A proposal for gamifying the circular economy

The topic of our Redesigning Business master class was to gamify the three economies (civic, circular and sharing economy). In practice this meant that our goal was to make a pervasive game, so that symposium visitors can experience the three different types of new economies and the old economy.

Overall Experience

Our game works like this. Visitors of the Symposium get handed different stickers at the entrance. The sticker defines in which team you are. The idea is that you can play individually, but your work will have consequences for your entire team. You have to work together with strangers for a common goal. You've got to build lego figures using four different economical strategies at the four different stands. But there's a catch: at all the stands you've got to build the lego figure in exactly one minute. If you win, you earn a point for your team. You can experience the four different ways of building lego figures, which are connected to the economies at their mechanical core. The circular economy game is explained below.

Definition

The circular economy is a economy-design based on reduce, re-use, recycle. Energy must come from renewable sources.

Gameplay and storytelling

The circular economy game is a game where you can make a product out of waste. You have to filter the waste in order to make a perfect one colored product. If you can't find the right colored resources, you can use another color. But then you'll have less profit. This reflects the necessity within the circular economy to rethink design such that high valued resources can be easily accessed for retrieval.

In practice this means that you have to build a figure with one lego block colour. But your resource to build this figure is a bowl filled with all lego colours. You only have one minute to select the right colour from the bowl and to build your lego figure to earn a point.

http://33.media.tumblr.com/c770e47946481728f1e006cfb4aea5cd/tumblr_nfata0LumK1u0pdywo2_500.jpg