Remixing Play into a Gameplan
Harnessing the power of creative thinking towards solving real challenges, topics or issues inspired by play and gameplay. A workshop on using game design as an assessment method.
Overview
The approach has the key aim of making game-based design thinking accessible to anyone regardless of their level game playing literacy. Inspired by the engaging nature of play and gameplay as a tool for learning, the workshop emphasises the design of playful experiences suited for the target audience (clients, stakeholders, customers, students, employees, etc.), which will inform the types of services, products and / or technologies that can be used to facilitate those experiences.
The act of play often produces intrinsic engagement and pleasure that enhances our interaction with services, products, problems, challenges, etc. It is therefore possible for us to be inspired by the mechanics of play towards informing our strategy, design and construction of solutions that will be more human driven, more emotionally intelligent.
Onboarding
As an introduction to the remixing play approach, the Remixing Play Flash Cards can be used as an onboarding tool to help introduce individuals to the concept of rapid creative thinking.
Practice Building
We promote an active and iterative creative process. The following activity expands the flash card approach to help encourage creative practices, where game ideas can be further refined and developed.
Step: 1 Understand the needs, context and audience
What are the key challenges you wish to address? What are the objectives / aims / goals? Who are your stakeholders? And in what context would your solution / intervention be implemented?
Step Two: Get inspired by existing play and gameplay
What play and game activities do you like the most? List them out. What are the core mechanics of those activities? Are there any particular game and play strategies that you can identify?
Map the different mechanics and use them as inspirations for the next step.
Step three: Map the needs and goals to the mechanics and strategy
How would you engage the stakeholders? Will certain strategies promote the aims and objectives you set out? What play and game activities might develop certain actions, attitudes, and / or behaviour?
Step four: Design your gameplan
Design and develop a strategy / solution / product / experience that will address the challenges, achieve the goals, and engage the stakeholders in the context that you set out in the beginning. Test your gameplan.
Step five: Pitch your gameplan
Share your gameplan and get feedback from your peers.
Delivery
You can deliver this through teamwork. Each team can pick a theme, topic, or challenge from a fixed list or they can choose their own. Go through the steps and encourage team members to collaborate.
Please view this sample slide deck that can be adapted to suit your needs.
The workshop can be delivered as a standalone session or embedded within a module as part of the tutorials, assignments and / or assessment process.
Simple Example:
Challenge – how to increase sales of a product?
Inspiration – Hide and Seek with simple Mechanics – Hiding and Seeking!
GamePlan – Hide rare items in products for customers to discover and collect.
If done right, the Willy Wonka effect can be achieved when customers are encouraged to purchase more in order to stand a chance to discover those rare items.
The game plan can lead to a strategy, a service and/or a product! As the process is based on the Design Thinking process, it will be iterative, agile and incremental in order to refine a gameplan. The process will exploit playfulness and engagement to help encourage creativity and innovation.
Digital Deck
We’ve built an online version of our Remixing Play Flash Card deck for you to use in your activities. Visit remixplay.gchangers.org to begin.
Physical Deck
Printed versions of the Remix Play Flash Cards are available on request. Clickt he button below to contact the team via email.
Slide Deck
Download a slide deck for delivering your own Remixing Play workshop.
(Size: 226 Mb)
