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J. Kleinen and L. Kurz
nature of sustainability challenges and necessary to reach out and create a desirable
future for our society?
There is a wealth of knowledge on making university operations sustainable (Leal
2009) and on integrating knowledge on sustainability topics into the curriculum (Leal
2018). Our research, however, focusses on building a bridge between the student’s
identity and practices as budding professionals as well as conscious and active citizens
shaping the future of our society.
Science-Fiction Prototyping is a method used to generate research ideas for new
technology while considering their implications for people and society (Johnson
2011). It does so by guiding its users in writing and reflecting upon a “futuristic”
short story. This allows participants to jump to novel ideas, identifying new research
directions as well as interdependencies.
Originally, Science-Fiction Prototyping was “out-sourced” to professional
science-fiction writers or used by individual scientists to add to their own research
practice. It has also been turned into different formats, for groups of subject matter
experts (Kymäläinen 2015) and for Business Innovation (Wu 2013). However, Wu
notes that there is need for more educational material on the method as well as for a
refinement of structures and rules.
We developed a game-based intervention to address this gap: “Collaborative
Science-Fiction Prototyping” (CSFP) workshops about “the sustainable factory of
the future”, previously implemented for cross-organizational groups of researchers
and developers in an open innovation network organization. CSFP provides a recipe
for how to turn the telling of a short story into an easy, reliable and replicable process
and a truly collaborative effort.
Serious games’ primary purpose is not to entertain (Abt 1987), but to harness the
benefits which games and play provide, e.g. higher motivation, engagement (Rigby
2014) and creativity; like gamification, “the use of game elements in non-game
contexts” (Deterding et al. 2011). Note that games are formalized systems with
a goal, while play “is not tied to objects but brought by people to the complex
interrelations with and between things that form daily life” (Sicart 2014). The concept
of meaningful gamification reconciles this by using “gameful and playful layers to
help a user find personal connections that motivate engagement with a specific context
for long-term change” (Nicholson 2015).
Our CSFP concept builds on this, aiming to create play through a storytelling
game. It adds to the existing knowledge by detailing a successful implementation of
this concept, which combines the motivational benefits of game-based methods with
future-oriented ideation and reflection on the connection between society and technology in one offering. For the application at universities, we adapted our original
format to fit a larger student group by substituting a card game for the facilitator-led
game. This study’s contribution is therefore twofold: The re-design of the SCFP
method, and the analysis of its test as an offering to introduce the topic of sustainability into an engineering and technology management curriculum. Our aim is to
foster the intrinsic motivation, perspectives and skills enabling our future engineers
to develop the technology and systems for society’s sustainable future.
J. Kleinen and L. Kurz
nature of sustainability challenges and necessary to reach out and create a desirable
future for our society?
There is a wealth of knowledge on making university operations sustainable (Leal
2009) and on integrating knowledge on sustainability topics into the curriculum (Leal
2018). Our research, however, focusses on building a bridge between the student’s
identity and practices as budding professionals as well as conscious and active citizens
shaping the future of our society.
Science-Fiction Prototyping is a method used to generate research ideas for new
technology while considering their implications for people and society (Johnson
2011). It does so by guiding its users in writing and reflecting upon a “futuristic”
short story. This allows participants to jump to novel ideas, identifying new research
directions as well as interdependencies.
Originally, Science-Fiction Prototyping was “out-sourced” to professional
science-fiction writers or used by individual scientists to add to their own research
practice. It has also been turned into different formats, for groups of subject matter
experts (Kymäläinen 2015) and for Business Innovation (Wu 2013). However, Wu
notes that there is need for more educational material on the method as well as for a
refinement of structures and rules.
We developed a game-based intervention to address this gap: “Collaborative
Science-Fiction Prototyping” (CSFP) workshops about “the sustainable factory of
the future”, previously implemented for cross-organizational groups of researchers
and developers in an open innovation network organization. CSFP provides a recipe
for how to turn the telling of a short story into an easy, reliable and replicable process
and a truly collaborative effort.
Serious games’ primary purpose is not to entertain (Abt 1987), but to harness the
benefits which games and play provide, e.g. higher motivation, engagement (Rigby
2014) and creativity; like gamification, “the use of game elements in non-game
contexts” (Deterding et al. 2011). Note that games are formalized systems with
a goal, while play “is not tied to objects but brought by people to the complex
interrelations with and between things that form daily life” (Sicart 2014). The concept
of meaningful gamification reconciles this by using “gameful and playful layers to
help a user find personal connections that motivate engagement with a specific context
for long-term change” (Nicholson 2015).
Our CSFP concept builds on this, aiming to create play through a storytelling
game. It adds to the existing knowledge by detailing a successful implementation of
this concept, which combines the motivational benefits of game-based methods with
future-oriented ideation and reflection on the connection between society and technology in one offering. For the application at universities, we adapted our original
format to fit a larger student group by substituting a card game for the facilitator-led
game. This study’s contribution is therefore twofold: The re-design of the SCFP
method, and the analysis of its test as an offering to introduce the topic of sustainability into an engineering and technology management curriculum. Our aim is to
foster the intrinsic motivation, perspectives and skills enabling our future engineers
to develop the technology and systems for society’s sustainable future.