Humour and serious play enhancing creative thinking in community disability service design

Over the years of providing disability services in Alberta, there has been an intention to design support models that are innovative and relevant to an individuals' needs, and aspirations. This project researched what might set the stage for innovations in disability services to emerge. In particular, this research project explored the use of serious play in the design processes of a pilot project, Recruiting Allies Within Kommunity (RAWK). From the data, a number of unexpected conclusions emerged. The first is that serious play in the design process fosters strong trust among the members and on that basis more creative ideas emerged. Second, there was a need to balance serious play and critical thinking to select relevant ideas. Third, from comparing and contrasting the data with relevant literature on enhancing creativity, an organizational culture can be strengthened to support creative thinking abilities in order to produce quality outcomes for service recipients.