The Box World Game & Boxology

Background

During my doctoral research on participatory science and public science communication (Van Even, 2023), funded by the inter- and transdisciplinary EU Horizon 2020 ParCos project, I developed two tools to improve, facilitate, and promote public interactions with science and technology. Both tools translate my research into accessible and engaging formats for a wide range of scientific and societal audiences.

• A tool for practitioners: Trainer Cards for Science Storytelling (2022). This card deck supports science intermediaries, scientists, and students in designing, iterating, and evaluating public science stories. This practice-oriented tool and its manual are openly available on Zenodo and can be used individually or in team contexts. 

The Trainer Cards translate research findings on the quality evaluation of science communication (published in the journal PLOS One) into a creative and practical format. They have been integrated into the educational toolkit for science communication evaluation within the COALESCE EU Competence Centre for Science Communication. 

While effective for professional practice, this format remained primarily practitioner-focused and offered limited space for open, multi-actor dialogue, a limitation that led to the development of the next tool.

• An arts-based tool for public dialogue and participatory science: the Box World Game. This visual research game was developed in collaboration with artist Vinik (Kevin Vanhaelewijn). A first prototype was developed in 2023 and the game was finalised in 2024. It facilitates playful, dialogue-oriented interaction through visuals, enabling participants to reflect on, discuss, and learn about issues related to scientific practice, technology, innovation, and science communication.

Through its dialogical and participatory approach, the game not only promotes public interactions with science but also contributes to more reflective scientific practice, engaging science communication, and responsible innovation. The game is played in moderated interactive sessions, in which I act as both a conversation mediator and "game master". 

Box World translates my doctoral research on foundational and paradigmatic issues in science and its communication into a creative and reflective format, turning the Trainer Cards into a tool for social conversations around science.

A game for dialogue and co-created meaning

In line with its focus on participatory science, Box World is a dialogue-oriented game that uses visuals to enable and promote public interaction with science. The game starts from the premise that not only the content of science communication matters, but also the form through which science is communicated. For this reason, careful attention has been paid to what is communicated and how it is communicated.

The game uses layered, rich in detail, and open-ended visuals to facilitate reflection,  interaction, and conversation around science, technology, innovation, and society. The interaction is bottom-up, playful, and dialogue-oriented. Rather than transmitting predefined messages, participants collaboratively explore issues, articulate concerns, and imagine possible responses to these issues and concerns. The visuals function as conversational triggers, evoking multiple interpretations depending on participants' backgrounds, experiences, and positions. These differences are not treated as misunderstandings, but as different perspectives that invite discussion and collective meaning-making.

Through this process, Box World makes underlying assumptions in science and science communication visible. Working with visuals supports the discussion of sensitive issues and the articulation of complex thoughts, while also fostering scientific and visual literacy. The images act as catalysts for reflection and exchange in a safe yet critical setting.

By enabling the comparison and negotiation of multiple perspectives, the game creates space to address paradigmatic issues in science that often remain implicit or difficult to articulate. It supports critical reflection on responsible and meaningful scientific practice and communication, and helps build bridges between science and society across disciplinary, professional, and cultural boundaries.

(Thinking outside) the "Box"

Most people are familiar with the expression "thinking outside the box". In Box World,  this "Box" is made visible. It symbolises structured, foundational frameworks that shape scientific practice, ideas, communication, and decision-making. 

These structures are often difficult to pinpoint because they organise everyday routines, language, norms, and expectations. Precisely because of their familiarity, they tend to become invisible. This invisibility can have consequences not only for scientific practice and discourse, but also for ethics and epistemology in science, with broader implications for society.

Rather than simply encouraging participants to think outside the box, Box World invites them to first look at "the Box" itself. Through joint reflection, dialogue, and collaboration across multiple perspectives, the game creates space to question these underlying structures and to explore how paradigmatic barriers in science and its communication might be recognised, discussed, and, where possible, rethought

Example of a game round:

Functions

Box World serves three interconnected functions: 

1. Dissemination. The game communicates and valorizes research findings from my doctoral research (Van Even, 2023) in an interactive and creative manner, translating academic insights into an engaging format.

2. Collaboration: Through dialogue and co-creation, the game enables participatory science. Participants collaboratively explore issues related to science and its communication, becoming aware of multiple perspectives and how these shape understanding and decision-making. 

3. Research: The game functions as an arts-based research method for qualitative data collection. I refer to this participatory, arts-based research approach as Boxology, through which participants' perspectives and interpretations are articulated and actively brought into the research process.

Through these functions, the game established a reciprocal relationship between science and society:  science has an impact on society, and societal perspectives, in turn, inform scientific reflection and research.

Box World also gave rise to a novel research method, which I call Boxology. Boxology is an arts- and game-based approach for conducting research at a foundational level, focusing on underlying structures, assumptions, and paradigms that shape scientific practice and communication but are often difficult to observe or describe.

By working with visual prompts, the method enables participants to articulate experiences, perceptions, and assumptions that are not easily captured through language alone. This articulation is central to Boxology as a data collection method, as it allows otherwise implicit dimensions to become accessible as qualitative research data. This makes it possible to inquire into structures (such as norms, values, and implicit logics) that tend to remain invisible precisely because they are taken for granted. 

Boxology supports transdisciplinary research by gathering empirical insights that cut across institutional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries. The dialogues and reflections collected through Boxology reveal both public and scientific perspectives on issues in science and its communication, allowing these perspectives to be examined in relation to one another. In this way, Boxology strengthens the reciprocal relationship between science and society without requiring a shared vocabulary. The collective interpretation of visuals generates analyzable empirical material, consisting of narratives, reflections, and negotiated meanings. Through this process, lived experience and multiple perspectives are directly integrated into the research process.

A book chapter on the Boxology method is planned for publication in 2026.

Over the past two years, the Box World Game has gained visibility within academic and professional contexts. I have been invited as a speaker or guest lecturer to present and play the game at universities worldwide, including:

• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam - Athena Instituut (invited by prof. dr. Michiel Van Oudheusden)

• University of Trento - Scienza Tecnologia e Società (STSTN) Department (invited by prof. dr. Massimiano Bucchi)

• Zhejiang University - Media and Communication Studies Department (invited by prof. dr. Kexin Wang)

• Johns Hopkins - Bloomberg School of Public Health - R3ISE Center for Innovation (invited by prof. dr. Gundula Bosch)

• KU Leuven - Faculty of Social Sciences (invited by prof. dr. Bieke Zaman) and Faculty of Arts (invited by prof. dr. Jack Mc Martin)

The game has also been presented at international associations, including Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), and the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB). In addition, Box World was presented at the Let's Talk Science event in Belgium and featured in a podcast episode titled "Thinking Outside of the Science Communication Box" by Belgian science communicator Julie De Smedt.

Since 2024, the Box World game has been played with over 850 participants across a wide range of professions (artists, students, researchers, media professionals, NGO actors, and other members of the public), and cultural backgrounds (Belgium, China, US, the Netherlands, Korea, Japan, Portugal, Thailand, India, Kenya, Bolivia, Italy). 

(IN PROGRESS)