Co-Creation Through Play

By Irina Schneid

"""Co-Creation Through Play"" is an interactive research project that explores analog gaming techniques as tools for collaboration and creative inquiry. Unlike more siloed approaches to design, “Co-Creation Through Play” puts design thinking into the hands of people who are most affected by design decisions. Accessible and easy to use, its tools help participants navigate the unavoidable friction of collaboration to make design processes more empowering for everyone.

Brainstorming can happen in a myriad of ways. The challenge comes when introducing collaboration into design. Once you have one idea, how do you combine it with someone else's? How do you bridge multiple community ideas into one? How do you prioritize everyone’s input? Grounded in the practices and principles of Community-Engaged Co-Design “Co-Creation Through Play” facilitates collective brainstorming to ensure that all voices are heard.

To kickstart our prototyping efforts, we are pleased to showcase one of the “Co-Creation Through Play” games, “Community SketchQuilt.” This game combines a ruled coordinate grid with derive drawing techniques to create a community quilt composed of unique design prompt mash-ups. Beautifully crafted and easy to use, Community SketchQuilt can be brought to any community engagement event to activate collaboration through play. Design prompt cards are interchangeable and able to be customized to the unique needs of each workshop, while butcher’s block paper serves as an affordable and expansive canvas for ongoing participation. Simply roll out the paper, place the grid on top, find your coordinate and sketch the inter-change between two design prompts or project priorities to make space for community contributions and voices to shine.

SketchQuilt Student Designers: Puteri Annisa Fuadah and Hannah Kim"