Learning about Co-creation Tools with a Game

In the last week of November, UNaLab project partners met to exchange ideas, report on the progress made and define the next steps. The meeting took place in Basaksehir Living Lab in Istanbul, where we had the opportunity to see work of the Living Lab - such as a mobile health station and a smart house.

ENoLL’s main role in the project is to guide UNaLab cities (Eindhoven, Genova, Tampere, Prague, Cannes, Castellon, Stavanger and Basaksehir) in developing Urban Living Labs and to monitor co-creation activities taking place in the cities.

One of our tasks is also to develop a co-creation toolkit, which can be used beyond the UNaLab project. This toolkit compiles all tools and methods that have either been developed or used in UNaLab. Some tools are fairly simple, while others are more complex. A challenge we were facing before the meeting in Basaksehir was how to make sure everyone in the project understands how to use these tools in a real-life setting.

Our answer was to develop a game.

We believe that through the process of playing, participants are able to understand better new concepts, take on a different perspective and experiment with different options. Using the game instead of a presentation, also requires high engagement of everyone involved, which is exactly what we were aiming for.

We developed an interactive game through which players discovered different stakeholder roles and Living Lab functions in an urban environment that is affected by a climate-related problem. The objective of the game was to develop a story and include different stakeholders in innovative ways, leading up to a Nature Based Solution (the solution per se is not relevant for the game – the focus lies on the process of innovation). As a result, players become familiar with the tools in the UNaLab toolkit and learn how to use them.

The game developed as part of the UNaLab co-creation toolkit was excellent. There is great potential for further development and use of the game as a mechanism to create shared stories, find viable solutions to challenges of global significance, and to of course increase collaboration between different stakeholders. Many thanks to all UNaLab partners who contributed ideas towards the game, and especially the UNaLab team within ENoLL who spent a lot of time and energy to ideate, plan, develop, and make the game a reality. Sami Kazi, UNaLab Coordinator, VTT

Due to the positive feedback which we have received on the game, we will further develop it and run a workshop with the game at the OpenLivingLab Days in Thessaloniki, Greece (3-5 September 2019).