Designing innovation games for community-based learning and knowledge exchange

Abstract

Communities, like organisations, have a natural tendency to resist the adoption of new processes and technologies aimed at changing the way people learn and manage knowledge. This paper reports on the attempt to use gamelike processes and systems to involve a very heterogeneous target population in gradually becoming more aware of the existing change barriers, then gaining interest in removing them, and finally becoming willing and exploring collaboratively (and playfully) new forms of learning, knowledge exchange, and social interactions. The insights gained in applying such a 'Learning by Playing' approach to an urban community and the key features of the systems which emerged in this process are described, raising a number of issues related to the use of games as a vehicle to reduce resistance to new forms of learning and knowledge management.