Data Games for Ecological Design

Can a complex site, such as an urban landscape, be better understood through a game? Might this playful preparation be useful for design? In response to such questions, this paper discusses a practical project that structured design-oriented site research as a development, implementation and deployment of a locative mobile game in which designers learn by racing colonies of virtual organisms. The analysis of this experiment demonstrates that this approach can support creativity and provide benefits compatible with goals of ecological design.