I believe that if we want to fully unleash our potential as a society, as individuals and as a species, we must change the way we think about play because our world is in trouble. The ways we teach our kids in school doesn’t do justice anymore to the complexity of the world.
Social media has transformed into a swamp of mindless consumption. And technological progress is gaining more and more speed. But we have no idea where we want to go with it. So, these are big and serious real-world problems. I wish there would be a way to do something about it.
Well, I wish there would be a way to level up teaching in school. I wish there would be a way for us to turn social media back into a place where people meet and discover their creativity. And I wish there would be a way for us to put different futures on the table, talk about them, and decide which ones we want to thrive for. Well, you know what? There is a way.
When I was a kid, I learned a lot about the complexity of the world and how to interact with it through playing - playing with my parents and with my friends. I learned a lot about my own creativity through making stuff just for fun. And I learned a lot about a future that I would want to live in by pretending that it was already there.
Now, if playing is so good for learning, once we grow up, why do we stop? Maybe we think games are not good. Maybe we think games are addictive, they make people violent, or they are just a waste of time.
Well, today I'm here to tell you that this is simply not true. Let’s not confuse the content and the medium. Yes, there are some really bad games. True. But the medium of play is just a very powerful tool for us to immerse ourselves in anything.
Now, what if we took the power of this tool and applied it to some big, serious real-world problems?
Today I want to show you three research projects that we conducted at the University of Wuppertal that show us how play can help us to learn, grow and thrive. The first one was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, and it’s about the complex topic of politics and bringing that closer to kids in school through the medium of play. Because when we play, we joyfully explore complex systems from a new perspective, and that's perfect for politics. One of the games that resulted from this project is this.
This is the game Grid by Danny Ludwig. It's a complex game about the transition to renewable energies. You can also see here what our students do well: aesthetics and new kinds of interaction. Now, usually at some point in the project, we would then go into the workshop and build a physical prototype so we can go out and test it with people.
Unfortunately, that was when the pandemic hit us, and the lockdowns came, and nobody was going anywhere. That’s when we almost had to cancel this project because how are you going to test your games with people if you can’t build it and go out and play with them? Fortunately, the situation forced us to rethink the project a bit and do this.
This is the game Consensus by Carl Siepen. And you see it’s a printable version of the game. It’s very low-tech, actually: a single-sided printing, black and white. We could email this, and that’s what we did to people. So during lockdowns, they could play at their kitchen tables. And this is also what we released in the end on the project website.
All the games, the whole collection, can be downloaded by everybody. Teachers in school, no problem. Print it and play it. Also, the students agreed to release every game under a very friendly Creative Commons license. So all the games can be adapted, translated - we have German and English right now - expanded. No problem. It’s very easy. I think that is a great way how play can help us learn. But it can also do more: it can help us grow.
The next project is about finding our creativity in social media. That isn’t easy because social media is, of course, full of instant gratifications, it’s very distracting, it’s fragmented. That's not easy if you look for your own creativity.
But what if we turn things on their head and use these rather problematic aspects of social media as part of the solution? That’s the idea behind CREactivities, a project which I was lucky enough to realize together with Maike Strauch. And CREactivities is a chatbot. It lives in your messenger, and it sends you creative challenges throughout the day.
So if this is about saving money, the first challenge might be: Look for places in the home where unused money tends to pile up. You sharpen your view, you take some photos, and then you send these photos back to the chatbot. And the bot will redistribute your solution to other people who also use CREactivities. Then it will give you feedback. So you get real humans giving you feedback on your ideas.
And this goes on all the way through the entire design process: seeing the problem, sketching ideas, and then building a physical prototype. In this case, that is a piggy bank with milestones to keep you motivated by saving your money in it.
All of that happens in a quest. It’s embedded in a story that takes us all the way to the spark of inspiration, a magical crystal, the source of all creative energy. But it takes us through the valley of idealessness, the jungle of distractions and up to the mountain of doubt. Places we all know too well, I think. But as you progress on this quest, you get better.
There are different design skills that you learn here: that is criticize, research, and vision, and act. And you level up like in a computer game, but differently, not like in a computer game. These are not just numbers in the computer. These are real-life skills you learn. And the feedback comes from real people on real problems.
And of course, if you allow me a little spoiler here, finding creativity is not about finding a magical crystal. It’s about finding it in ourselves. And, of course, you’re not alone. It’s an entire community of people who are eager to invent small solutions for small problems in our everyday lives.
Here you see some of them. And, of course, one result of this project is people who discovered their own creative powers. And that’s something great to discover. And I think that’s a great way how play can help us grow because play can motivate us to keep going until we reach our goal.
So far, I’ve shown you two projects: one about learning, one about growing. The third project I want to show you today is about thriving. And play is good here because play can help us to safely explore different possible futures and decide if we like them or not.
The project I'm showing you here is a critical design project. It's one that explores a dystopian future that I personally do not want. It’s about the question of what would happen to our world, our everyday lives, if we chose to have our governments and our courts be replaced by an artificial intelligence. I’m very happy that I was able to do this project together with David von Netzer, David Hrlic, C.J. Weld, Alex Görts and Piet Becker.
And it’s called aicracy. Let’s take a look. So the students designed different everyday objects that show us what life would be like if we chose to live that way.
Like this: this is a transparency bracelet and, well, all citizens have to wear it all day when they are awake. And it’s used to track everybody, and the algorithm also gives you feedback on your behavior.
This is another wearable. This is the happiness patch. You also wear it in your body, and the morning you connect it to your bloodstream, and it will measure how happy you are. And if people are a bit unhappy, it gives you a shot of dopamine, and it makes you artificially happy. Mmmm.
This is Julia. She’s the perfect citizen from the point of view of the algorithm. She’s jogging and keeping herself fit, but only where she can be filmed by the surveillance camera.
This is Alex, her boyfriend. He’s hitting the snooze button. The algorithm doesn’t like that. He also wears the happiness patch. He’s very happy. Of course he is. But he has a bit different life, I would say. Here, for example, you will see him go to work. He goes to work through dark passages, and the algorithm does not like that. This you can film in Wuppertal without special effects necessary.
Okay. Alex has arrived at the supermarket. Now he’s going shopping. What is shopping like? Well, maybe personalised prices, like we know them from insurances, would also find their way into the supermarket. We want to motivate him to be more engaged. So natural food is a bit more expensive for him. But no worries - he gets the same nutrition from a tasty powder. Mmm.
Differently, when Julia comes to the supermarket, we want to encourage her to keep as she is. We want to keep her healthy. That is why natural food is cheaper for her, subsidised.
How can this be fair? How can this be programmed? Who programs it? Well, everybody. We all program it together.
Every Sunday is voting day, and that means every Sunday we go to the voting terminal. Here we see Julia, and she’s getting marbles. These are votes. So different questions about how to live together. And she can answer these questions by inserting marbles. Now Alex is coming to the voting terminal. Any idea what happens? A bit less. He’s not that well compliant, I would say.
He’s not that popular from the algorithm’s point of view, so he’s getting fewer marbles. And that’s a bit complicated, of course. Because there are more than three questions. I can understand that this is difficult. And I can also understand that he’s getting a bit angry here, but don’t worry, in aicracy everybody is happy all the time. Mmmmm.
Who wants to live in this future? Nobody. Okay, good. Me neither. But playing it through is something that could be the first step to prevent it from happening, of course.
I would also like to show you what ‘playing it through’ meant for us. This is our design process. So we start looking to the world: what’s happening right now? And then we try to see the potentials in it. Here come the potentials, okay? And then we focus on the most promising ones.
We respond to these potentials with concepts: what could be done concretely? We try to give it a shape, sketches get bigger, and then we go into the workshop and build something.
Many people think design is what happens at the bottom part. It’s actually the entire thing. And that is how play can help us to thrive. It can help us to safely explore possible futures without having to fear any consequences. And that’s great.
So, let’s change the way we think about play. Play is not a waste of time. It’s not something only kids should do. It’s not something that won’t work on big, serious, real-life problems. It has the power to, for example, level up learning to a new way that matches the complexity of the world. It has the power to transform social media from a place of mindless consumption into one of mindful connection. And it has the power to let us safely, like a child, explore what could be and use that as a point of orientation.
Is that a future I want, or is that something we want to stay away from? It can change our world. It can change us. It can change our future. All we have to do is change the way we think about it. So when you see a problem out there, try it, play with it. Because our brains run on fun.
(Applause)
Thank you.
