NordiCHI Workshop

When Design Becomes Visible: Structural Awareness and Reimagination in Playable Systems

Games, simulations, LARPs, and participatory exercises all create structures that shape what participants can do, notice, and imagine. Rules define what counts as success. Roles distribute power. Constraints make some actions possible and others difficult or impossible. These structures also carry assumptions about how the world works and what kinds of futures are thinkable. In this half-day workshop at NordiCHI, we will explore what happens when we make those structures visible and treat them as something that can be questioned and changed.

We will work with a three-part approach:

• Exposure. Identifying goals, roles, incentives, absences, and assumptions in a playable system.
• Mapping. Comparing those structures with the situation or world the system represents.
• Reimagination. Changing parts of the system and exploring what different structures make possible.

Participants will first play and analyze a shared simulation game. In the second part of the workshop, we will apply the approach to systems from participants’ own research or practice.

Who is the workshop for?

We welcome researchers and practitioners working with HCI, interaction design, games, LARP, participatory design, simulation, serious games, CSCW, and related areas.

You do not need previous experience in game design.

Organisers

The workshop is organized by Jakob Bandelin, Weronika Szatkowska and Annika Waern at Uppsala University.

It takes place as part of NordiCHI 2026 in Vaasa, Finland, 3–7 October.