Facilitating collaboration through design games

In recent years both companies and research communities call for collaborative work practices and user-centered approaches in various design fields. There are several challenges and issues to take into consideration. For instance there is a need to find ways of collaborating across various competences, interests, responsibilities and perhaps professional languages both within one organization, between several organizations and between the organizations and a group of (potential) users. It is necessary to find ways to learn about users and the contexts of use, and to create a common understanding of the development task. This paper presents a set of four design games, which offers solutions to the challenges mentioned. The design games have been developed in the Space Studio during several projects and years. Here experiences are discussed on the basis of two research projects carried out in collaboration with industrial partners and potential users, and use of the games in three educational settings.The overall aim of the design games is to help facilitate a user-centered design process for cross-disciplinary design groups early in the design process. Framing collaborative design activities in a game format, arguably improves idea generation and communication between stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed.