Dan Lockton, Jillian Student, Jonas Torrens, Merijn Bruijnes, Federico Andreotti, Kuangyi Xing, and Niva van der Geer
In this workshop, we introduce Unbox, a game-like tangible toolkit which allows teams to open the black box of collaborative processes. Materialising a variety of new metaphors through physical artefacts and doing so via a playful-yet-meaningful process offers teams the potential for exploration of new ways of thinking and working as alternatives to common project metaphors such as milestones, goals, work packages, north stars, etc. Unbox’s use of maps as metaphorical spaces, which serve as contexts for related metaphors to be used and explored together (rather than in isolation), adds the possibility of explicitly treating these spaces as a form of boundary object into which collaborators from different backgrounds can enter and together explore, navigate, and experience. Equally, a co-creative process of creating—and debating—new metaphors together can be part of a team integrating their collective knowledge and expectations. Workshop participants explore applying Unbox to their own existing or potential future projects to open up thinking about the roles of metaphors in collaborations, as well as providing direct inspiration for how games, maps, and tangible thinking tools could be used in their projects, in research, education, and knowledge exchange contexts, in relation to systemic design.
KEYWORDS: metaphors; tangible; boundary objects; physical models; games
RSD TOPIC(S): Learning & Education, Mapping & Modelling, Methods & Methodology