Using play and game techniques to challenge assumptions and create surprises in circles of cross-collaborative design, learning and innovation.

What happens when we use play not simply for engagement, but as a way to challenge assumptions, disrupt familiar patterns and create productive surprises?

Join visiting Danish co-design researcher Associate Professor Sune Gudiksen for a participatory session exploring how play and game-based techniques can foster richer forms of collaboration across design, education, research and innovation.

Sune will open the session by sharing examples from his research and practice in co-design, play design and cultural institutions, including insights into how playful methods can be designed and facilitated. We will then move into collaborative sharing and reflection, drawing on examples brought by participants from their own practice, research or works-in-progress.

Together, we will explore what makes playful co-design work: how methods are designed, how in-play situations are scaffolded, and how reflection and debriefing can turn moments of play into sustained insights and new possibilities.

Bring something to the table. Participants are encouraged to bring an example of a playful or game-based method they have used, encountered, researched—or are still imagining.

This is a space for experimentation, exchange and cross-disciplinary thinking. No expertise in games or play is required; curiosity is enough.

Sune Gudiksen is Associate Professor in co-design in conjunction with experiential-interaction design and head of the five year research and development programme Playful Attractions at Kolding School of Design, Denmark. This programme started in 2022 and have up to this date included 10 funded collaborative projects with the cultural-experiential sector – Museums, Libraries, Experience centers, Galleries etc. He has led several national and international EU-funded projects "Hope & Despair" with seven museums across the German-Danish Border, "EU Gamify" with Universities and creative industries from five countries and "Moving Museums through play" with six visiting sites from the National museum in Denmark. He has edited books such as "Framing Play Design", "Gamification for innovators and entrepreneurs" and upcoming 2027 Routledge book “Museum Play: Concepts, Design and Audiences”. He has published more than 50 scholarly publications focusing on play, design, creativity, and cultural-experiential institutions.