Structuring Gamified Participatory Public Space Design Developing a Design Quality Evaluation System to Support Digital Co-creation Processes

Participation and co-creation are increasingly used to incorporate end-users’ demands and mitigate conflicts of interest. Digitalised games are introduced to better visualise design scenarios and invite multiplayer collaboration. A recurring problem is how much input and guidance are needed to achieve creative and feasible outcomes. This paper explores how guided forms of gameplay can lead to more informed negotiation and better game outcomes. The study focuses on public space design in a high-density housing estate, where widely varied resident demands put pressure on limited space. The methodology employed in this study involved the development of a design quality evaluation system to support participatory processes. To recruit study participants, design students were selected from the same course and randomly assigned into teams. These participants were then engaged in co-creation using a digital sandbox game that was designed to facilitate the process. Participants’ co-creation outcomes were analysed through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The original contribution of this study lies in the development of a user-activity-based toolkit for spatial configuration analysis. Preliminary results demonstrate how structuring collective design explorations around principles of activity complexity, sociability, environment comfort, adaptability, surveillance, and wayfinding can offer a more objective basis for collaboration. The implications of this approach can activate collective creativity in the age of digital production and contribute to the creation of more inclusive and user-centric public spaces.