Designing by playing and playing by designing: developing design game concepts through the deconstruction of conventional games

Abstract

At the same time that games can optimize design processes by adding meaningful playful interactions to their usual dynamics, the concept of “design games” is still underexplored in theory and not widely disseminated in practice. Therefore, this work aimed to investigate how to facilitate the development of design games. To that end, it proposed a workshop script for developing design games based on the deconstruction of conventional games such as “dominoes,” “UNO,” and “peg solitaire.” The developed script was validated through its application in a graduate-level Design course, resulting in the development of three design game proposals. These are presented and discussed from the perspective of games as artifacts that support the design project process.