The role of participatory design methods in

working with refugees to co-develop games

for learning

Matthew Bates, Nottingham Trent University, UK

• RISE aims to remove the gaps in key competencies

• that are creating barriers to employment

• for refugees in the UK, Germany and Ireland

• via the provision of a focussed curriculum

• and accompanying learning materials,

• including interactive desktop and mobile games learning resources,

• which will be engaging and accessible to the target groups

RISE Project

• Participatory design workshops run in the UK, Ireland and Germany

• Spring 2013

• Attempt to apply previous participatory design methods

• With different target demographic of end user

Investigation

Objectives for Participatory Design

Hart’s Ladder

A Comparison of Approaches

Workshop Design

Issue 1:

- Participant group difficult to organise

Solution:

-Weekly activities (10) condensed into monthly activities (3)

-Duration of project the same but contact hours reduced

Issues

Issue 2:

- Cultural interpretation of ‘games’ as educational products

Solution:

-Project output considered learning applications

-Co-operative enquiry process revised became issues led

-Identify issue, propose solution, map into gameplay narrative

Issues

Output - Visual designs

• difficult top apply participatory design methods with demographic

• visual design documents useful for facilitating discussion

• BUT, design decisions are difficult to interpret

• requiring use of a selection matrix to quantify relevance of designs

• to achieve the desired outcomes of the RISE project

• This requires higher level of participation from educators

• which limits participation of end user to lower levels of Hart’s Ladder

Conclusions

Thank you