Prasad Sandbhor
Research Student

Interests

Serious/applied games design and research, Games for change, Design research, Qualitative research

Qualifications

Master of Design (MDes) in Toy and Game Design, National Institute of Design, India

Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electronics Engineering, Savitribai Phule Pune University

Career

Prasad is a serious game designer and researcher. He has designed games for education, healthcare, social safety, sustainability and science outreach over digital, tabletop and hybrid platforms. He has co-founded the Play in Nature initiative that crafts playful experiences to connect people with nature around them. He also teaches game design and user experience design.

As a multidisciplinary design consultant, Prasad has been involved in conceptualising and creating B2C and B2B digital products for Indian as well as international organisations. His professional experience of 8 years in setting and leading design teams has made him proficient in strategic management of design. Prasad has been able to maintain his secret identity as a freelance author too. He writes short stories and essays in his native language, Marathi.

Prasad’s PhD research explores designing games that facilitate the sensemaking of climate actions among university students. It defines sensemaking as a structured process aiding the understanding of alternative pro-environmental actions within complex constraints, involving activities like reflection, brainstorming, and critiquing. The primary objective of his work is to identify game elements that impact players’ ability to make sense of climate actions to articulate design and facilitation guidelines for researchers, designers, and educators from climate change education and communication domains. It also aims to explore the transferability of sensemaking from the game into the real world.