Hubbub was founded by Kars Alfrink, a seasoned interaction designer who saw the need to create a place where the use of game design as an applied design discipline could be investigated through the process of making. Kars works with a large variety of creative professionals from his network, depending on the project at hand. In this way, Hubbub can work in a technology-agnostic fashion and take on a diverse range of projects while staying true to its core ideas.
Hubbub is a design studio. The things we make are usually considered to be games, toys or playgrounds. We help organizations bridge the gap between their wants and needs and their target audience on the one hand, and the execution of a product or service on the other. We have an extensive repertoire of processes, techniques and methods at our disposal to do so.
You should get in touch with us if you have a project that deals with at least one of these themes:
Play – That wonderful enigmatic thing that all humans (and even animals) engage in. It is an activity that is worth doing for its own sake, and revolves around exploring the possibilities of rules and roles, and of social, physical and digital systems.
Sociality – We are interested in the social on several levels: the function design can have as a force of positive change in society, the uses of social interactions between people as a material, and the social lives of games, toys and playgrounds.
Physicality – Our agenda (in part at least) is to make the human experience of technology more embodied. We do not look to create traditional screen-based interfaces. In stead we choose to create things that engage people’s full sensory apparatus.
In practice, our services break down into research, conceptualization and design. Each one flows into the next. However, we can offer each separately.
Research covers activities such as interviews of stakeholder and target audience, field studies and exploration of material properties. The goal of which is to discover new opportunities for playful experiences that deliver real value. Deliverables in this phase can take on a myriad of forms, from videos and maps to briefings and presentations.
Conceptualization is all about generating as many interesting directions for design as possible. We prefer to work closely with clients and target audiences in this phase, usually through workshops. Output of these workshops are typically collections of concepts visualized with sketches and annotated for clarity.
Design takes a concept and develops it so that it can be experienced and understood by clients and target audiences in a tangible way. Through sketching and prototyping, we envision possible forms for the project at hand. Prototypes are put through frequent testing to evaluate their effectiveness, so our designs take shape iteratively. When finally we settle on a proper design, it is documented in a clear manner so that it can be taken into production.1
To get a sense of what all this can result in, take a look at our projects. If you’d like to work with us, do get in touch. We’d be delighted to hear from you.
Although not a requirement, our preference is to stay involved once production starts, so the design can be further tuned based on insights in that phase. [↩]
About
Hubbub was founded by Kars Alfrink, a seasoned interaction designer who saw the need to create a place where the use of game design as an applied design discipline could be investigated through the process of making. Kars works with a large variety of creative professionals from his network, depending on the project at hand. In this way, Hubbub can work in a technology-agnostic fashion and take on a diverse range of projects while staying true to its core ideas.
Hubbub is a design studio. The things we make are usually considered to be games, toys or playgrounds. We help organizations bridge the gap between their wants and needs and their target audience on the one hand, and the execution of a product or service on the other. We have an extensive repertoire of processes, techniques and methods at our disposal to do so.
You should get in touch with us if you have a project that deals with at least one of these themes:
In practice, our services break down into research, conceptualization and design. Each one flows into the next. However, we can offer each separately.
To get a sense of what all this can result in, take a look at our projects. If you’d like to work with us, do get in touch. We’d be delighted to hear from you.