On 20 November 2025, the Dutch Games Association organised an event at Post Plaza in Leeuwarden focused on design thinking and applied game design and beyond.
Interested participants could register free of charge to maintain the open character of the CLICKNL events. The registrations show a diverse audience, ranging from people involved in game development and academics to representatives from other fields. This time we also saw a group of upcoming talent from Northern educational programmes related to game studies.
Innovation specialist Sophie Asveld opened with a session about developing a healthcare innovation with gamification that is not only inventive but also truly connects with the target group. Sophie shared the techniques she uses to translate ideas into impactful healthcare innovations.
Her talk was followed by a presentation by Tim Laning, commercial director at Grendel Games. He spoke about Laptitude, Grendel’s leading platform for laparoscopic surgery training. Tim reflected on the development of the platform and what they learned from user experiences in order to build a community-driven hardware platform for innovative training worldwide.
Next was Nathan van der Stoep, indie game developer and cognitive neuropsychologist at TNO. In his lecture he discussed the principles of human multisensory perception and how these are applied or can be applied in game development.
The content programme concluded with Yuen Yen Tsai, Creative Coach and Facilitator/Trainer Design Thinking and Creative Intelligence at Make Me See. She shared design thinking tools that can be used in conversations with clients and stakeholders. She presented three design thinking tools to reopen dialogue, reconnect and move forward.
After each presentation there was an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. This option was used enthusiastically, so much so that there was not enough time to answer all questions during the programme. Fortunately, from 17:30 onwards participants could continue their conversations informally over drinks. This also led to new connections between people who plan to continue their discussions later.
We thank CLICKNL for helping make this informative knowledge-sharing and networking event possible.