Towards tangible gamified co-design at school: two studies in primary schools

Co-design is an ideal approach to design with users. It allows designers to create products, such as games, with their intended users and in their natural environment, e.g., children and their teachers in their school. Nowadays school contexts, however, pose their own requirements to co-design, which can affect its success. For instance, school contexts tend to be associated to boring rote by learners, who are used to interactive digital games. Gamification can then help in creating a positive engaging experience for school classes that co-design, as games do. This paper takes up such a view: it gamifies co-design contexts in order to positively engage school classes. To this end it presents two studies with gamified co-design in primary schools: heterogeneous teams co-designed prototypes by resolving missions as in a game, in the first short-term study; they did it in an even more gamified context, in the second long-term study. Results of both studies are encouraging for the approach. The paper also advances basic guidelines for tangibly gamifying co-design at school, grounded in the studies and literature.