Exploring AI through Tabletop Game Making

Designerly Investigations of the Challenges and Opportunities of Human-to-AI Collaboration

Half-day Workshop at HCI International 25, Göteborg, Sweden, Monday June 23 2025

The workshop invites participants to submit contributions that deal with human-to-AI challenges, including human-AI collaboration, the automation vs control agency continuum, the role and impact of AI regulations, and AI literacy.

Selected participants will present and discuss their contributions as a group to flesh out and formalize a common initial list of human-to-AI priorities, and then work with an original tabletop game-making framework for the exploration of wicked problems to translate the human-to-AI priorities into game concepts and prototypes to directly explore, experience first-hand, and reflect on the short- and longer-term challenges and opportunities of human-to-AI cooperation.

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

Participants will co-create one or more speculative game prototypes that investigate the opportunities that AI-augmentation of all sorts of products, services, and experiences offers, and reflect on the short- and long-term challenges and unintended consequences it poses.

The facilitators will introduce participants to an original methodology for game making, the DGF (see Links), contribute a series of seminal game concepts based on previous research and education work, and provide both a selected sample of tabletop games to use as examples and inspiration, and an original skeleton narrative game called “Cognisys Ascendant” that deals with a scenario in which a commercial AI is set to take over the management of a large number of crucial social services.

The participants, supported by the facilitators, will use the prioritized list of human-to-AI challenges and apply it first to the “Cognisys” scenario and then to their own exploration and designs.

Schedule

13:30 - 13:45 :: Welcome and introductions

Presentation of the activities and of the DGF framework

13:45 - 14:30 :: Discussion of participant contributions

Formalization of initial list of prioritised AI challenges

14.30 - 15.30 :: 1st design activity (ideation)

Game playing, remixing and beginning of prototyping

15:30 - 16.00 :: Coffee break

16.00 - 17:00 2nd design activity (creation)

Game making iterations and finalization of prototypes

17.00 - 17.30 :: Final round of reflections

Full room discussion and activity map for next steps

The schedule above is tentative and activities may be moved.

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

Participation and submissions

We invite contributions that deal with human-to-AI challenges and opportunities, such as balancing automation with human agency, the role and impact of AI regulations, human-centered AI approaches, trust and control, and AI literacy. We are especially interested in contributions that explore the role of AI literacy in designing with and for AI. Contributions can either outline theoretical propositions (position papers) or identify challenges or opportunities as encountered in projects and case studies.

Prospective authors should submit their proposals as either long abstracts (1000 words) or short papers (2000-3000 words) in PDF format through the HCII Conference Management System before April 11 2025 AoE. Acceptances or rejections will be communicated to authors by April 25, 2025.

Proposals should also contain a one-paragraph outline or summary of the contribution, and a brief bio of the author(s) (max 150 words per author).

We welcome submissions from students, researchers, practitioners, designers, and decision-makers interested in AI literacy and human-to-AI collaboration who are eager to raise awareness of AI challenges and opportunities, and curious about the use of tabletop game making as a way to explore, conceptualize, and prototype this complex problem space.

Accepted proposals will be distributed among participants before the workshop and discussed orally as part of the initial activities.

Organizers

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).

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.

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: Jan 20 2025 :: Handcrafted with love, care, and Skeleton CSS :: Image: AI City, detail :: joshgmit under the Pixabay Content License