Book

The Rules We Break: Lessons in Play, Thinking, and Design

2022

Synopsis

Everyone can learn from game design: interaction designers and software developers, graphic designers and urban planners, kids in after-school programs and university students studying design. This collection of interactive games and exercises is designed to help you consider new ways of approaching productive collaboration, creative problem solving, analysis of systems, and how to communicate ideas, providing skills you can use in any discipline or situation.

These real-world exercises are designed to be played on tabletops, as playground-style physical games, and via social interactions with others in person or online. A wide range of entertaining, thought-provoking games, exercises, and short essays grow in complexity over the course of the book, from 20 minutes of play to design projects that last for days or weeks. Award-winning game designer Eric Zimmerman invites you to play your way through it all, learning about play, systems, and design along the way.

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