Session S1E 0-7803-7961-6/03/$17.00 © 2003 IEEE November 5-8, 2003, Boulder, CO 33 rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S1E-6 EXPLORING DESIGN THROUGH GAME Eunice Ratna Sari 1 1 Eunice Ratna Sari, translate-easy.com, sari@translate-easy.com Abstract - A design project is a social process that typically involves social interaction and collaboration among people with different backgrounds. Within the process, the pattern of social interaction and collaboration is not always trivial. To cope with these challenges, a designer needs to be equipped with some good social skills to achieve an optimal professional work quality. Unfortunately, the typical design education is lack of emphasise in the development of social competence. In this paper, we propose a creation of board game as a means of exploring design in a context of a balance design repertoire development within a design education framework. A first-hand experience in the development of 4 Seasons board game serves its purpose to explore design through game. The results, conclusions, and observations of the study were parts of the design and development of the game itself. Index Terms – 4 Seasons, design education, design repertoire, exploring design, board game. INTRODUCTION Introducing design literatures and conducting some project- based design activities are the typical methods of teaching design. Reference [5] argues that it is necessary to move beyond the introduction of design literatures and individual project-based design activities to nourish Schoen’s reflective practicum [7] in teaching design. The introduction of design literatures that includes literature tutorial, literature discussion, and literature study can help students develop their understanding of design theories and learn from previous design works. Some project-based design experience can give students some opportunities to apply their knowledge of design theories. Nevertheless, both of the methods are insufficient to help the students in developing collaborative design competence, thus, reference [5] describes some board games as learning design collaboration test beds. Despite of its significant contribution, reference [5] only provides a concise description of board game creation process by design practitioners and only emphasised the values and lessons of playing board games. The lack of description in the board game creation process from students’ point of view disregards the role of board game creation process as a significant part of the development of students’ design practice repertoire. To augment the previous research effort and to provide a holistic view of design exploration through board game, this paper reports an empirical study of 4 Seasons board game (see Figure 1) creation at the University of Southern Denmark. Furthermore, the results of questionnaires to the design students who created several other board games serve their purposes to enrich the value of this empirical study. FIGURE 1 THE 4 SEASONS BOARD GAME GAME IN DESIGN Game is an adaptable framework for social interaction to build design vocabulary for fruitful idea generation and design discussion. It can spur creativity of participants in a co-design process [2,5]. Furthermore, the familiar, egalitarian and relaxed atmosphere of a game can help different stakeholders to work together [6]. The Silent game [4] is an example of a game that simulates certain aspects of design process, design moves and strategies. Searching for an inspiration for a design task is sometimes frustrating. Even if there is an inspiration, another potential obstacle is a transformation of inspiration into solutions or design artifacts. In a design study class, ten design participants were asked how they usually got an idea or inspiration. Nine out of ten participants told that they usually got an inspiration or idea when they were not engaged with design tasks. Furthermore, some participants said that they got an inspiration when they looked at the sky, sat on the beach, and lied under the sun. Sky, sea, sun or clouds as a part of nature has become a source of inspiration, idea, or vision; Creative ideas and solutions are the results of mimicking the design and process of nature [1]. In the initial design stage, we had planned to make a game that simulates a designer-client interaction. In the game, a client presented some hints of needs and problems to the designers. The designers, on the other hand, tried to understand the problems and the needs of the client. The designers and the client needed to communicate collaboratively in the form of story telling, role -