Design Game
What is it?
The StreetForum Design Game is a board game which addresses the stages of planning and design, as players design a certain urban area by placing specific street design elements on the gameboard, explaining their ideas, and negotiating with other players.
Why is it useful?
Players exchange their perspectives while playing and designing an urban area. The informal, playful setting enables players to express their views naturally in context. The rules and characteristics of the game allow players to act as certain predefined characters – roles – where they must envision the viewpoints of a character and act according to its needs.
Who should use it?
The StreetForum Design Game addresses all stakeholders involved in the (re)design of an urban area, such as citizens, residents, business owners, city planners, decision-makers, government, etc.
How to use it?
The gameboard represents a certain location including several element fields. Players put element cards on these fields to illustrate what they need at that particular place. Elements are pieces of infrastructure, such as greenery or a bench. As the number of elements grows, fewer spaces are available, and players need to negotiate which elements can stay on the board and which can be removed. Character cards define the role a player is representing in the game. Personal goal cards define a specific goal a player needs to achieve throughout the game. Since each player follows a different personal goal, these cards support debate and negotiations among players. Action cards add moments of surprise to the game by, e.g., allowing a player to place an additional element. The game supports an augmented reality (AR) view where elements are displayed as three-dimensional objects in a smartphone app.
Example of good practices
The StreetForum Design Game was played to collect ideas for a planned redesign during a street event at Rahlgasse (Vienna), in October 2024. Three engaged players took part in the game; two were schoolchildren attending a grammar school in this street, and the other player was an adult interested in the game and who knew the location well. It was very interesting to observe how the players tried to reach their specific goals by placing the needed elements, but also negotiating with each other when elements had to be dealt with collaboratively.
This tool was developed by Artifact-based Computing and User Reserearch, TU Wien. Contact: Hilda Tellioglu (hilda.tellioglue@tuwien.ac.at), Gerfried Mikusch (gerfried.mikusch@tuwien.ac.at)
Resources
The downloadable items include user manuals for the tool, along with both printable and digital components. These are listed below, and accessible by clicking on the text:
Cards used in the game (action cards, character cards, personal goal cards)
Design Game overview (fix points)
Design Game overview (flex points)
Element tokens (fix points and flex points)
3D models for point coins (flex points)
Game documentation forms (for gamemasters)
Collection of gameboards for different venues of the StreetForum project