Ep. 8: Project Inner Alliance - Designing a Social Impact Game Focusing on Cultural Evolution, Inclusivity and Team Cohesion

Our host Donna Dupont interviews Kassie Miedema to discuss the power of social impact games to support learning goals, behaviour change and positive social messaging. 

Kassie Miedema is a Senior Foresight and Design Researcher at Archipelago of Design. Kassie is passionate about resilience and transformative culture change and continues to contribute her multidisciplinary expertise to address contemporary security and defence challenges. 

In this episode we discuss development of the game Project Inner Alliance, focused on cultural evolution and inclusivity within teams to transform beliefs and behaviours. The premise is a humanitarian aid and disaster relief scenario game where the environment is “the enemy” presenting challenges and obstacles. This orientation of the game shifts the focus from character based combat to collaboration and building team cohesion. Project Inner Alliance leveraged a co-design participatory approach and included a diversity of participants and perspectives in order to advance a scenario game that resonates with our defence and security community.

 

About This Episode's Guest:

Kassie Miedema is a senior Foresight and Design Researcher at Archipelago of Design. Kassie is passionate about resilience and transformative culture change and continues to contribute her multidisciplinary expertise to address contemporary security and defence challenges. At AOD, Kassie uses her skills in design thinking, foresight, serious games, workshop facilitation to tackle projects involving cultural evolution, inclusivity, and climate change. Kassie studied architecture at the University of Waterloo and worked for several years in architecture firms before pivoting her career. Her time in architecture taught her an appreciation for sustainable design and resilience, but Kassie had a desire to pursue a career change where she could have a more positive social impact. She enrolled in OCAD’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program in 2021 where she met Professor Michele Mastroeni and began working with AOD. Most recently, Kassie has completed the project Safeguarding the Future: A Strategic Foresight Handbook for National Security and Defence Professionals (which is publicly available on the AOD website) and is currently working on a Climate Change and Security Workshop Toolkit and Project Inner Alliance, a transformative game to increase inclusivity and readiness within defence and security teams.

 

Show Notes

AOD is hosting an international conference on security design on September 18-20, 2024 at the Naval Academy, Lisbon, Portugal. If you’re a fan of the podcast and want to learn more, please visit https://aodnetwork.ca/securitybydesign/ for the full programme, and  https://securitybydesign.eventbrite.ca/ to register.

Project Inner Alliance, currently under development in partnership with Wero Creative, is one of several games conceived by AOD to accelerate cultural evolution. Specifically, Project Inner Alliance promotes transformation of beliefs and behaviours by exploring team dynamics and cohesion. Through mechanics such as limited command, trust, and procedural rhetoric, players learn the import