How can games aid co-design of user-centered circular offerings?

• Widespread adoption of circular offerings, including those based on products with prolonged lifetimes, depend on offers which are attractive to users. To develop such offers, user needs must be considered in depth during the development process. Co-design is a promising approach to develop user-centered solutions but is yet underexplored when it comes to design of circular offerings. To facilitate co-design of circular offerings, games present one opportunity but have previously primarily been used to support understanding, creation, and learning in relation to circular economy. This paper explores how games can support co-design of user-centred circular offerings by presenting insights from an analysis of existing circularity-related games and summarizing insights from literature. Eight circularity-related games were played to identify benefits and drawbacks. Relevant literature was also reviewed to synthesise recommendations for a game aimed at supporting co-design of user-centred circular offerings. The results show none of the existing circularity-related games include a deep understanding of users’ needs and only a few go beyond mere learning and actually contribute to developing companies’ offerings. Identified recommendations suggest games will have higher potential to support co-design of user-centred circular offerings if they, for example, enable co-design with users and co-creation with multiple stakeholders in the business ecosystem, provide game elements that represent circular challenges and opportunities in a realistic and dynamic way, and create bridges from the game to the real world. Future game development should hence take such recommendations into account, while ensuring the developed games do not become too complicated to play.

Nyckelord

Circular business model; Circular design; Serious game; Co-design; User-centered design.

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