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Paper short abstract

In this paper, we designed and played a board game from 5 years of ethnographic data on how engineers produce knowledge and change their culture. We show how a board game, as a mediating artifact, functioned as a site of interdisciplinary knowledge production.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, we designed and played a board game. We were tasked with presenting initial findings from a multi-year ethnographic study of culture change amongst a group of faculty in an undergraduate electrical and computer engineering department. Initially, we recognized that a conventional report would frame the team as spectators to their own change effort, where findings presented can be too easily acknowledged and set aside. Instead, we made the findings playable. Drawing on interviews, field notes, and meeting transcriptions, we translated our data into the game's mechanics: the players were invited to take on roles in their own change effort, reflect and dialogue about what actions they took to complete their mission of cultural change; drew event cards built from ethnographic moments as part of the progression of the game; and replayed past decisions from their present vantage point. Turn by turn, they confronted knowledge expression, travel, and frictions that took place during the grant activities, then played out during the game. We describe how change was made and sustained when engineers collaborated and moved beyond their disciplinary boarders, were self-motivated, and grounded knowledge practices across overlapping institutional structures. Additionally, we show how a board game, as a mediating artifact, functioned as a site of interdisciplinary knowledge production. Players collectively (re)constructed and enacted cultural change. Thereby, the game became a research practice and additional layer of making and doing change.