Explaining AI

Game making for a designerly exploration of challenges and
opportunities of predictive technologies in public processes

Half-day Workshop at NordiCHI 24, Uppsala, Sweden, October 13 2024

Explore hands-on and directly experience the short-term and longer-term consequences and externalities associated with the introduction and regulatory governance of AI in public sector processes by making tabletop game prototypes.

Participants in the workshop will co-produce one or more speculative game prototypes meant to increase AI literacy and awareness of the different impact, opportunities offered, and challenges posed by different types of AI products—including their possible short- and long-term unintended consequences—of public decision-makers that are tasked with the AI-augmentation of public processes.

Yes. We will make (prototype / provocatype) tabletop games.

The intended audience is students, researchers, practitioners, and civil servants interested in AI literacy in public bodies and public governance, eager to raise awareness of AI challenges and opportunities in the public debate, and curious about the use of tabletop game making as a way to explore, conceptualize, and prototype this complex problem space.

If this sounds like a plan, send a personal half-page statement of interest to nordichi24@designgamesframework.com by end-of-day September 4 2024, CEST

Schedule

Block 1: Introductions and warm up

Facilitators welcome participants, introduce the day’s activities and the Design Games Framework, and scope the workshop. First playthrough.

Discussion

Break: full-room reflections on what happened in Block 1, leg stretching and group making

Block 2: play to remix

Rapid design, no play through, only conceptual understanding

Discussion

Break: full-room reflections, coffee break, leg stretching

Block 3: remix to design

Game making for exploring the challenges and opportunities of AI in public processes using the DGF

Block 4: endgame

Wrap up: full-room reflections, takeaways, and next steps

The Design Games Framework

The Design Games Framework, or DGF, is a structured approach to the co-creation and reflective use of tabletop games aimed at the in-depth exploration of a specific problem space.

The DGF does not aim at the creation of games as generically educational end-products, but focuses on exploiting the design process that leads to a working, successful game as a way to understand, explore, and experience the systemic entanglement of the specific problem space the game itself centers on.

The DGF is applied first reflectively, to analyze, and then generatively, to design, in a process that consists of three distinct phases: play in which selected games are played and then systematically analyzed. This phase favors reflection over generation; remix in which new games are designed that purposefully modify existing games by recasting selected formal, dramatic, or spatial elements. This phase balances reflection and generation; design in which entirely novel games are designed that introduce different formal, dramatic, and spatial elements. This phase favors generation over reflection.

You can read a brief pop-science intro to the DGF or hunt down a paper describing its application to the ethics and technology problem space

Participate

We invite all interested parties, and especially students, researchers, practitioners, and civil servants who intend to participate to send a personal half-page statement of interest to nordichi24@designgamesframework.com by end-of-day September 4 2024, CEST.

The declaration should be in PDF format and clearly state what interest the submitter has in the topic and / or the methodology, their affiliation and primary research or professional interest. A short bio can be included.

The declarations will be reviewed by the organizers and acceptance will be confirmed at the latest by September 6 2024. Submissions will be evaluated based on fit, ability to stimulate discussion, and contribution to the game-making activities that will be carried out during the workshop.

Organizers

Bertil Lindenfalk is a researcher and lecturer at the School of Health and Welfare at Jönköping University. He is a designer by trade and an educator by practice. His research focuses on how designers can be aided in their practice while navigating complex situations and settings, often connected to healthcare contexts. As an educator, Bertil has always had a strong belief in experiential learning and often uses games and other exercises to encourage reflection. His main work focuses on the formalization of the relationship and natural movement between system space and design space during design processes while designers tackle wicked problems, often as collaborative endeavors.

Simon Norris is a PhD student focusing on Human Centered Artificial Intelligence at the department of Intelligent Systems and Digital Design at Halmstad University. A designer and cognitive scientist with twenty five years of experience running an international strategic design agency as founder and CEO, Simon researches AI design and how the incorporation of designerly thinking and practices can help reduce negative externalities and unintended consequences of AI augmentation and integration. He is a contributing author to Advances in Information Architecture (2021).

Andrea Resmini is associate professor of experience design and information architecture in the Department of Intelligent Systems and Digital Design at Halmstad University and a researcher in design games at the University of Skövde. An architect turned information architect turned educator, Andrea is a two-time past president of the Information Architecture Institute, a founding member of Architecta, the Italian Society for Information Architecture, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Information Architecture, and the author of Pervasive Information Architecture (2011), Reframing Information Architecture (2014), and Advances in Information Architecture (2021).

Last updated: June 17 2024 :: Handcrafted with love, care, and Skeleton CSS :: Image: Board game, as envisioned by MidJourney