The ATLAS Design Game
Tuuli Mattelmäki
ATLAS, a game conceived to help cross-disciplinary teams scope and plan service design projects, is a collaboration between Encore, SimLab and BIT – three research labs at Aalto University in Helsinki. Tuuli and her team brought co-creation to the scientific research the business and innovation partners contributed. ATLAS is grounded in empirical findings and theoretical reflections from 13 research projects and it scaffolds how players-as-stakeholders come together to develop a project plan. The game offers a vocabulary for the dimensions that co-creation projects are built on – supporting players in charting how a project might take shape by identifying the key design decisions that need to be made. The game translates a framework of design choices so that the players can work through what influences the formulation of projects and what informs the selection and development of methods. The game is designed to support teams in coming together to assess and plan co-creation projects.
The gameplay has teams go through various dimensions essential to planning and conducting service co-creation projects. With a facilitator at each table, small teams take turns selecting cards to focus the planning around one of those dimensions. For example, a player might choose to focus on who gets to participate, followed by the next player choosing the dimension of what objects could be designed. The non-linear game rules support a co-evolution that affords divergent, focussed inquiry alongside convergent opening up of the decision-making sequence. The coded design materials, shaped in a hexagon, present a specific kind of convivial interaction. Although quite analytical and solution-oriented, there is a playfulness imbued in the random unfolding of the sequence. Design games, like John Carse’s notion of the infinite game, stage participation not around winning or losing but around the value of continuing to play. Design games have rules but also a playful gameplay that invites a porous boundary between what needs to be planned and what might be allowed to unfold in its own time. In this way, the design game as a workshop offers a mutual learning platform for sharing current and past experiences that deepen insights for the designer, the player and the game designer. In ATLAS, this play mindset is brought to the task of making tangible decisions about future services and systems.