Talking about Code 4 at Chi Sparks

Our long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Alper Çuğun will be at Chi Ned­er­land’s bi-annu­al con­fer­ence to talk about Code 4 (for­mer­ly referred to as Maguro). Code 4 is a per­va­sive game we cre­at­ed for the Dutch Tax Admin­is­tra­tion with the aim of ignit­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al change.

Chi Sparks is a con­fer­ence that focuss­es on “the very impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions that good HCI research makes in real­iz­ing suc­cess­ful, inno­v­a­tive, new prod­ucts or ser­vices that have a gen­uine impact on people’s lives.”

I think with Code 4 we man­aged to have a real impact on the orga­ni­za­tion and its employ­ees. So I am pleased we can share our work with peers in the HCI community.

Below is the abstract. There’s a few more inter­est­ing ses­sions on games and play that we are part of. Get your tick­ets fast, ear­ly bird reg­is­tra­tion ends June 6.

Pro­mot­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al change with­in large gov­ern­ment bod­ies remains an elu­sive goal. The game Code 4 was devel­oped to cre­ate a coher­ent ful­ly mixed media approach to elic­it­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al change effects by employ­ing employ­ees as the pri­ma­ry actors (play­ers) in a game. The Code 4 game was set in an anal­o­gous world but with a clear cause to action in a dystopic finan­cial cri­sis and with rules that mir­rored but also sub­vert­ed exist­ing bureau­crat­i­cal process­es. The game­play reward­ed suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with­out regard for the orga­ni­za­tion­al frame­work. Results indi­cate that many play­ers were whol­ly engaged with both the core game as with the sup­port­ing encoun­ters and that the trans­fer­ral of game effects was suc­cess­ful. Employ­ing a game for orga­ni­za­tion­al change has proved itself to be a valid approach.