Bubble Games researchers take home Lamp and Lovie awards

A year ago we wrote a piece on the Bubble Games – a research project that looks at how we can design for empathy and what role digital technologies like VR play in helping us understand what it means to walk in one another’s shoes.

Since then, associate professor Froukje Sleeswijk Visser and the rest of her team, including Jeroen van Erp (innovation strategist at Fabrique and former IDE professor of Concept Design), have been busy planning their next steps and presenting the Bubble Games in different places – from Rio de Janeiro to Austin (Texas) to northern Sweden.

Recognition and Awards

They have also been celebrating the attention they have received in the form of award nominations, honourable mentions, and wins. In the last two weeks alone, they have won two separate awards. The first being a Bronze Lamp Award in the category for “Design – Social Design” from the Dutch Creativity Awards 2023. The second, a Silver Lovie Award in the category of “Beyond-Connectivity” from the Lovie Awards.

The recognition this project is receiving is a great example of what a good collaboration between designers, researchers, the public sector, and experts can accomplish.

Research and Design

Bubble Games shines a spotlight on how research and design go hand in hand. When looking at it from a design perspective, by having a bold idea and starting to develop it, the Bubble Games team was able to create opportunities and design new interventions. By tracking transformative processes through tangible outputs (for example by measuring the increase of empathy), design interventions were evaluated and could be further improved.

This two-prong approach allows researchers and designers to challenge the role of technology (in this case, VR) and the roles of designers (dig deeper into this via the paper mentioned below). It also gives them the ability to develop design methodologies for societal challenges by analysing such design practices.

Project Developments

As mentioned before, the Bubble Games team have been busy working on their next steps. They can’t reveal everything yet, but there have been a few exciting updates they can share:

A new PhD project has been created thanks to the Bubble Games. PhD candidate and former DfI MSc student Deanne Spek will research perspectives changes in public care settings together with Judith Rietjens. Her project will build on the knowledge gained from the Bubble Games, amongst other bodies of work. She will combine research through design with evaluative research, meaning she will design perspective change interventions and evaluate their effects in the context of public healthcare.
Associate professor Froukje Sleeswijk Visser and innovation strategist Jeroen van Erp have published a journal article, entitled: “Let’s step into each other’s worlds: designing for local transformation processes”. They are currently working on two other publications, so keep your eyes open for those!