Circular Connectedness

The interactive tool Circular Connectedness can be called a social game. In all its elements it uses the shape of the circle, which symbolically stands for integrity and the whole, for connectedness and unity. It is precisely these values ​​that the game should emphasize and promote. The aim is to bring people closer together, to highlight similarities and to appreciate differences as strengths. Further it shall create a power sensitive setting, in which everybody has equal possibilities to express themselves.

The tool enables a playful and visual as well as personal and collective reflection of each kind of topics and questions in a group of maximum six participants. At the beginning each player answers the respective question individually on an own set of round tokens without quantitative or qualitative restrictions – every answer is a correct answer. In the next steps the circles are placed one after another in the center. Similar answers are placed beside each other and form a group, different answers are placed at a distance and probably form a new group in the course of the game. These different groupings clarify visually who takes which positions, which positions connect everyone and which are the similarities and differences between the individuals of the group.

Finally Circular Connectedness shall connect people and foster social interaction between them – on one hand by holding on to the similarities figured out in the game by sharing it afterwards together and on the other hand by getting inspired by others and connect with them to learn and get to know something new.

Even though the tool can be used in any context, it is created in the context of migration. In particular it shall be used in different workshops (July 2021) with a group of recently immigrated Nigerian women to assess their interests, skills, needs and visions  and to connect them by finding commonalities and inspire them to consider new actions and thoughts. The outputs shall set up one common vision that shall be tackled by starting a participatory design project with the goal of collective and individual empowerment.

(Still in progress. The displayed photos show one of the first testing rounds with a paper prototype.)