Ludic — The Lego Way

On this normal London day in the second week of the new term, I was looking forward to everything that it has to offer, but London TFL had other ideas and wanted to pop my bubble. I was running late to class owing to a bus issue, and the main problem was to find the classroom location. After going in and out of a few buildings, I finally found the classroom. I felt like I had accomplished something, but I missed an activity where everyone had to draw how they felt that morning. If given the option, I would have drawn a variety of emotion smileys, which made me question if others, like me, who had such a straight expression after a difficult morning, had varied emotions and sentiments going through their heads while they are just listening to someone. There are ways to let others know how people actually felt, interesting, maybe that was the objective that our module teacher Sylwia was trying to tell.

During the lesson on Lego Serious Play, I learned the terms homo ludens and ludic. The term “Playing Man” refers to Johan Huizinga’s 1938 proposal of “Homo Ludens”. where “ludus,” the Latin word for “play,” is the source of the adjective “ludic.” Being playful is a part of all of our actions, including how we connect with others and with technology. When designers add fun to their products, people are more likely to want to use them and enjoy using them. However, in the previously described exercise, playfulness was more effectively utilised to collect data than to provide a solution. The Drift Table is an excellent illustration of a Ludic encounter. Sitting comfortably in your own environment, the drift table functions similarly to a digital hot air balloon, allowing you to observe the locations around you. One important lesson to be learned from this case study is that products lacking usage instructions lend themselves more to individual interpretation. In turn, a person’s interpretation and self-expression are strongly linked. In today’s world, corporations and organisations frequently prioritise meeting the demands of customers in order to establish themselves as the preferred option in the market. However, this emphasis on consumer wants sometimes comes at the expense of originality and adaptability in their goods.

[embed]The Drift Table The Drift Table is an electronic coffee table that allows people to float slowly over the British landscape from the…research.northumbria.ac.uk

One of the more entertaining activities we had during our session was the LEGO Serious Play Workshop, in which we were given a packet of Lego and invited to sit with our allocated groups. We were first instructed to make a tower, and everyone created their version of a tower. The first thing that sprang to me was the Tokyo Tower, which I had seen many times in the anime, so my Lego tower was based on it. As Sylwia moved through the task, we had to redesign the tower depending on some of the questions she asked; it was eye-opening to watch when my classmates had same sentiments but distinct tower structures, or vice versa.

The main value of the workshop, for me personally, was the sense of closeness and building a strong foundation for the team to work on our brief to build a “smart city farm,” where we would not have been able to find out each other’s strengths by just talking to each other. As the workshop went on, there were some creative creations. It demonstrated to me several approaches to research and efficient methods for gathering data. The highlight of my class was combining all of our towers to make a final build. Our group was able to redesign the towers by simply arranging them around one another, and we were able to create a stunning structure without even dismantling any of the towers we had built.

This will be one of those sessions that sticks with me and has a long-term influence on my career as a researcher. Playfulness on the farm may be intriguing; entertainment and relaxation go well together, but can they be used practically on a farm? This might be one of the ways we can explore play’s transformational power and potential to reveal hidden ideas, build deeper relationships, and produce practical results in a variety of situations, including business, education, and beyond. Let us remember that creativity has no limitations, and with the correct tools and mentality, we can all unleash our creative potential and design a better future.