AUGUST 2020
In this four-week studio, we looked critically at the role of design activities, in two modes - Speculation and Realizing of value systems, lives and artefacts - using the scaffold of a board game, with Miro & MS Teams as the platform. We did this with an aim to open up conversations on questions of accountability in design. As design activities are highly context-sensitive, what happens when the context itself is changing so rapidly and is intermingled with many different variables - can design catch up? How do we re-imagine the way we design to be able to cope up with context changing world?
TEAM MEMBERS
Anuja Powar, Geethu Davis,
Riya Sethi, Simran Mehta
MENTORS
Paul Anthony
Varun Gupta
STUDIO
Rehearsing the Futures
MOODBOARD
AREAS OF INTEREST
PROCESS
Each team consisted of four members and each member selected an area of their interest. After sufficient secondary research, a speculative artefact in this area was prototyped and a video was created that demonstrated the use of this artefact in a mundane life of a speculated future. The narratives of all four members were then woven together in a soft world building process and a board game was subsequently designed to invite more players to navigate through this world. We designed the game such that the players’ choice of action would give us insights into their perceptions/attitudes/fears/aspirations and at the same time, provoke the players to question their own decisions and the status quo of the real world in comparison to the game world.
Designing Speculative Devices for the selected areas of interest
Creating a video narrative citing the use of the designed devices
Building the game world by interweaving the narratives
Designing a board game to navigate through this world
Paradigm Shift using Design
Epistemic Inequality and Shifts in Power
Selected areas for the game:
Technology Adoption in Elderly
Health and Fitness
GAME WORLD
Old Town is a world of elderly masses, set in a speculative future where people have a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years.
You may be wondering how it came to be so? Well, the global warming led to the melting of permafrost soils to release ancient viruses and bacteria that had lain dormant for thousands of years. Sea level increased, and along came innumerable diseases, resulting in a series of pandemics.
Healthcare and technology evolved at a rapid pace to combat them and now the world is largely immune to all infectious diseases. Alas, all this came with a cost. A cost of lives. This world is sparsely populated, but with a high life expectancy.
RULES OF PLAY
The players grow old through the game and will encounter various situations, devices and dilemmas. Each encounter will call for a response from the player, based on which the Game Master would guide the players through the game. The health, wealth, skills and possessions of the character may affect the results, for good or ill! After the game ends, the Game Master analyses and scores how the characters or their families have made progress towards the vision of creating an age- friendly environment. The family with more stability, activeness and community building traits depicted through their actions would win the game. Despite the world being largely populated by the elderly, many aspects of this world still discriminated against the old age. The vision of the game is that the players should strive to make their lives increasingly old-age- friendly.
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CONCLUSION
This game design and game play was a practical approach to looking beyond conventional modes of doing or interpreting design research. At first glance, it looked like making a world that clubbed multiple lines of inquiries as a rather hard goal to achieve. But as time progressed, we began making connections with each other's inquiries and it came to a point where we could not look at any of these inquiries in isolation. All the factors were entangled and deriving from each other. Though it was slightly chaotic during the beginning of the game play, players gradually eased into the game world and actively participated in the play. There were some speculative aspects of the game that everyone found hard to accept (like ageing incredibly fast) while there were some others which were heartily welcomed (like getting to choose your own family). It would now make more sense to zoom in to a specific line of inquiry, but at the same time, being aware of the broader picture too.