This workshop provides a game session for training participants in using alternatively methods for ideas generations in the design area of activities and functions permitted by physical interfaces. Instead of fixed procedure of design thinking we propose models useful to criticize existing artefacts and to structure the intuitions in a collaborative context. In this way Game-Play Design approach will support the design practice in a variety of ways, e.g. by facilitating lateral thinking training methods, offering tools appropriate to work by context techniques, investigating potential interfaces development, or by providing opportunities for collaborative design exploration and new concepts generation. Persons interested in participating should assume the role of gamers in predicting collaboratively novel uses of well-known objects placed in their unrelated scenarios. A potential outcome is to acquire a groundwork building method for managing and analyzing real-world scenarios of interaction with objects and environments. A further goal is to experiment unusual game design situations fruitful to stimulate the concepts generation using game materials furnished to support the overcoming of conditioning processes. The training in self-conscious design by game-play method could bring benefits to several design fields, such as service, urban, interaction and product design. In this perspective the workshop aims to suggest a subversive operation by anticipating the user needs without restrictions. The collaborative brainstorming method is intended to open design dialogues by removing the limits and conventions of the creative thinking.

1. Workshop
Undesigned for:
re-thinking interactions through
game-play design
Serena Cangiano / serena.cangiano@supsi.ch
Vanessa De Luca / vanessa.deluca@supsi.ch
Irina Suteu / irina.suteu@polimi.it
undesigned4.wordpress.com

2. On today’s menu
• What we mean with “undesigned for”?
• What is an “ordinary” interface?
• Who are you?
• Game rules: how to re-use things.
• What’s going to happen next.

3. Criticize types and roles
Increase object openness and object reusability
Workshop Objectives
Have fun together

4. Love the Object
Ordinary or extraordinary?
Something new?
Armando Testa, Adv Motor Show 2009, Bologna
Object and environment relationship

5. Use what is dominant in a culture
to change it quickly.
Jenny Holzer
What is Design?

6. P.O. (Provocative Operation)
Re-thinking form

7. P.O. (Provocative Operation)

8. P.O. (Provocative Operation)
Re-thinking function

9. the way things are made is being remade
The future of making map – Institute for the future – www.iftf.org
Trend

10. DIY is presenting an array of
creative activities in which
people use, repurpose and
modify existing materials to
produce something.
Make Magazine, issue 23
L. Buechley, D. K. Rosner, E. Paulos, Amanda
Williams, DIY for CHI: Methods, Communities, and
Values of Reuse and Customization, 2009

11. DIY subculture shows novel
approaches to design

12. Hacking the interaction modalities of
an Ikea Lamp

13. DIY LED Air Sensing Balloons
to Signify Air Quality

14. Noise makers
sonic milking can and the Synthopotamus

15. Game Rules
1. Match game cards
2. Share ideas and envision
relationship
3. Sketch how your idea works
4. Repeat step 2-3
5. Show your most amazing idea

16. Let’s Play!
1. Select your team (3-4 persons) 5’
2. Match game cards 5’
3. Game-Play / sketching session 45’
4. Presentation / Poll session 5’

17. Get the party started 5+5 minutes

18. Who are you?
• Dress your player hat
• Act your role
• Feel your game context
as your real surrounding
• Subvert the well-known

19. Game-Play session 45 minutes
• Rethink relationship (assembling, reuse, recycle)
• Be intentionally visionary (replace habit with curiosity)
• Use the “formula”: What happens if I do ... ?
• Don’t mind constrains (jump over well-know boxes)
• Talk, listen, sketch
The result has to be witty and thought provoking!

20. What are the main actions to be accomplished when
participating in a workshop ?

21. process
content
decision on
process / content
! Team dynamic – has an impact on
the flow experience
Flow:
the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else matter; the experience itself is so
enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost for the sheer sake of doing it. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992,
2002)
Kick-off Ideas generation
Concept definition
Presentation

22. * Read and discuss the brief with the group comparing the different interpretations.
*! Understand the different perspectives (disciplinary, cultural)
*! Define the motivations (what the different members of the group expect from the
workshop) and goals (what they want to achieve). Divide tasks according to the skills.
! Expect to encounter disagreements. Turn potential conflicts into creative opportunities.
1.Organize the team

23. ° Idea generation – outline the qualities and features of the concept.
Distinguish between the core and marginal attributes – establish priorities.
°*! Use dialog, rather than debate. Visualize ideas using written lists and drawings.
Take preliminary decisions.
° Integrate the attributes (tangible – intangible) and define form / function relation.
° Stabilize the description of the concept, name, keywords.
2. Let’s play !

24. * Plan the presentation. Designate the person to present or divide the arguments to
be presented among the members of the group.
° Explain the thought process; the issues to be addressed by the concept
(where you started from) and the outcome (where you arrived).
3. Presentation

25. “Dialog is not only possible, but perhaps enlivened
when people don’t share meaning. What we share is
not as interesting as what we don’t share.”
C. Bender Bakhtinitan perspectives on “everyday life” sociology.

26. A new victory is here !

27. Grazie
Serena Cangiano / serena.cangiano@supsi.ch
Vanessa De Luca / vanessa.deluca@supsi.ch
Irina Suteu / irina.suteu@polimi.it
undesigned4.wordpress.com