Games Design and Ethnography Masterclass
AAYMCAs National General Secretaries Meeting 2025: Uniting for Innovation and Impact
19/05/2025
Game Design for Social Impact through Design Thinking - Nairobi (May 19-23, 2025)
The Nairobi phase focused on equipping participants with tools to ideate, prototype, and test educational games using design thinking principles. Sessions emphasized empathy, creativity, and systemic innovation, framed by the YMCA Vision 2030 and findings from the AAYMCA Innovation Audit.
Participants worked through the full design cycle—from understanding user needs to testing game prototypes. The process fostered a spirit of playful problem-solving while tackling serious social themes. Outputs included user personas, journey maps, and low-fidelity game models designed to stimulate youth engagement.
Game Design – Facilitated by ThinkPlace Africa
Ethnography as a Tool for Justice-Oriented Research - Mombasa (May 26–29, 2025)
In Mombasa, the focus shifted to ethnographic methods. Led by expert ethnographer Simekha Cynthia, participants explored community-centered approaches to research through feminist, Afrocentric, queer, and disability-inclusive lenses.
Ethnography was framed as an ethical, relational practice—an act of seeing and hearing those often unheard. Participants examined positionality, reflexivity, and participatory ethics, cultivating humility and radical empathy as core research values.
Methodology and Field Practice
Training was hands-on and reflective. Teams practiced techniques such as note-taking, participant observation, interviewing, and photo prompts.
The field exercise at Mama Ngina Drive Market offered real-world engagement with youth, vendors, and locals around themes like informal economies and social belonging.
A structured debrief helped synthesize findings and demonstrate how ethnographic insights can enrich programming, empower youth voices, and improve community relevance.
Challenges
While deeply rewarding, the two-week masterclass was intensive. Participants noted the mental and physical demands of continuous training across cities. Limited time for prototyping and field data synthesis posed constraints.
However, these challenges were countered by high-quality facilitation, creative pacing, and the energizing shift between urban and coastal settings.
The facilitators’ attention to well-being, inclusion, and participatory methods helped sustain motivation throughout.
Lessons Learned
A major takeaway was the synergistic power of combining design and research. Participants learned to shift between creative and analytical thinking—designing with empathy and researching with curiosity. This cross-method training nurtured a deeper understanding of the "how" and the "why" behind effective youth work.
The AAYMCA gained insights into delivering long-form, high-impact training. The success of this pilot experience underscores the value of interdisciplinary, immersive learning that blends theory, creativity, and real-world practice.
