Johns, M. (CMPM) – Playing Together in a Co-Designed Future: Building Resilience Through Community-Centered Gameful Design

Complex societal problems (e.g. wicked problems) such as those brought on by climate change can be addressed through a combination of Research through Design (RtD), co-design, and Serious Games (SG) by inviting affected communities to take part in developing iterative, experimental solutions and exploring their potential impact. In the course of my research, I have proposed a framework for design research that engages with wicked problems at the community level through gameful design, which is based on existing literature in HCI drawing from RtD, co-design, and SG. Core elements of the framework include supporting diverse perspectives, interdisciplinarity, working with local knowledge, and aligning different concepts with specific gameful elements to support meaningful interactions and discussion.

In a specific case study, my proposed framework is applied to create a gameful intervention to support wildfire resilience in communities at the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) which face particular risks from natural hazards. Through a community co-design process, open discussions have identified consistent pain-points and challenges faced by communities who have experienced wildfires or evacuations, e.g. traffic congestion in areas with one road in and out, while also pinpointing differences in their approaches based on local conditions, such as whether or not to encourage people to evacuate on foot. Through an RtD approach, important ideas have emerged about how serious games can be utilized in this space. For example, a common approach to serious game design is to align the win condition of a game with specific learning outcomes or desired changes. However, when working with wicked problems there are often complex social dilemmas and conflicting values without clear right answers. In these cases there is a need to map dilemmas and trade-offs to game mechanics rather than mapping learning outcomes to win conditions.

The gameful intervention developed through this dissertation integrates local knowledge from communities alongside expert knowledge from disciplines including fire science, social science, engineering, and design. The resulting artifact leverages a minigame design to map different concepts to specific and approachable game mechanics. Through universal and inclusive design practices, the games can be accessible to a broad audience including both children and older adults. The cooperative multiplayer aspects of the games encourage discussion and collaborative play between friends, community members, and particularly intergenerational play within families. In addition to contributing RtD reflections as a result of the project, I also measured change in resilience at the individual and community levels after deployment of the games through qualitative and quantitative methods. This dissertation contributes to knowledge about what game design has to offer to addressing wicked problems, with specific approaches to better serve communities facing complex risks such as those associated with a rapidly changing climate.

Event Host: MJ Johns, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media 

Advisor: Katherine Isbister

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/7959349044?pwd=cVYraU9yMUVwVFhYWHp6T05OZm5rZz09