Case study: Game design thinking as a strategy for community engagement in a rural indigenous village

This paper presents the formulated ‘play-to-engage’ model for community engagement that incorporates factors in cultural protocols and the game design thinking approach. The model was experimented in an indigenous rural village in Borneo. Engagement was done with a group of indigenous community leaders, teachers and indigenous students from the village. It is a known fact that all indigenous cultures have overwhelming cultural protocols and rural custom practices for researchers to adhere to and follow. Since game is a universal language, the creation of a trustworthy partnership between the community and researchers was made easier using play during the engagement process. Incorporating a fun gameplay approach could also be a solution to thrive on reflection and creativity of those individuals in capturing the needs of the study. The outcome of the engagement was positive and the communities’ needs, issues, experiences and motivation were collected during the play.