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Serious gaming

  1. ProTesters: a board game for teaching the testing process

    ProTesters: a board game for teaching the testing process

    Gabriel Gonçalves Moreira, Andreia Malucelli, Sheila Reinehr, and Frederick van Amstel. 2022. ProTesters: a board game for teaching the testing process. In XXI Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality (SBQS ’22), November 07–10, 2022, Curitiba, Brazil. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3571473.3571503 - Jan 28, 2023
  2. Iguaçú III community center (2022)

    Iguaçú III community center (2022)

    Uniperifa collective joined Laboratory of Design against Oppression students to plan community actions in Condomínio Iguaçu III. This slum-upgrade urban project relocated people near the city center to the city outskirts, leaving people disconnected from the city and having little sense of community. We identified several sustainability issues that required increasing this sense of community, […] - Dec 13, 2022
  3. UTFPR Curitiba master plan (2022)

    UTFPR Curitiba master plan (2022)

    UTFPR Curitiba formed its first Campus Master Plan Committee in 2022 to plan its future spatial developments. The campus has three localities. Seeking for broader adoption, the committee adopted a participatory design approach. The entire university community will be invited to collaborate in the planning process through various activities and methodologies. The goal is to […] - Dec 13, 2022
  4. The role of games in developing transformative agency

    The role of games in developing transformative agency

    Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2021). The role of games in developing transformative agency. Brazilian Journal of Socio-Historical-Cultural Research and Activity, 3(2). - Dec 31, 2021
  5. Lego Physical Oxymoron (LEPOX)

    Lego Physical Oxymoron (LEPOX)

    LEPOX challenges the participants to collaboratively identify and materialize a contradiction using Lego pieces. This game is inspired by the LEGO Serious Play ® method, which relies upon physical metaphors for improving team communication. The participants are invited to make a model of what they perceive to be a contradiction in terms — a physical […] - Apr 6, 2020
  6. Stake Holder Analysis with Lovely Links (SHALL)

    Stake Holder Analysis with Lovely Links (SHALL)

    SHALL is short for Stake Holder Analysis with Lovely Links. It consists of mapping all the stakeholders possibly interested in a problem through their organization and inter-organizational relationships. Each stakeholder is mapped as a doll and relationships are loosely represented as a thread connecting the dolls. The game starts by asking the participants to map […] - Apr 6, 2020
  7. Problem Solution Problem (PSP)

    Problem Solution Problem (PSP)

    PSP is a simple game that quickly explores the design space for a particular project. It starts by asking for problem statements written on Post-its. Then, problems are exchanged and the competing teams need to solve the problems. The solutions go back to the first team, who needs to find problems for these solutions. The […] - Nov 1, 2018
  8. Idea Market

    Idea Market

    Idea Market is a design game I developed for pitching and developing ideas while looking for partners in entrepreneurship programs. Participants start alone with their idea and progress by selling it to someone who is willing to give up his or her own idea. It is a very competitive game since nobody wants to give […] - Nov 1, 2018
  9. LegoML

    LegoML

    Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a set of standard diagrams and notations for creating software. We created at PUPCR a physical version of these diagrams with Lego to enable the participation of designers, clients, and users in software architecture and modeling activities. The concrete representations help the participants understand and make good use of software […] - Nov 1, 2018
  10. Expansive Play

    Expansive Play

    I’m developing further the Lego Serious Play method to support Expansive Design, in particular, to represent tough contradictions in a humorous style. This is useful when people avoid talking about contradictions openly or deny their existence. The pretext of play enables critical voices and radical alternatives to emerge. References Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2021). The […] - Oct 31, 2018
  11. Strategic Planning for Hotmilk (2017)

    Strategic Planning for Hotmilk (2017)

    Hotmilk is an innovation hub inside the Catholic University of Parana which connects the University to the industry. In 2017, a new director was appointed to PUC Agency (its former name) and one of his first acts was to organize a participatory strategic planning session. I facilitated the session and helped to compile the results into […] - Oct 31, 2018
  12. Educational Game Design

    Educational Game Design

    Educational Game Design is a 45 hours graduate course from the Design program of Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). The course was delivered in collaboration with prof. Andre Battaiola. The syllabus includes readings on Game Design and Cultural Historical Activity Theory. The initial classes reproduced some experiments with entertainment and educational games. The Silent Game […] - Apr 28, 2016
  13. The Transformative Potential of Game Spatiality in Service Design

    The Transformative Potential of Game Spatiality in Service Design

    Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. and Garde, Julia. Games to explore the possibilities of space and the space of possibilities in service design. Simulation & Gaming, 47 (5), 2016, p. 628-650. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878116635921 - Mar 4, 2016
  14. Organization change at a major hospital

    Organization change at a major hospital

    Clinics Hospital of Paraná had problems to coordinate the work of the surgery unit, materials unit and the surgery center. The patients were already suffering from the bad effects of their political fights. I was called to conduct a pilot study if my design games could help overcome the struggle. The hospital was undergoing a major organization […] - Dec 13, 2015
  15. Expensive or expansive? Learning the value of boundary crossing in design projects

    Expensive or expansive? Learning the value of boundary crossing in design projects

    Amstel, F. M.C. van; Zerjav, V; Hartmann, T; Dewulf, G.P.M.R; Voort, M.C. van der. 2016. Expensive or expansive? Learning the value of boundary crossing in design projects. Engineering Project Organization Journal, 6 (1), Pages 15-29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21573727.2015.1117974 - Nov 18, 2015
  16. The Conceal and Show Game (2015)

    The Conceal and Show Game (2015)

    The way Facebook conceals or shows up messages in the news feed is a mystery to most users. Facebook gives the impression that if a user posts a status update, all of her friends receive it in the timeline, but that is not always true. The Edgerank algorithm decides what is shown in the timeline based on three variables: This abstract […] - Jul 31, 2015
  17. Double stimulation experiments

    Double stimulation experiments

    For my PhD research, I had to do some experiments in design education. Design education is characterized by a learning-by-doing approach when the learner is pushed to take the lead of experimentation. This represents a problem for design educators who also want to test the research hypothesis within teaching activities since it is not easy […] - Dec 20, 2014
  18. Game spatiality

    Game spatiality

    I’m developing a concept to understand how board games are employed to produce a social space among the players where conflict is enacted and worked out. Game spatiality is the sense of being in a space produced by playing a particular game. This sense is gradually developed through the bodily actions of players trying to […] - Aug 14, 2014
  19. The Expansive Hospital Game (2013)

    The Expansive Hospital Game (2013)

    The Expansive Hospital is a board game in which players collaborate and compete to build a hospital with plastic blocks. The game design is based on research conducted with three healthcare construction projects in the Netherlands, commissioned by Pioneering. The research found that hospital design is often over schedule due to the conflicts of interests […] - Nov 12, 2013
  20. Making games to communicate research findings

    Making games to communicate research findings

    After two years conducting field studies about the participation of healthcare professionals in construction projects, I decided to make a board game based on my findings. The target players are those same professionals I’m studying. The idea is that the construction and healthcare professionals can switch their roles for a while and understand their different […] - Apr 4, 2013
  21. A Problem-Solving Game for Collective Creativity

    A Problem-Solving Game for Collective Creativity

    I presented a drafty paper at INSCOPE, a conference about Social Innovation. My goal was to get some feedback about the theoretical framework I’m working on to link creativity to organizational change. Instead of taking creativity as an eureka moment or as talent of an individual, I take it as a social process. According to […] - Oct 27, 2011
  22. CICITY (2011)

    CICITY (2011)

    Codesign of an interactive installation for the 2nd International Innovative Cities Conference, held in Curitiba, Brazil. The main conference’s theme was about the responsibility of individual’s action on the macro scale, bringing speakers like Fritjof Capra, Steven Johnson, and Jaime Lerner to discuss new frontiers of urban innovation. The main hall of the conference had […] - Jul 22, 2011
  23. Critical games to reflect on violence

    Critical games to reflect on violence

    Often, videogames are considered the cause of inadequate violent acts. Traditional media prefer to find an easy culprit instead of discussing the broader problem: the origins of urban violence. The gamer that enacts an inadequate violent act would do it by the influence of videogames. To avoid this behavior, the gamer should not be exposed […] - Jul 7, 2010