Blog – More than a paper, co-designing a board game

Papers are our currency in academia, but writing blogs, taking part in podcasts, and giving talks can have a much higher reach and impact. What’s more, using non-academic platforms can help to share our research with the people that matter. In our case, that includes people with dementia, carers, care professionals, Charities, and decision makers.

But sometimes we fancy doing something even more outside the academic paper box, and come up with a random idea to design a game. How did we come up with the idea? The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast (ARC NWC), or rather its predecessor the CLAHRC, produced a snake-and-ladder-esque game about Health Inequalities. Having done research into inequalities in dementia care for quite a while now, I thought it would be interesting to try and share findings in the area in a different way, and this game gave the idea really.

So, you’ve got the idea, but how to go about it? It’s been a steep learning curve! Not to speak about intellectual property and copyright and royalties, which comes later. Just like with research, the first thing to do is always co-production and public involvement (besides pulling together a small team of course!). We were lucky to secure some PPI funding from the Wellcome Trust to host three co-production workshops. At the first two (virtual ones), we spoke with people with dementia, unpaid carers, health and social care professionals and Third Sector representatives about their experiences of inequalities in dementia, and about some very early thoughts on how a game could look like.

Co-design in action, people coming together to work through the details.

We synthesised those discussions and produced print outs of each noted barrier to dementia diagnosis and care. We also drafted a very basic template for such a game. At our third co-production workshop, this time face-to-face at the University of Liverpool, we first of all asked attendees to discuss and prioritise the identified barriers. Then, we provided them with the print outs of the *very basic* game design to draw on, make comments, and advance the design in group table discussions. Attendees had so many important and worthwhile experiences to share, two hours felt like ten minutes and just whisked by.

Whilst we still had a very basic concept idea of the game, we approached a game designer to support us with properly designing it.

This took a lot of meetings with the game developers, who were incredibly helpful, and talked us through how the board might look, how many cards we should make available, how many players there can be, and the target audience.

Now, I won’t go into the details of the final game, which is being finalised and going into production at the end of this month! But, here are some key learnings about co-designing a game, which is incredibly creative, engaging, fun, and different, and makes you learn a lot too:

1. Involve people with lived and professional experiences multiple times, before even having any idea of how a game could look like.
2. Reimburse any attendees for their time and effort (luckily, we secured a small Wellcome Trust Public Engagement fund).
3. Take your time and meet up with your team repeatedly, taking into considerations the ideas that emerged from discussions with lived and professional experts.
4. Work with Third Sector organisations early on to generate buy in. Ultimately, you’d like to sell the game, so you also need to think about where the funds for larger production will come from.
5. Chat to your University’s legal and Intellectual Property team early, keeping them involved in the steps of the design and especially when it comes to creating and selling a final product.
6. Think about how profits might be divided among your team (feeding back to the Third Sector organisations and into new public involvement activities or research)
7. Advertise and generate momentum for your game. If no one knows about it, it will be difficult for the game to reach the intended end user. That also means you need to be clear for what group(s) you are designing the game in the first place.

And lastly, enjoy playing the game! Dementia is the opposite of fun, but the aim of our game, the Dementia Inequalities Game, is to improve awareness of and learn about dementia and associated inequalities, whilst discussing the topic with fellow game players. The game is designed for people with dementia, carers, health and social care professionals, and the general public. It can be used as a training tool for social care professionals, medical students, or allied health professionals. Shortly, the final game will be available on the Lewy Body Society webpage, co-funded by LBS and SURF Liverpool (Massive thanks to Jacqui and Hilary).

Needless to say, we are uber excited to see this game come to life, and unpacking the prototype boxes has been a little bit like Christmas! Whilst not everyone wants to design a game, there is something about being creative in the dissemination of your research which is really exciting. I’d encourage everyone to think about how else we might share research and encourage learning outside of the currency of academic papers.

Dr Clarissa Giebel

Author

Dr Clarissa Giebel is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool and NIHR ARC North West Coast. Clarissa has been working in dementia care research for over 10 years focusing her research on helping people with dementia to live at home independently and well for longer, addressing inequalities that people with dementia and carers can face. Outside of her day work, Clarissa has also organised a local dementia network – the Liverpool Dementia & Ageing Research Forum, and has recently started her own podcast called the Ageing Scientist.

Follow @ClarissaGiebel