“It's All Connected” - A Boardgame to Communicate Climate Impacts of IoT
Teresa Castle-Green, Kinga Lewandowska, Neelima Sailaja · 2024
Fueled by the rapidly increasing Internet of Things industry, the volume of global e-waste escalates annually posing significant health and environmental risks. Our research around repairability of IoT devices to elongate their lifespan has uncovered common faults, challenges and barriers to repair. To communicate this work in an engaging and impactful way, we created a boardgame raising awareness of challenges and highlighting connections between design, production, ownership and repair. This paper describes our design process demonstrating how research findings were translated into game mechanics through design iteration and testing workshops. We discuss findings from workshops to demonstrate how the game influenced thinking about links between smart device production, maintenance, policy and the climate. Through this we demonstrate how complex IoT repair challenges can be disseminated through game design. Thus contributing to both research around device repair and the growing movement of research communication through serious games.