In recent years both companies and research communities call for collaborative work practices and user-centered approaches in various design fields. There are several challenges and issues to take into consideration. For instance there is a need to find ways of collaborating across various competences, interests, responsibilities and perhaps professional languages both within one organization, between several organizations and between the organizations and a group of (potential) users. It is necessary to find ways to learn about users and the contexts of use, and to create a common understanding of the development task. This paper presents a set of four design games, which offers solutions to the challenges mentioned. The design games have been developed in the Space Studio during several projects and years. Here experiences are discussed on the basis of two research projects carried out in collaboration with industrial partners and potential users, and use of the games in three educational settings.The overall aim of the design games is to help facilitate a usercentered design process for cross-disciplinary design groups early in the design process. Framing collaborative design activities in a game format, arguably improves idea generation and communication between stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed.

This article discusses design games as a particular genre for formatting design dialogues. In the first part of the article we review the participatory design literature for gameoriented framings of co-design. We look at what constitutes game and play, we discuss other authors' use of games in collaborative settings, and finally we examine the board game as a particularly interesting game format. In the second part of the article we present and discuss two board games: the User Game and the Landscape Game. We show how these games respond to particular challenges, and how they have interesting characteristics in being both 'as-if' worlds to explore and shared representations of what the players accomplish. In the last section of the article we discuss how new games may be designed and played and what makes a good design game.

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Information and communication technologies are moving into the era of ubiquitous computing, with increased density of technology and increased mobility and continuity in use. From a design perspective, addressing the accommodation and coordination of multiple devices and services in situated use across different contexts is becoming increasingly important. In the COMIT project, ethnographic fieldwork has been combined with participatory design engaging users, designers and researchers in order to explore mobile IT use as well as the design of mobile IT concepts. Four seclected scenarios from the project are presented and discussed regarding implications for the design of mobile IT devices, with particular focus on (1) coping with multiple social contexts, and (2) the configuration and connectivity of mobile devices.

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This paper disseminates work from the European Give&Take project, which aims at co-designing service sharing among senior citizens based on a mobile and distributed platform. With this project as a frame, the authors' paper addresses methodological considerations of participation in co-design for ageing. Based on the notions of design culture, communities of everyday practice and situated elderliness the authors present accounts from two European countries, and discuss methodological issues related to mobilizing senior citizens in co-design work as they have manifested themselves and influenced the Give&Take project. Challenges for mobilization are identified, based on an analysis of attitudes and values among design researchers and senior citizens. This analysis lead them to identify and discuss three strategies for mobilizing senior citizens in co-design of mobile technology: 1) Understanding being ‘elderly' as situated elderliness rather than closed categories; 2) Understanding how ad hoc or loosely coupled infrastructures can define a community rather than a formal, organisational structure; and 3) Understanding the nature of mobilization and motivation for participation as processes that continue, and need to be supported, also after completion of the project. These strategies have emerged in the authors' work on mobilization and service sharing, but may apply to a broader context of infrastructuring and ongoing negotiations.

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