What is a role play?

By grammar, the word is a ‘noun’.

“In the PSYCHOLOGICAL TERMS, it may be defined as, the acting out or performance of a particular role, either consciously (as a technique in training) or unconsciously, in accordance with the perceived expectations of society as regards a person’s behavior in a particular context” (Google Search result).

“In simpler terms, Role-playing refers to the changing of one’s behavior to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing).

Below diagram shows the strengths of “Roleplay”,

(Image source: http://roleplayasaninstructionalmethodforadultlearners.weebly.com/key-features-of-role-play.html)

In the design engineering, “role play” indeed plays an important role.

How does it work?

The roleplay builds on the previous knowledge and experience of the performer. It helps a learner or performer to immerse into experiencing a situation from past or to an extent help to be prepared for a future situation.

“Role play is valuable in learning situations where it is not reasonable to practice the required skills directly in the field. For example, role playing a public meeting with irate citizens or a child protection worker removing a child from their home. The main learning goal for a role play is for the student to learn the knowledge and ability required to approach or deal with a specific situation. The learner gains this knowledge and ability by acting out the situation in a controlled environment, and by reflecting on that experience. (http://roleplayasaninstructionalmethodforadultlearners.weebly.com).”

The next topic to cover in the course of Design Engineering is the Empathy Mapping. It needs a background built in the thoughts of a student that what may happen while playing a role of someone. It is a prerequisite to Empathy mapping exercise.

The goal of the Roleplaying exercise is to strengthen the Empathy Mapping.

How to Do?

For students, it is comparatively easy to play a role of someone who, they have seen the most and remained for a larger period of duration in their life. The best roleplay considering gender effects may be a male student playing a role of his father, uncle, brother and so on. For a female student, one may go with playing a role of her mother, sister, auntie and such. Prior playing a role for someone who is purely is to be assumed, one need to check how much good one can perform.

Steps are easy to follow:

1. Create a situation (assume) and devote some 20 to 30 minutes’ time (solo or in a team, creating a scenario where everyone is someone else) and let your thoughts flow;
2. Bring in different emotions (one-by-one);
3. Think of possible reasons working behind such emotions;
4. Note down your experience (let’s say by the end of each of 3-4 minutes);
5. Verify it with the person whose role you played.

The last two steps are important.

It will help you,

• Documenting the thoughts; (the structure of writing language is improved)
• A quick verification on missing thoughts;

Such verification will increase the insights in playing a role of a near n’ dear one. Of course, prior playing a role of some other user.

Learners may be allowed to play the roles of different persons around them and document each experience and get more of insights in the task.

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Immersing into Roleplay by Bhasker V. Bhatt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Created the content as a part of developing Open Educational Resources (OER). It means you are free to use, re-use and distribute the above all for free provided while the usage, proper citation is made. The page is under Creative Commons free culture license.