participatory experience design

aim: to cooperatively design a mixed reality experience, on-site, with various other local and visiting stakeholders

SCOOT NewCastle | SCOOT Valley

SCOOT @ NewCastle, NSW. Half day workshop/participatory design. Sept. 2004. Designed for the Electrofringe festival and funded by dLux media

SCOOT @ the Valley, Brisbane. Half day workshop/participatory design. Dec. 2004. Designed for the SOOB festival. Self funded.

These workshops represent the final iterations intended for the SCOOT series of Location-based game designs.
Previously 'SCOOT @ CIP' and 'SCOOT @ Fed Sq', were highly mediated experiences for the players... in that, I would design a specific experience through a dynamic environment for individuals and groups to follow. These games were designed to reveal certain impressions inspired by the environments. These impressions were formed through an extensive survey of the people, places and things contained in the spaces. Although these SCOOTs come with rich media (games, sculptures etc) and dynamic interfacecs (web site), the players had no real agency over the paths travelled or the outcome of the game as they played.

The Workshops introduced a whole new approach for SCOOT.

This version is much less mediated by myself (and the design team) but has a much higher potential for increased player agency. This is done by creating a more complicated system (but much less complicated game interface) that acts as a framework to support participatory design methods. There is little rich media and a very simple interface consisting of instructions and text fields to fill in. The information entered into the fields later beomes the SMS content that drives players through the site.

The important difference in the design approach is that the 'players' become co-designers. They are given the tools for analysing their location as a game world and then are shown how to generate this information into a playful located experience using the most basic mobile phones. They then enter a series of SMS clues and solves into their very own game database... and ABRACADABRA... they have designed a game that anyone can play simply by registering a mobile number on the web site and using this phone to follow a local experience designed by the workshop participants.

We (Marcos and myself) have trialed this version in Newcastle (for the Electrofringe festival) and Brisbane (SOOB festival).

The general SCOOT WORKSHOP GAME PLAN

The initial idea was to desribe the potentials of location-based gaming and then provide the processes and resources that may be required to

a. analyse a site to identify candidate nodes of interaction for game play
b. design a mission/narrative experience for navigating thru the space with an alternative 'lense'
c. cooperate with other participants to link different nodes and interactions to design a broader experience
d. enter the data into a customised web app (see magic) to trial their 'experience' on site using their own mobile phones (SMS) to navigate thru the space and interacte with the game narrative and other players.

It was our desire to get people interested in the online application we have built (see magic) so they would later attempt to use it in other environments. The online interface has been designed so that a participant could log in from anywhere to submit a customised game experience to be played out with mobile phones in their own local/favourite enviironment. The system can then be set to send and receive SMS 'clues' and 'solves' from any location at any time.