Let play lead the way

The ability of playfulness to inform many, if not all, design processes and outcomes is the driving principle of DesignCamp2018 at Design School Kolding. The title of the Camp is “PLAY – the design way”. It takes place from 22 January – 2 February and will show how open-ended and playful methods can drive the development of strategic design and playful products.

”We will be gathering about 100 MA students – both our own and students from the University of Southern Denmark, Aalborg University and a number of international universities. For two weeks they will work with specific challenges made available to them by a companies and institutions, including Arla, Danske Bank, Fredericia Municipality, Ledon A/S, LEGO Education, Nicolai for Børn og Starbucks,” explains Lene Nyhus Friis who is Head of the Lab for Design for Play at Design School Kolding. “The purpose is to inject inventiveness and radical reframing into the solutions to issues surrounding the provision of products and services.”

Play is the clue
“Play has in past decades been defined as something outside serious or practical processes, however in DesignCamp2018 it is considered the clue,” says Barnabas Wetton, taching associate professor at Design School Kolding. “We are going to combine two principles – how to act playfully together with users and stakeholders within a design process in order to activate the innate inventiveness, and how to translate this into solutions that contain a degree of playfulness in the widest sense of the word.”

Associate Professor also at Design School Kolding, Sune Gudiksen, elaborates:

”For two intense weeks, these 80-100 students will work in cross-disciplinary groups and produce either playful process proposals or playful products. The design process involves quick iterations where they process insights and translate these into specific ideas supervised by Design School Kolding’s Play team and an invites task force of hands-on practitioners in the field of play. This will be followed by an exploration of the strategic possibilities and directions facilitated by Designits power team. Finally, this will all be turned into prototypes, which will be presented at an eventful conference with acknowledges keynote speakers.”

Design for Play & Designit as driving forces
Design for Play at Design School Kolding will work with Designit to increase the quality of the annual DesignCamp and drive it forward. Designit will offer design research, strategic design and assist the Camp groups in making great ad useful prototypes. Designit’s international experience with making design development from A to B will give the DesignCamp an extra boost. Associate Professor Sune Gudiksen states:
 
”The DesignCamp is part of a powerful and fruitful collaboration between two players to promote design and play. We look forward to embarking on a joint journey over the next few years and to having Designit contribute to our Design for Play programmme in terms of teaching and development focusing on getting students, teachers, developers, companies, stakeholders, and others to work together using design and play as their common platform.”

Open conference
The Camp finishes with an open conference. Keynote speakers are Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Denmark’s first Play Professor and Professor Krystina Castella at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena.

The purpose of the conference is to share knowledge on how to use play in the context of creating playful products, processes and services for the future. With the conference, we seek to acknowledge and enhance the role of play in design by introducing new perspectives from practitioners and academic experts, and we seek to identify the primary possibilities and pitfalls for the future use of play within the field of design.
Through a Play Exhibition and three Play Track Sessions, you will be able to experience the playful inspirational designs created by approx. 100 MA students during the DesignCamp2018.

Head of Camp, Sune Gudiksen, will lead a Panel Discussion between the members of the ‘specialist task force’ that has been set up to facilitate and qualify the students’ work. Through questions defined by the conference guests, the panel will debate interesting topics within the area of play, design and business.

The conference takes place on Friday 2 February and is open to everyone. Please register no later than 29 January (see link).

Organisers
DesignCamp2018 is organised by the Laboratory for Play & Design at Design School Kolding in collaboration with the University of Southern Denmark, Aalborg University and the innovation network D2i - Design to innovate. The DesignCamp2018 is funded by the Region of Southern Denmark and the EU Social Fund.