Sand Nourishment Game
(WP 3.1)

Work Package 3 - Social costs and benefits

Illustration by: Joost Fluitsma

WP 3.1 – Sand Nourishment Game

To create an interactive gaming environment that enables collaboratively exploring and experimenting with nourishment strategies to foster shared understanding and learning

 

Start & end date

Year 2 – year 6

Work package leader

University of Twente

Methodology

The main methodological approach in the development of the game will be co-design, placing stakeholders’ needs in exploring and experimenting with sand nourishment strategies central and actively involving them throughout the design process. Dutch coastal managers (in particular RWS) and other stakeholders (e.g. nature organizations and industry) will be engaged from the start through interviews to elicit the specific needs that the game should meet to enable the collaborative exploration of nourishment strategies. Based on these interviews, initial requirements will be formulated on game elements such as the game indicators, the desired in-game information and feedback, and landscape visualizations. Next, the game will be developed in iterations, starting with simple prototypes that can be developed quickly to present and evaluate game concepts and their interaction design with stakeholders and researchers in multiple co-design sessions. Coastal manager and stakeholder participation in these sessions ensures that their views and needs are accounted for, while involving researchers from other WPs ensures that developed knowledge and results can successfully be integrated in the game. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring that the game builds on the predictive modeling of coastal nourishment (WP 2.4) and includes the costs and benefits of coastal landscapes and their spatial quality (WPs 3.2 & 3.3). The co-design sessions have the additional value that these will support aligning knowledge development in SOURCE with stakeholder needs to developing sand nourishment strategies (WP 4). A final game prototype will be developed that caters to the uncovered needs, integrates knowledge obtained in the SOURCE project about the dynamics of sand nourishment strategies, and offers realistic visualizations of coastal landscapes. Subsequently, the game will be evaluated in the context of WPs 1 and 4 on to what extent it enables stakeholders to (1) co-develop and assess sand nourishment strategies, (2) learn about the complexities of the coastal ecosystem including the future impacts of climate change, and (3) share perspectives on the values of coastal landscapes.

Description of research activities

Task 3.1a Interviews with coastal managers and stakeholders to elicit the needs that the game should fulfil
Task 3.1b Iterative cycles of developing and testing continuously refined game prototypes, including creating and testing different interaction design concepts, game mechanics, and landscape visualizations
Task 3.1c Organizing and conducting sessions to evaluate the game on to what extent it achieves the WP’s objective
Task 3.1d Enabling customization of the game to be applied in international contexts and exploring an adaptation of the game in a case study

Productive interactions (co-design and co-creation)

The core approach of this WP is co-design, where all partners will contribute to ensure that the game caters to the needs in practice and thereby contributes to the desired impacts. This will include interview participation (first year, coastal managers and stakeholders), at least four co-design sessions (second and third year), and evaluation sessions (fourth year). All SOURCE researchers will support in developing the Sand Nourishment Game by aiding the coupling of their models, data, and analyses to the game where needed.

Contribution to project (impact)

The Sand Nourishment Game will contribute to two impacts of SOURCE, namely: (1) the improved collaboration between coastal managers, stakeholders, researchers and industry, and (2) the co-creation of sand nourishment strategies. It does so for the first impact by bringing these stakeholders to the same table where they collaborate and share views and perspectives, both during the project (co-design) and after (tool). It does so for the second impact by offering an interactive environment where stakeholders experience a sense of safety to collaboratively explore and experiment with sand nourishment strategies. It will also be used within SOURCE to communicate with citizens and stakeholders outside the project during e.g. information sessions (see Section 5.2). The serious gaming environment will be available to the stakeholders during the SOURCE project, and to the general public after the project.

Key results

[Here the key results of this WP will be presented.]