For this story we flew to South Dakota to interview the makers of an amazing story game that was created as part of our EBOW program (Engaging Beyond Our Walls). Written by Eric Schoenborn, a PhD student researcher at American University.
It was said When Wilmot Brookings, the namesake of South Dakota’s fourth largest city, walked around the Dakota territories his two squeaky wooden legs betrayed his arrival. Brookings left an unmistakable imprint on this proud South Dakota town of almost 30,000 about 60 miles north of Sioux Falls, but his eclectic story as a double amputee civic leader in frontier is proving to be the critical ingredient in a new interactive experience. Embodying Brookings’ pioneering spirit, some contemporary civic leaders in this historic town are working to more widely dish up a new take of the 19th century frontier legend through the contemporary practice of local story games.
The game in action (at top), and the joyful design team (left to right): Brookings Public Library’s Nancy Swenson (Technology Services Library/Programming Supervisor), Kirsten Gjesdal from Downtown Brookings, Brookings Public Library’s Mikaela Neubauer (Community Services Coordinator)
Beginner’s Pluck, Not Beginner’s Luck
Despite never having built interactive stories, the Downtown Brookings organization in collaboration with the Brookings Public Library, courageously raised their hands to experiment with the Playful City Lab through EBOW. Even as novice interactive designers, the team followed Playful City Lab’s unique recipe to mix with their town’s rich history with local story games and cook up a new way to engage the residents of Brookings. First they needed to take stock of their ingredients. This team of three Brookings loyalists knew they had a rich bouquet of statues, points of interest, architectural anomalies, hideouts for notorious bank robbers, dinosaur animatronics, museums, and homecoming rituals of the local university among their list of local flavors to mix into a historical texting tour. Between the three team members of this civic collaboration, a professional historian, a lifelong Brookings resident and library professional, and another highly engaged library employee and alum of Brookings-based South Dakota State University, there was a deep understanding of the rich potpourri of history Brookings holds. But what was going to unify these ingredients? Despite collectively knowing as much as any about the details, history, and stories hidden in the nooks and crannies of this college town in South Dakota, the team – like all narratives – needed a catalyst for their story. It would only be after being a bit along the process of creating their historic texting tour that squeaky lightning would strike and the team would be properly introduced to their protagonist, Wilmot Brookings.
Designing Their Way to an Outlandish Protagonist
With all their professional experience and local engagement experience the team from Downtown Brookings and Brookings Public Library, like most Brookings residents, didn’t realize the catalyst for their story was hiding right beneath their noses … or at the end of a pint glass. It turns out the story of the rugged namesake of Brookings, also inspired the name of one of the team’s favorite haunts, Wooden Legs Brewing Company. As participants in the Playful City Lab’s EBOW program, the Brookings team was being introduced to the iterative, playful design process that backgrounds technology and centers the process on writing a fun local story game. Following one of the primary steps in our recipe, embarking on a search for a protagonist to host their own local texting tour, led these civic engagement experts and novice designers to connect their protagonist to this hoppy establishment. A protagonist that would help them unlock the whimsy and outlandishness we at the lab argue is the essential spice to cooking up engaging local story games, historic texting tours, and other playful interactive mobile experiences EBOW works to instigate.
>> See our Brookings project page / Historic Texting Tour on the Playful City Lab’s details page for EBOW projects.
Joyful Collaboration
The designers-in-development were not only beginning to build the muscles to author fun story games, they were building the muscles to connect the dots across local assets essential in meaningful production of these games as Community Catalysts (an IMLS-supported report). You see, Wooden Legs Brewing Company didn’t just employ the story of Wilmot Brookings into their identity, they engaged local artists in creating playful visual branding that the EBOW participants recognized immediately as a perfect visual for their signage and essential IRL print materials to put a literal face to the outlandish pioneer host of their tour. Something else important and often elusive was simmering as well. The authentic bonds formed through joyful collaboration between community partners. An important goal for each of the community partners with each playing a different role in enriching the texting tour with flavors unique to this place.
Local Flavors, Universal Recipe When these three public sector employees in Brookings, SD, raised their hands to embark on their first foray into interactive design, they had no idea they signed up for a satisfying design adventure in addition to the community engagement responsibility they expected. The Playful City Lab recipe values engagement through a mixture of fun, low-fi experiences. The Brookings team exemplified the whimsy EBOW is designed to tap into while not losing their sense of place. Our three budding interactive designers embodied the hearty local spirit in telling the stories embedded in place throughout the history of this prairie treasure. Like South Dakotans have for generations, including Wilmot Brookings, the design team set out on their journey without knowing exactly how’d they reach their destination. This courageous disposition is important in any design endeavor, and essential for the successful iterative creation of interactive story games. It is with joyful collaboration, also essential to the forage for the ingredients of a unique local texting tour, that the Brooking’s participants’ advanced out their design journey to a playful destination. And now, due to this joyful creation, it is a ringtone that will betray the arrival of Wilmot Brookings throughout this historic town, and not his squeaky gait.