference I got invited and thanks to them Brasil now knows about my existence and work in design. So in return for this invitation I offered to do a workshop designing games for a societal problem. While preparing this workshop that week in Rio I experienced the traffic very much, the same ride by taxiof approx 10 km can cost you 15 minutes or 1,5 hours depending on the time of the day, the wheather or other circumstances which are hard to predict when planning your day.
With this problem as focus, we decided to work in teams of for or five, student and professors mixed.
Step #1: a theory on how games can be used for different purpose then entertainment only including examples of games with an intention/impact.
Step #2: the method of designing a game concept using the game design canvas (usable for non game designers and even non designers proven to be of use and easy to compley to the given tasks).
Step #3: teams will create a prototype to use to explain their game concept in a pitch, some teams explain the game, some play the game to make it’s gameplay more clear, context is often included in the presentation (3 minutes max).
Step #4: Best Game Award Election plus reflection, the purpose of the workshop is to experience playing around with a problem as a toy and change a mindset, elicit the dialog and creativity and make the team bound together towards a solution. Enjoyment is apparently experienced as a bonus in this ; ). Oh yes, six amazing game concepts are of course an important result, but the dialoges during the workshop are equally important, the point of views, the turning topics upside down, and taking different perspectives on the problem are a great experience, for instance one team thought of ‘the empathy game’, to make people aware how it is for older citizens to use the public transport. Or the carpool app with the ice-breaker button to press at all times at awkward silence moments. And many more great solutions were invented within two hours time only.
To see the slides for this worskhop in prezi >>
