The role of participatory design in working with refugees to co-develop games for learning by Matthew Bates, David Brown, Aoife Breheny and Manuel Beozzo

1. The role of participatory design methods in
working with refugees to co-develop games
for learning
Matthew Bates, Nottingham Trent University, UK

2. RISE Project
• 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

3. Investigation
• 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

4. Objectives for Participatory Design

5. Hart’s Ladder

6. A Comparison of Approaches
Workshop Design

7. Issues
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

8. 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

9. Output - Visual designs

10. Conclusions
• 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

11. Thank you