Learning how to apply design in city planning through a card game
CMU Graduate Design Thesis 2018–2019
This post is part of an ongoing documentation series for my design thesis research on Maintaining Policy Intent for City Planners. Please find the full collection here.
A year ago, I started my thesis research with a simple intent to understand how human-centered design can be helpful for the field of city planning (from a policymaking perspective). I ask myself: what can happen if planners are more like designers?
After a year, I have wrapped up my thesis (which you can read here). In this article, which is the last of this documentation series on Medium, I will include:
- a brief overview of my final thesis deliverable — a card game that consolidates all of my thesis learning into a playable experience; and
- reasons why I decided to design a card game, amongst all possible things.
The Game
The Death and Life of Great Planning Meetings
The Death and Life of Great Planning Meetings is a card game and a facilitation tool for planners, community organizers, committee members, or anyone who has been to a planning meetings. The Game’s ultimate goals are:
- showcasing how different human/environmental factors in a planning project contribute to successful meetings;
- introducing design methods that might be useful for specific planning challenges; and
- creating resonating moments and/or points of debate amongst players.
Playing the Game
In the Game, each player is in charge of a community planning group of five whose members have different personal traits, making them easier or harder to work with. Players can up their group members’ good traits and down those of others using different story cards (if you have played Atlas Gloom, the setups are very similar). To win, a player must solve three problem cards with appropriate method cards, which can only be played when the group has enough good traits collectively.
The game rules and cards are designed not only to create tension, strategy, and entertainment for game play but also to embed “learning objectives”. These learning objectives highlight the often unseen human/environmental factors that impact how successful a planning meeting can be.
Here is an example of a round of game and the learning objectives embedded in each move:
Post-Game Facilitation
Post-game facilitation activities are key to helping players identify and discuss the “learning objectives”. The Handbook details the core learning objectives and different facilitation activities (with tutorial).
Note that there is no right or wrong ways to run the facilitation (it isn’t even strictly necessary). The point is to get players recognizing how much of their experience in the Game can be true in the real world and how that may change their future approaches.
Learning about Design Methods
The learning of design methods is camouflaged in the “method cards” which are design-inspired methods to tackle various problems in the Game. Had players become interested any of the methods, they could learn more about the methods in the Method Book. The book includes succinct instructions on when, where, and how to use each method appeared in the Game.
The Method Book can also be a standalone document for anyone who is interested in applying new methods in their planning practices.
Game Testing and Feedback
Play-test feedback was largely positive, with most players finding the game “creative” and “engaging”. Plays described the card content as humorous and reflective of what they experienced in real planning meetings. They also appreciated the design details of the cards (when the cards overlap and create certain effects, etc.) that made the game special for them. Post-game discussions often started with certain cards and ended with players’ concerns or hopes on their current planning projects/cities.
As for bringing the Game to the wild, some planners are excited about using it in community outreach, others remain hesitant in introducing gamification to the rather formal planning department. Setting up game nights or sending free samples to different cities are possible ways to further identify use cases. From a more hopeful perspective, the Game may also be popular beyond planning professionals, similar to how Wingspan has become popular beyond bird enthusiasts.
So … why a card game?
Throughout the product development, many factors surfaced and resurfaced to shape the purpose, form, and intended quality of interaction. Instead of trying to set up a linear narrative (because it was not), I’ll point to three design considerations that majorly steered the product development:
- Create a safe place to empathize and simulate
- Package design as information, not knowledge
- Find the right parameters for me and my audience
1. Create a Safe Place to Empathize and Simulate
The idea of a game really started with an A/B testing session I did in February, when I wanted to understand whether planners would execute a “design method” (a facilitation tool in this case) in their planning meetings more successfully if they receive a more personalized learning experience. To run the A/B testing, I made up a fake meeting and asked some of my participants (all planners) to role play as meeting members, while others running the meeting with the newly taught “design method”.
Immediately after the A/B testing started, participants went rogue on acting out their “iconic” meeting members (anti-development, evidence-driven, single-issue, you name it) and practically putting the “design method” into no use. People were shouting, interrupting others, and making absurd comments (they do happen in real life!). Long story short, my assumption was wrong — the personalized learning experience part didn’t matter.
What mattered was how the A/B testing created a safe place for everyone to empathize with one another. Not only did everyone have a great time during the testing, they also voluntarily stayed for another hour discussing what really mattered in their respected communities. Furthermore, the testing allowed them to simulate the execution and saw the method’s effect first hand, making it all the more powerful and convincing.
This experience planted a small seed in me.
“Whatever I end up creating, it should give people the same freedom, joy, and sense of being understood like what I saw today,” I told myself.
2. Package Design as Information, not Knowledge
Throughout my research, I have seen a growing resistance to a didactic approach from planners. On one hand, planners have doubts for new approaches (even best practices) because these approaches may not apply to the specific environmental and social contexts in their projects. Even when they adopt a method, they will extensively personalize it to fit the community’s needs. On the other hand, planners’ pride in professional experience and knowledge is a delicate topic. Some planners may feel frustrated or threatened when new “knowledge” published by respected agencies conflicts with what they currently practice.
A way to address this emotion is to packaged design as “information” that are neutral by nature and free to adopt (or not). When people are given the agency to decide if information is useful for them, they feel trusted and their expertise respected. They will become more invested in the information they deem valid. In the A/B testing, planners experimented with a method and decided that it wasn’t useful — and it was fine! No design method is universally applicable, and it should be humbly presented as so.
Challenge reframe: How can I create an experience that presents design methods as information (not “knowledge”) in a simulated environment that also facilitates empathy building amongst participants?
3. Find the Right Parameters for Me and My Audience
Even with the reframed challenge statement, there are still many product directions: labs, workshops, games, courses, pop-ups, acting, you name it. Frankly, most of them will probably work if given the appropriate context. Some also already exist in the wild (Together San Rafael is a good example for a city-level learning lab that applies human-centered design).
After some initial sketching and prototyping, I realized that it wasn’t about choosing the “best” solution, but finding one that I can actually build, test, and iterate based on what I’ve learned about my audience (planners). With that, I consolidated more design goals for my product:
- has relatively short engagement time (planners are busy)
- has a positive ending scenario or a “hook” (something to look forward to)
- accessible/minimal on-boarding (capture interests quickly)
- social and lighthearted by nature (existing interactions are too formal)
- specific to the field of planning (feels unique and personalized)
- low cost (easy to replicate)
- fully functional on its own (no need for maintenance or further development post-thesis)
Having set the parameters, I then had a hard look on whether it’d be truly fruitful to incorporate technology, multi-stakeholder services, or other trendy but potentially costly interventions into my design proposal (which would be thought provoking but not readily implementable).
Eventually I became very pragmatic in my ideation process and focused more on refining the “positive”, “social” experiences than the medium/form. The rest of the story was rather simple: I made a game prototype with paper, the idea got the most support in testing, so I developed the game further. One month later I had a game prototype that lives in the wild. Yay!
What’s next?
The year-long thesis research has officially ended (find the final doc here), but the product development is still slowly moving.
Please contact me if you or your network would like to play or get a copy of the Game! The more we discuss and engage, the more likely we can start seeing design being tested and integrated in the world of city planning :)
Angela is a recent design graduate at Carnegie Mellon University. She currently lives in San Francisco. Please email [yinjwang@gmail.com] for any inquiry.
