Transdisciplinary Design

A Game of Bing!

Posted on December 6, 2010 | posted by:

Let me set the scene … It’s a regular, sunny, Sunday afternoon and three caped crusaders charge boldly into the unknown, armed with a stick, international accents, and one very peculiar limp. Welcome to my game of Bing!

Those three caped crusaders were none other than myself and two of my classmates, Bland and Aaron, and we really did partake in this rather wacky game called Bing. There aren’t many rules to Bing beyond that you need a stick and a whole lot of imagination. Play kicks offs when the first player throws the stick into the air and which ever way the “end” lands, is the direction you must walk until you happen upon a solid object — be this a person, tree, building, wall etcetera. Once you meet this obstacle, the next player takes his/her turn to throw the stick and so it continues. The stick acts as a way to encourage spontaneous movement, as the game has no limits, even geographically speaking.

So, throwing a stick randomly into the air might not seem like much fun,  but here’s where you add the twist — each player must contribute to the rule set and every 15 minuets, the players are required to add, subtract, or multiply to them. Permit me now to share with you my teams unique set of rules. To start off with, we were only allowed to talk in “funny” accents, Aaron chose German, Bland, I believe was Austrian (maybe Russian-ish), and mine was a squeaky voice, which I quickly regretted. We also needed to “walk funny”, yes, that’s right, limping, waddling, skipping were now a necessity to the game. Once our 15 minuets were up, it was change-over time, here we multiplied the walk into a run (which turned into a jog, which turned into a jog — sometimes), we subtracted the accents and added a “continuous talking mode” which meant that even a moments silence was forbidden. Also each team member was now no longer allowed the toss the stick themselves, but instead was required to approach an unwitting stranger to do so in our place. The changes to the rules altered the dynamics dramatically — and only for the better (apart from the running which tuned out to be disastrous, due to my rather lame rule choice). It was the interactions with the public that heightened the game to a new level and made it all the more engaging, but I’m not sure why I’m surprised. Our game turned into a non-stop babbling fest, requesting participation from a slumberous crowd, whilst wearing duvets covers and actual superman capes, catapulting a stick periodically into the air, then running (aka half jogging) around the grassy green until we bumped into yet another tree.

So, why were we playing such a silly game? And why am I mentioning it here? We had recently teamed-up to investigate the notion of infrastructure as part of our first studio assignment — and the three of us gravitated towards play. As a team we collectively decided to immerse ourselves into the benefits of play as a way to create an empathetic understanding of what we were about to achieve. Each week we met at different “fun” spots, and I have to say Bland outdid himself with suggesting Bing in the park. After the game, he also temporarily installed hammocks, so that we could  reflect on what turned out to be a very fun and challenging afternoon of “research”.

We concluded that setting time aside for play is often hard, that such physically, playful interactions seldom appear in our everyday lives, even though the benefits are substantial. But it was through actually engaging in play that this became all the more clear. Many of us designers love coming up with the ideas but there is something to be said for really empathising in what it is we are trying to solve or develop or say. To actual feel the emotion, to behave in a silly manner, to realise what it means to be claustrophobic, or sit in uncomfortable chair, or feel dizzy by the cacophony of sounds in an environment which is suppose to be soothing. I feel like this project allowed me, possibly for the first time, to really understand the value of empathetic research as a tool in my process but I’ll also remember that day in the park, feeling embarrassed, whilst half jogging, laughing and squeaking to tune of a game called Bing!