Description

“Undesigned for workshop” addresses facilitation of lateral thinking training method by collaborative game-play practice. Game-Play Design approach can support designers in a variety of ways, e.g. by offering tools appropriate to work by context techniques investigating potential interaction dynamics between users and artefacts, or by providing opportunities for collaborative design exploration and new ideas generation in the field of interaction design. In this way the workshop proposes a game situation where participants re-design interactions of everyday objects and essential interfaces of contemporary life.
Considering contemporary phenomena such as the climate change, the environmental awareness and the economic crisis, the design research context are discussing about how to lead human activities, behaviors and ways of thinking to a positive change. Instead of strategies and methods marketing-driven oriented to mass productivity and effectiveness of the results, new tools are required for training designers to re-think interactions alternatively.
For this purpose, the Game-Play Design approach provides archetypes for a self-conscious practice of design inviting the workshop participants to think outside the box and work in collaboration to find alternative ways of using well-known objects in unrelated environment. The provocation of play design method engage people in a constructive negotiation for finding new way to interact with and through the artefacts.

Objectives
The workshop ties together several themes: reflective design, design obsolescence, symbolic and physical interactions, creative thinking and game-play method for collaborative design investigations. We will adopt the game-play design approach as a method to design interactions and to project in the reality new possibilities to overcome the imagination gap in the collaborative design processes [8, 9].
The objectives of the workshop are to reflect on unpredictable uses of well-known object through design practice and to generate collaboratively “undesigned for” concepts that are scenarios of new interaction dynamics. The purpose is to stimulate designers and researchers on removing boundaries and thinking without fixed models and technical constraints jumping over speculative design solutions [13, 5].
As a brainstorming method, this game exercise aims to facilitate cooperative design exploration about the potential of the artefacts in action from both functional and cultural point of view.
By a practical point of view the workshop provide an agile redesign technique that allows people: to encompass obstructive patterns of thought, to generate alternative solutions and to put forward an original dialogue between form and context from which can flowing out a critical design reflection, as well as to increase the cohesion of teamwork, the team building motivation and performance [6,7,11].

Structure and content
The workshop format goes along with a common game-play session where participants learning the rules, are engaged to build a design strategies and to achieve the best results. Game materials will be furnished to the participants in two set of cards presented as postcards and photos representing artefacts and environments organized in thematic categories. Workshop participants, organized in groups, have to match game cards creating an unconventional situated context. Immersed in this scenario, all teams have to consider how objects (interfaces, controllers, switches or buttons) could be used in the selected context, and they start to refine a set of ideas by sketching visuals of detailed schemes of the usage.

The workshop structure consists in two main phases plus a final session:

1. Workshop introduction
Subversive design cases will be presented: objects designed by visionary inventors, DIY objects and inspirational products or sketches stimulating the reflection on how the reuse of this objects is suggested by their shapes or conditions [see references]. The discussion will encompass in a tacit level which symbolic interaction between humans and the environment these objects generate.
2. Game and design session
The teams will choose their design context and will start to envision new scenarios of use. A design context could be a joystick in a private garden or a switch button close to a seat in the stalls. Participants can show their “undesigned for” concepts by using different techniques from graph to storyboards.
3. Concepts presentations and pull discussion
As final presentation of the concepts the unexpected format of pull session will be proposed. Teams can experience the ideas and vote each other, this debriefing judging phase aiming to open the game to a fruitful dialogue about the design topics of the workshop.

Format (duration: 90’)
First phase Oral presentations and slide-show on the topic of rethinking the interaction dynamic with example cases. Introduction to the game rules and cards. Groups formation.
Second phase Group conversation and scenarios making. Hand drawings using a sketching paper template furnished by the workshop organizers. A wall-scenarios collage will be created around the pair of cards.
Third phase Conversations moderated by the organizers. The results and the follow-up of the workshop will be posted on a blog and open for further discussion.

References
[1] E. Amsel, J. P. Byrnes, Language, literacy, and cognitive development: the development and consequences of Symbolic Communication, Jean Piaget Society. Symposium 1998, Jean Piaget Society, 2008
[2] V. Archipov, Design del popolo. 220 invenzioni della Russia post-sovietica , Ed. Isbn, Milano, 2007
[3] J. Bleecker, Design Fiction. A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction, Near Future Laboratory, 2009
[4] T. Brown, Change by design. How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation, Harper Collins, 2009
[5] E. De Bono, Serious Creativity: Using the power of lateral thinking to create new ideas, Harpercollins, 1992
[6] V. De Luca, M. Aureggi, M. Bertolo, M. Pillan, Training new designers for interaction: GINA, a game design workshop for improving sensitivity, In: Proceeding of Design Connexity 8th European Academy Of Design Conference, Aberdeen, 2009
[7] J. Dewey, How we think, Prometheus books, NY, 1991
[8] K. Friedman, 52 Events 2002, But these are just ordinary object, 2001
[9] W. Gaver, Designing for ludic aspects of everyday life, ERCIM News, vol. 47, October 2001
[10] S. Lundgren, Designing Games: Why and How. Interaction vol 16, Issue 6 (November/December 2008), pp. 6-12
[11] M. Obrist, DIY HCI. Do-It-Yourself Human-Computer Interaction, VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Salzburg, 2007
[12] Rethink Games Ltd., Play rethink: the eco-design game, London, 2007
[13] B. Sterling, Design fiction, in Interactions, Volume 16 , Issue 3 (May/June 2009), pp. 20-24
[14] I. Suteu, V. De Luca, How to construct and express the creative thought. Understanding the communication mechanisms of the collaborative design teamwork. In: Proceeding of IASDR 2009, Seoul
[15] The Future of Making Map [www.iftf.org/node/1766]