Games and Participation by Alex Holland
Articles & Papers by Alex Holland
Can a complex site, such as an urban park, be better understood through a game? Might this playfu... more Can a complex site, such as an urban park, be better understood through a game? Might this playful preparation be useful for design? In response to such questions, this paper discusses a practical project that structured design-oriented site research as a development, implementation and deployment of a locative mobile game in which designers learn by racing colonies of virtual organisms. The analysis of this experiment demonstrates that this approach can support creativity and provide benefits compatible with goals of ecological design.
Can a complex site, such as an urban landscape, be better understood through a game? Might this p... more Can a complex site, such as an urban landscape, be better understood through a game? Might this playful preparation be useful for design? In response to such questions, this paper discusses a practical project that structured design-oriented site research as a development, implementation and deployment of a locative mobile game in which designers learn by racing colonies of virtual organisms. The analysis of this experiment demonstrates that this approach can support creativity and provide benefits compatible with goals of ecological design.
Facilitating communication and cooperation is a challenge for anyone who seeks to achieve change ... more Facilitating communication and cooperation is a challenge for anyone who seeks to achieve change and reform in architecture and other disciplines. This article discusses a project that seeks to overcome this problem through a participatory design process enhanced by mobile gaming. Deployed on smartphones, the project’s custom-built game - PocketPedal - is designed to accompany conventional participatory methods. The toolkit created through this work can be used in design workshops to facilitate communication across habitual divides and to support imagination and creativity. The current iteration of the project applies its methods to the challenge of reforming urban cycling in Melbourne. More specifically, it investigates one of the city’s characteristic and intractable cycling challenges: St Kilda Road.
This paper is based on a hypothesis that games can be used to support design decisions in a varie... more This paper is based on a hypothesis that games can be used to support design decisions in a variety of complex situations. To explore this proposition, the research described below focuses on two aspects. Firstly, it experiments with the potential of games to be socially provocative. And secondly, it applies the induced provocations in support of collective imagination. This discussion is supported by a practical case study: a working prototype of a smartphone game that simulates urban cycling. The paper discusses utilisation of this game by diverse stakeholders in a workshop that sought to advance decision-making in a particularly vexatious stalemate.
This paper demonstrates how mobile games can contribute to participatory design and its aim of ac... more This paper demonstrates how mobile games can contribute to participatory design and its aim of achieving positive change through the involvement of stakeholders. This overarching goal is considered via a particular case-study that utilizes a purpose-built smartphone game. The case-study applies this game to the design challenges of urban cycling. Utilisation of the game in a stakeholder workshop suggests that mobile play can aid understanding and help to establish communication amongst diverse participants. For further information and media, see https://osf.io/vy5dq/
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Games and Participation by Alex Holland
Articles & Papers by Alex Holland