On boarding into playful creativity

We have worked with various stakeholders on a creative design process with play and games inspirations in mind. GameChangers, specifically aims to get individuals and groups to realise their ability to think creatively by repurposing existing ideas and artefacts.

Aligning with Fogg’s Behaviour Model that emphasises that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behaviour to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Prompt/Trigger, Gamechangers onboarding involves nudging people to realise their ability, what they care about (motivation) using familiar prompts and triggers. The “behaviour” that we are expecting to be nurtured is the sustained practice of playful and creative thinking. A “brain-worm” that will nudge you to continually/automatically think about playful solutions for problems, needs, challenges and opportunities that you see in your day to day living.

Feedbacks such as “I didn’t know I could think of a new game to solve this problem in less than one minute…”, “this is empowering…”, etc. demonstrate that simple activities can open up opportunities for mindsets to be changed, which will hopefully translate into sustainable practices.

One of the simplest activities that we normally use to help onboard individuals into quick creative thinking by remixing existing playful and gameful activities is the Remixing Play- The Flash Game! In this quick game, two cards are flashed on the screen – (1) Game inspiration(s) (2)Topic/Challenges/Needs. In the first iteration, we asked people to create a new game in 2 minutes. A few managed to come up with new ideas in less than a minute. And in other sessions, a few created new playful ideas in less than 30 seconds!!! Do not underestimate the power of creativity!

Please feel free to reuse the slides below that can be used as prompts to encourage people to derive motivation from what they care about and realise their ability to be a creator and innovator in the process. Using this template, you can add other game inspirations and topics/themes.

This approach is often used as an introduction activity for the Remixing Play into a Gameplan approach.

Please tweet us (#GChangers @disrupt_learn @sarnab75)  with photos (if possible) if you are re-using this approach (CC by NC).

Check out remixed games by our community in Malaysia: Games created by teachers for teachers