Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation

Acknowledged as a “great artist” [1, p. 83], a “pioneer” [2], and a third culture thinker [3], the speaker, through his over four decades portfolio of works, in this talk reflects on the question of “Why it’s Art?” Such questioning aligns with others who have asked, “What is Art?” [4] “Where is Art?” “Who makes Art?” [5] “What is Art for?” [6] and more. Ongoing discussions abound. However, if the art under scrutiny transcends genres, as in this case, the questioning of “Why it’s Art” art becomes multifold and more challenging for third-parties to expertly argue. Aligned to this is that because of its bespoke hybrid synthesized nature, - Performance Art as Human Performance as Performance Art -; the concept in question is posited as one that needs to be self-experienced in order to argue opposition. There are thus few experts with extended involvement given its contemporary and original nature. This keynote talk presents selections from the speaker’s works spanning decades either side the turn of the millennium that resulted in European and national awards (across genres). This brief text focuses on extracting from Tolstoy [4] in arguing the author’s contemporary position in light of historic argument. These works, awards and text support the positioning, which is further sustained by him achieving numerous national and international multimillion Euro funded projects with various collaborators from industry and public sectors where the work has been central. The work is ongoing.

The international conference ArtsIT that began in 2009 has grown since its inauguration presentation in Taiwan. Since then it has been hosted twice in Denmark, 2011 and 2016; as well as in Italy 2013; Turkey 2014; and most recently in Crete, Greece in 2017. The international conference Design, Learning and Innovation (DLI) was inaugurated in 2016 as a co-located event to ArtsIT being presented together in Esbjerg, Denmark; in 2017 in Heraklion, Crete, Greece; and in 2018 in Braga, Portugal. The series of conferences has realized over 108000 Springer e-book downloads at September 2018 and numerous special issue journals. This paper presents past aspects of ArtsIT/DLI from the perspective of steering persons having purpose to offer readers a historical framing of the events under the European Alliance for Innovation (EAI). This is supplemented by overviewing the authors’ researches, which promoted EAI to invite leadership, alongside a background of the complementary workings, and contextual goals of the partnering.

6,849.32 new research journal articles are published every day. The exponential growth of Scientific Knowledge Objects (SKOs) on the Web, makes searches time-consuming. Access to the right and relevant SKOs is vital for research, which calls for several topics, including the visualization of science dynamics. We present an interface model aimed to represent of the relations that emerge in the science social space dynamics, namely through the visualization and navigation of the relational structures between researchers, SKOs, knowledge domains, subdomains, and topics. This interface considers the relationship between the researcher who reads and shares the relevant articles and the researcher who wants to find the most relevant SKOs within a subject matter. This article presents the first iteration of the conceptualization process of the interface layout, its interactivity and visualization structures. It is essential to consider the hierarchical and relational structures/algorithms to represent the science social space dynamics. These structures are not being used as analysis tools, because it is not objective to show the linkage properties of these relationships. Instead, they are used as a means of representing, navigating and exploring these relationships. To sum up, this article provides a framework and fundamental guidelines for an interface layout that explores the social science space dynamics between the researcher who seeks relevant SKOs and the researchers who read and share them.

For over a hundred years, comics is presented on paper-based carriers such as magazines and books. With the development of new technologies, the comics industry has the opportunity to embrace a new carrier—the digital environment in electronic devices. However, due to the difference of the carrier, there exist differences between d-Comics (digital comics) and printed comics. One main difference is how the carrier creates segmentation of a sequence of comic panels: the segmentation created by paper is static and exclusive, while the segmentation created by screen-based electronic device may not be static nor exclusive because the same comics can be accessed through electronic devices with different screen sizes. This article describes an online experiment conducted to investigate how panel sequences are segmented in d-Comics. By analyzing the collected data from 80 participants with 4 panel sequences, two types of segmentation of panels in d-Comics were identified and discussed. This finding will further contribute to the design of d-Comics.

Museums promote cultural experiences through exhibits and the stories behind them. Nevertheless, museums are not always designed to engage and interest young audiences, especially teenagers. Throughout this paper, we discuss teenagers as an important group to be considered within the Children-Computer Interaction field, and we report some techniques on designing with teens, in particular, arguing that participatory design methods can involve teenagers in the design process of technology for museums. For this purpose, we conceptualized, designed and deployed a co-design activity for teenagers (aged 15–17), where teenagers together with a researcher jointly created and designed a medium fidelity prototype. For this case study, participants were divided into groups and invited to think and create games and story plots for a selected museum. All the prototypes were made by the participants with the support and guidance of the researcher and the Aurasma software, an augmented reality tool.

In this paper, we describe the process and technology behind the creation of a video art piece, ‘Moderate Recursion,’ that is a by-product of the dance performance, ‘Heavy Recursion.’ The original interactive dance work was part of the Dance.Draw project and was a reflection on the role of technology in our lives. The resulting video art piece, ‘Moderate Recursion,’ uses a combination of recorded videos of the projected visualizations and of the dancers on the stage. This paper presents the emergence of this new visual art piece. This demonstrates how ephemeral instances of interactive performance art can be captured for broader audiences to experience, through a permanent video artifact.

Artists often try to open up new experiences for people, challenging them to extend horizons and perception. This becomes particularly relevant when thinking about experiencing built environments: Here, technologies like Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVE) or Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) can be used as a tool to offer richer experiences to the audience in both art installations and exhibitions. We have been developing several exhibitions tackling the challenges that come with exhibiting in (semi -) public spaces: how do we engage visitors in our exhibitions, what role do bystanders play and how can this be considered in the development and design process? The exhibitions were built in a chronological order (2015–2018) and increasing degree of immersion and interaction. For exhibition one (“step-in/Ideal Spaces”), we built a CAVE-like “tryptic” projection showing linear pre-rendered videos of seven different built environments. In exhibition two (“fly-over/Super Nubibus”) we build a replica of a hot-air-balloon and let people experience architecture from birds eye view using a HMD. Exhibition three (“cruise/Biketopia”) is also an immersive VR using a HMD, but from a very different angle. Here we use a bike to let people actively explore a space by regulating speed and direction of the bike. By using the discreet method of observation, we ensured that the visitors were not disturbed in their experience, which in turn would falsify our findings. So we are able to compare and discuss these three approaches in regards to the above mentioned criteria within this paper.

Bǎi is an interactive sound installation that uses a pendulum speaker as an interface for audience participation. We track the movement of the hanging speaker with an HTC Vive tracker which allows to use its motion as input for the interactive dialogue. A 6-speaker setup is surrounding the pendulum and reacting to it. While interacting, the behaviour of the installation changes and goes through different states and levels of excitement. This results in a dynamically changing sound environment for the audience to explore. This paper elucidates the design goals we intended to achieve for the audience experience and the behaviour of the installation. We present a comprehensive description of the development process, including physical, software and sound design. Meanwhile, we discus different forms of interacting with the pendulum speaker and the surrounding speakers.

This paper presents research output from an experiment that combines ideas from User Research and Art-based Research. Artistic processes inspired the study, in which we asked participants to assess and then “paint” their emotions over emotion-eliciting images using an array of materials, such as watercolors and colored pencils. We used a mixed methods approach that included questionnaires, psychometric data from validated scales and informal conversations. Our primary goals were to inform the design of a mobile application meant to improve emotional wellbeing and assess whether creative self-expression can help to engage users when evaluating and exploring their affective states. We conclude by summarizing the results, which we believe to be positive.

Video games often either have good single player campaign modes or good multi-player campaign-less modes. This paper presents a framework aimed at the full game development pipeline, from designers to programmers, to aid in creating multiplayer campaigns by providing components that help singleplayer story modes to be used in multiplayer interaction settings. We also propose a custom matchmaking system capable of matching players so as to intertwine their individual stories. The proposed framework has been validated in a case study. A set of experimental results show that the framework is capable of producing valuable story crossings and proper matchmaking.

Information Visualisation studies how visual representations can help understanding hidden patterns in large amounts of data. The produced visual artefacts should have both functional and aesthetic dimensions to make the visualisation appealing to the user. However, in the Data Aesthetics field, the process of creation of visualisations is more concerned with aesthetics. Our goal for this project is to develop a framework to explore the aesthetic dimension of a functional visualisation model characterised by a series of parameters, which can make the visualisation more functional or more aesthetically appealing. In concrete, we propose a framework based on Interactive Evolutionary Computation (iec) to evolve the parameterisation of the visualisation model, enabling the user to explore new possibilities and to create different aesthetics over the data. Our case study will be a dataset with the consumption patterns of the Portuguese people in one retail company. The developed system is able to create a wide diversity of emergent visual artefacts that can be intriguing and aesthetically appealing for the user.

Surveillance art is a contemporary art practice that deals with the notion of human expressiveness in public spaces and how monitoring data can be transformed into more poetic forms, unleashing their creative potential. Surveillance, in a sociopolitical context, is a participatory activity that has changed radically in recent years and could be argued to produce, not only social control but also to contribute to the formation of a collective image of feelings and affects expressed in modern societies. The paper explores a multidisciplinary approach based on tracking human motion from surveillance cameras on New York Time Square. The performed human trajectories were tracked with a real-time machine vision framework and the outcomes were used to feed a generative design algorithm in order to transform the data into emotionally expressive 3D visualizations. Finally, a study was conducted to assess the expressive power of this approach so as to better understand the relationships among perceived affective qualities and human behaviors.

Visualizing and characterizing scientific data from observations at the nanoscale is a challenging task. We present creative approaches in the development of an interactive system to visualize and characterize nanopillar structures. This research is a result of a collaboration inside a team of scientists and artists, in the course of an artistic residency that occurred in a scientific institution. Before describing the development approaches, we will present a brief introduction to the thematic of nanotechnologies, media arts, and data visualization. This work arose from the need to observe and present nano visualizations during an artistic presentation, and to provide a software solution, that has been developed. The focus of this paper is to describe the technical and creative processes in the development of a reliable scientific visualization system.

Observing audience attendance of a student created interactive art installation is posited relating to phenomenon of serendipity, brought about via cumulated conditions and strategies, synchronously resulting in an author-recognized ‘Aha experience’. Identifying of engagement, then disengagement, and subsequent re-engagement informs reflections and critique. Speculation to how multi-affordances in an interactive art installation can combine with perceptual and cognitive pre-knowledge, e.g. pervasiveness of sensors in contemporary society (as audience pre-knowledge), to influence audience expectation, explorations, and engagement experiences. This contextually illustrated in how affordances (false/perceptual/hidden) of the installation became aspects that unwittingly and coincidentally cumulated to establish a critical incident moment: A period in time that serendipitously and synchronously involved observation of audience disengagement following initial confrontation immediately followed by a system reset that stimulated (as if playfully) re-engagement. Conclusions question how a strategy of playful artistic design that incorporates such audience perceptual and cognitive influencing through affordances can be a potential factor utilized in realizing interactive art installations. Posited thus is a contemporary art strategy goal to engage beyond artless mapping (e.g. one-to-one) toward more stimulating, intellectual, and enjoyable audience experience.

The digitalization and commercialization of the Internet have led to a digital culture of remembrance in recent years. This change is difficult; negative examples are subject of ongoing discussions. These discussions are elucidating that the collective remembrance culture, especially within the digital domain, is a sensitive field. Currently there is no guidance available for the development of innovative concepts of digital memory products. “Best practices” collections, which might provide guidance to the development of novel products and services linked commemorative culture, are so far missing. In this paper we will describe the current status of the ongoing project Memorial Design Pattern. The presentation of the theoretical approaches to the culture of collective remembrance, the design patterns concept as well as best-practice researches initiate this work. We present the concept of a catalogue and knowledge base for best practices in the field of digital memorial design pattern. We also present our approach for the identification of patterns and a set of selected examples of design patterns in digital-media based commemorative culture. Finally, the paper provides a discussion on future work for building up a memorial design pattern repository.

The idea of 360 degree is not a new phenomenon in arts and media. It has its origins in the arts of the early 18th century and later the panoramic view in the field of photography and also in film was adapted. Groundbreaking technological progress has allowed for a new hype in 360 degree videos in recent years, including new possibilities of interaction. In this paper we will describe the current status of the ongoing project Cyberella which focuses on exploring filmmaking and narrating techniques for interactive 360 degree films. Our approach is divided into two steps. Firstly, existing interactive 360 degree videos are examined for their specific film language. A catalogue will summarize important results of the analysis, including research questions, as a basis for our film project. Our second step will comprise of our film project Cyberella, which is testing a variety of film styles to find new ways of filmmaking and defining design guidelines. In summary, this paper aims to contribute to the discussion of how storytelling in relation to traditional film language can or should be adapted in 360 degree interactive video context to formulate first design-issues for practical use.

This is a short paper accompanying a keynote talk on playable cities at the 2018 ArtsIT conference in Braga, Portugal. We discuss smart, playable, and affective cities from the viewpoints of on the one hand how a city can be perceived and experienced by its citizens and on the other hand how the city perceives (monitors) its citizens. Both viewpoints assume sensors, actuators and computing systems embedded in urban environments. The viewpoints are illustrated with examples from smart cities, affective cities and playable cities.

Serious games can be used as a way to transmit knowledge to the users/students, playing the role of a pedagogical tool in their learning process. Following this idea, a serious game on Statistics is developed for higher education level, promoting and demonstrating the applicability of statistics concepts in day-to-day life and in the decision-making process. The proposed idea is to create a challenging environment (mystery that needs to be solved), where the clues are contextualized in the statistics area through the practice of probability knowledge, confidence intervals and hypotheses tests. According to the student’s answers and choices, the game branches out leading the player to different activities/challenges, guaranteeing that, by the end of the game, the student has a better understanding of the subject. In the present paper, the storyboard and the student competencies are presented and discussed, focusing on the project’s main objectives.

This article presents preliminary findings on the application of both Speculative Design and Game Design towards the conception of two prototypes of serious games with focus on anorexia. The first prototype focuses on psychoeducation of school-age youth, and the second aims to support research and sharing of knowledge about the disease, able to be used in focus groups and interviews. Anorexia is a complex and often fatal disease that has no cure, and by conceiving and playing these first prototypes we were able get a glimpse of the its context, making us more ready for this research’s next stages.

In this article, a multidisciplinary experience with designers and developers to create pervasive games prototypes for an Interactive Space is presented. The Interactive Space, in which the experience took place, and the toolkit that the developers used in order to implement the games are explained. The different sessions with designers and developers are also described in detail, together with the game prototypes that resulted from the experience.

This paper presents an analysis on the interactive installation of “Scentgraphy”, which could compute, interpret, simulate and store scents behind scenes. It acts like an original camera or gramophone to capture and save pictorial memories. It not only enriches the interactive experiences, but also establishes a closer relationship with the combination of smell, vision and emotion. Meanwhile, Scentgraphy also provide an interesting interaction conducive for immersive experience of breathing aromatherapy. This project explores new experiences about the senses, sensory boundaries, storing and reproducing of the sense of smell. Based on ancient perfumery techniques, a closer bond is developed between memory and sense of smell. Scentgraphy project explored a way for computing, simulation, and telecommunication of odors by visual and olfactory conversion. This is a preliminary exploration on olfactory informationization, and this research ensures that the feasibility of converting visual and olfactory and digital odors can be spread and applied in media and information technology.

This paper describes exploratory research that consists of the production and testing of a 360-degree video-prototype aiming to provide a closer perspective to Paralympic athletes’ training universe, exemplified by the wheelchair basketball. Media coverage of Paralympic sports has been changing but still represents athletes as heroes due to the overcoming of odds related to the impairment and not to the sports results. The present work considers immersive journalism and the use of virtual reality (VR) technologies as the path to an alternative framing where the athletes are portrayed as players facing a hard training routine and having sporting goals as the non-disabled ones.The paper presents a brief description of prototype production and details the user study conducted in the aftermath with four focus groups. Feedback provided by participants indicates the suitability of the 360-degree video, when experienced with a headset and headphones, for the framing proposed and also points out narrative strategies that can be useful not only in Paralympic sports’ storytelling but in the conception of diverse narratives for 360-degree video.

As smartphones have become widely available at low prices, interface designers need to improve accessibility of mobile applications for e.g. illiterate users. We evaluated how effectively and efficiently different signifiers communicated the affordances of dragging and double tapping touch gestures in a text editor environment. We found that spatially represented signifiers for dragging (drag handles and drop shadow) communicated the affordance better than temporal signifiers for double tapping. The latter appeared only for a limited amount of time in the user interface and were less effective and efficient than even a control condition that provided no additional information.

The use of mobile apps has become a significant part of people’s daily life. Mobile apps are used not only to share or have information on social platforms but also to socialise and meet basic human needs. Mobile apps have an incontrovertible potential to provide not only interpersonal communication among users but also help for cultural institutions to communicate and create an attraction for their target audiences. This paper presents the design process of a social mobile app, Acht, which aims to gamify a museum experience with a dating feature.

This study investigates the effects of vibrotactile feedback by motion controllers of a commercial virtual reality (VR) system on immersion, actual and perceived user performance, and perceived difficulty of specific tasks in VR.To this end, we developed two different tasks in VR with different types of interactions: entering numbers by rotating a number dial and stirring a pot. In a within-subject experiment, 14 participants completed the two tasks with and without vibrotactile feedback.The results showed that for both tasks self-reported immersion was significantly improved by vibrotactile feedback, while perceived difficulty was significantly reduced for one task, and perceived performance was significantly increased for the other task. These results show that even the limited vibrotactile feedback by motion controllers of commercial VR systems is capable of significantly changing VR experiences.

Within the field of artificial life it has been possible to create numerous virtual models that have allowed the study of the behaviour of living organisms and their interactions within artificially created ecosystems. Whilst the methods employed in this field have been mostly explored by various researchers in their projects, they had not been broadly applied to the entertainment and art fields.This paper focuses on a system (digital toy) which contains artificial life agents. These agents learn to interpret external audio commands and adapt to their environment using evolutionary computation and machine learning.

This paper addresses the development process of a serious game - PHOBOS - for hemophobia treatment. Hemophobia, also known as blood phobia, is the fear of blood, wounds, injuries, amongst others. The game addresses the issue through applied-tension exercise combined with exposure therapy on a virtual reality environment. One of the main challenges was to design a game that reconciliate in a balanced way an immersive narrative and plot with the treatment of a phobia that causes great tensions and find the best mechanics to allow a gradual exposure to blood. Artistically we wanted to create the more realistic environment possible, in tune with the sound design. This process was done with the help of a team of psychologists that in conjunction with the team of game developers created a plot that helps the player to adjust his discomfort and challenge himself in his path to deal with this phobia. We present an early stage development process of a virtual reality phobia game, from the brainstorming concept of the game to the development to the first prototype with its requirements and hardware used.

Inside the Geometry - Double language is a virtual reality art-project, which takes the form of diverse site-specific video-installations. The project involves the use of various 3D viewers, plus related smartphones playing diverse virtual reality animations.

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life on Earth and its biological diversity. It boosts ecosystem productivity, where each species has a role to play. Unfortunately, human activity is causing massive extinctions and biodiversity losses continue. Because of that, nature conservation efforts and environmental monitoring have become increasingly important to manage natural resources and reacts to changes. Following this line, we designed a game with a purpose (GWAP) aimed to address two emerging issues in this area: (i) engaging citizens in validating bioacoustic samples collected using smart bioacoustics sensors; and (ii) educating and enhancing the user’s biodiversity awareness while playing, inspiring them for later reflection and eventually inspire behavioural changes. In this paper, we describe the different design phases and the insights obtained from an early experience prototype session of the game, engaging 14 young-adults. From the prototype session, we collected insightful feedback on the design of the game and its mechanics as well as its interface. Moreover, preliminary positive responses of the users encourage us to refine and continue developing the game.

This paper explores how Donna Haraway’s “String Figuration” together with Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s concept of “touch” as a design method have worked in the process of an augmented reality (AR) play called Play/ce. The aim of this paper is to propose that designers of playful cities are creating the conditions for playability to show how players can try out and play with responses in a city by different acts of touch. I suggest that responding, which comes from the act of relaying, is part of designing ‘games as a social technologies’, a concept from Mary Flanagan. I will develop this concept since I think it is especially interesting to take into account when it comes to using cities as playgrounds and turn people into full body players to explore what touch means.

Museums are crucial elements of regional and local cultural offerings and can play a major role in tourism-related, educational, economical and urban-planning policies. To increase visitor numbers and thus further cultural exchange between regions and economical profit, we provide insight to a storytelling-based smart-city approach that routes users between the age of 14–25 years across 8 museums along the Dutch-German border using both Informations and communications technology (ICT) and gamification as part of the Rhhijnland.Xperiences project. Creating an appealing user-experience is a key-objective as the users motivation to continue his journey between the museums will highly depend on it. Each visit at one location facilitates the longing for visiting the next museum in the network. This approach is applicable to various other sets of institutions or points-of-interest (POI). The project itself is yet in a development stage and its product will be released by 2020.

This paper aims to propose a semiotic perspective on how play can be used to change the citizens’ perception of the city. The paper propose a meaning-centered understanding both of play activities (seen as resemantisations of the surrounding environment) and of urban spaces (seen as complex meaning-making machines) and attempts to show how the first ones can be used to re-interpret the second ones. Finally, a few examples such as parkour and flash mobs are analyses in order to test the efficacy of the approach.

This paper describes different types of activities/challenges designed for social interaction, while discussing the performance of such challenges using the mobile digital game “Secrets of the South” ( http://secretsofthesouth.tbm.tudelft.nl/ , Secrets of the South). The game was played as part of a scientific meeting, with participants from 25 to 62 years of age and a varying degree of cultural differences. The presentation and discussion of the results of the gameplay provide insights on the appropriateness of the different challenges for social interaction in a playful city. Directions for future work for such challenge designs are presented.

Can social engagement and reflection be designed through social touch in today’s smart city’s public spaces? This paper explores ludic, playful design for shared engagement and reflection in public spaces through social touch. In two Artistic Social Labs (ASL), internationally presented in public spaces, a radically unfamiliar sensory synthesis is acquired, for which perception of ‘who sees and who is being seen, who touches and who is being touched’ is disrupted. Participants playfully ‘touch themselves and feel being touched, to connect with others on a screen’. On the basis of the findings in the ASLs, guidelines are proposed for orchestrating social engagement and reflection, through social touch as play.

Resilient communities are an important prerequisite to reach urban resilience. In such communities, citizens need to be able to participate for improving liveability and safety of their environment. The playable city, where participation is key, provides the environment for this process to unfold. This paper researches requirements for the design of playgrounds: environments for open interaction and collaboration, as part of the playable city. Two workshops were organised in two neighbourhoods in The Hague to explore specific citizen preferences for playground design. Neighbourhood locations and the type of information citizens would like to discover, share, and create are identified, in particular with respect to healthcare, safety and social engagement. The implications of these requirements are presented and discussed with design options which exemplify how playgrounds in the city enable joined information sharing, creation, interaction, and collaboration.

As an emerging technological and communication form of this century, digital and social media applications are gaining acceptance as platforms for creativity and inspiration in fine arts and graphic design. However, despite the proliferation of social media platforms and digital manipulation and painting apps, repurposing them for pedagogical purposes is yet to be explored as an educational strategy in the traditional painting studio or computer graphics classroom. The essence of this paper is to employ qualitative as well as quantitative research methods to explore the capabilities of digital and social media applications as a technological apparatus for creativity and expressivity in art and design education and practice. The research involves an empirical investigation of the potential offered by digital media applications and social media platforms to enhance the creative learning experience in art and design. The methodological procedures that are discussed in this paper are the result of two experimental studies; the first study explores the use of a digital painting technique – Phone Art– in the fine arts studio, while the second study investigates the use of social media applications in the graphic design classroom. The investigation is undertaken in an experimental educational setting in an attempt to determine how technology can be utilized by educators in order to optimize the creative performance of students.

This paper first examines a variety of conceptual contemporary challenges and cognitive shortcomings of public policy makers, entrepreneurs and other practitioners in Germany as a knowledge-based economy. Systems thinking, digital competencies and several modern leadership skills are identified as possibilities to meet contemporary challenges in fast changing and complex environments. Modern leadership skills and promising working styles imply the ability to manage agile processes, flexibility and diversity, and the modus operandi as self-organizing networks. After that, the simulation game GLOBE Exercise at the OTH Regensburg is introduced as an innovative and transformative learning method. In its concept, the GLOBE Exercise combines virtual collaboration with Action Learning, and thus contributes to skills development and transfer both concerning digital competencies and analytical skills.

Despite the growing popularity of makerspaces in education, we currently have little understanding of the conditions and processes that promote students’ design thinking and knowledge creation in these digitally-enriched learning environments. To address these research gaps in current research knowledge, we draw on two ethnographic case studies on students’ maker activities situated in Canada and Finland. In the Canadian study, the focus is directed to analysing students’ design actions carried out in a five day long “microcycle” of learning by individual students in a Maker Lab. In the Finnish study, attention is directed to investigating forms of students’ collective knowledge creation during an elective course in a makerspace, The Fuse Studio. This paper shows that design thinking is a potentially fruitful way to build students’ global competencies and to approach knowledge creation in a makerspace environment as students engage in interest-driven making, requiring various levels of instructor/peer support, from independent making to guided inquiry.

Previous studies revealed that a compelling illusion of virtual body ownership (VBO) might be achieved under a condition of recognizable anatomical and morphological similarities to human body. Though certain deviations from morphology might be acceptable (e.g. virtual tails, longer arm or larger belly), if external limbs are responsible for specific functions in conjunction with a certain virtual scenario. Thus, this study aims at showing a possibility to achieve a compelling VBO illusion over a non-human avatar in a virtual environment. The paper describes a within-subjects study exploring if immersed users could achieve a compelling VBO illusion when inhabiting a virtual body of a bat. Test subjects experienced visuo-tactile stimulation of their arms while seeing an object touching their virtual wings. The mapping between the real and virtual touch points varied across three conditions: no offset between the visual and the tactile input, 50% offset, and 70% offset from the tactile input. The results revealed variations in the degree of experienced VBO across the conditions. The illusion was broken in the absence of visuo-tactile stimulation.

There is a growing need to develop new types of learning environments using different kinds of digital support to improve learning. Aalborg University which is based on problem based learning (PBL), has for several years tried to rethink the traditional courses to optimize and enhance the quality of the learning processes, e.g. when using video conference systems (VCS). In order to develop a new format of VCS courses we have used the course “Theory and Practice of Game Design and Development” as a foundation for experimenting with a new structure based on blended synchronous learning environments. This paper will introduce the learning environment concept of this course, the structure and students’ opinions of the new course concept and structure using VCS.

This paper presents the results of a field study on the use of lighting as a tool to structure and support teaching and learning activities by teachers. In a Danish elementary school, a dynamic lighting technology with the option of choosing four different lighting scenarios was installed in classrooms. The teachers’ use of the lighting was studied combining qualitative research material from observations and interviews and quantitative data from the lighting control system which indicated the teachers’ choices for lighting scenarios. As a result, different types of motivations for interacting with lighting emerged in the analysis: Supporting and structuring learning activities; Communicating with lighting and involving students; Affecting students’ activity level and behavior; Creating atmosphere; and Supporting visual task and visual comfort. All these motivational aspects should be considered when designing dynamic lighting systems for learning environments, thus creating a new interactive tool for teachers.

Both storytelling and learning by teaching approaches have shown to be beneficial separately when integrating robots into learning settings. This paper discusses how to combine them, based on principles found in the literature, and presents the design and implementation of a playful robot application for second language (L2) learning targeted at primary school children. Our first tests showed that the robot kept the children engaged throughout the learning activity. It appears to be a promising approach as some vocabulary gain is observed in children, but there can be several factors involved that were not controlled in the trials and that will require further work.

Today’s digital age is redesigning the educational process significantly, so the researchers have conducted a survey to explore the practice of teachers in the integration of contemporary information and communication technologies (ICT) at school level in Bulgaria. The paper presents and analyses findings of the teachers’ views on the frequency of use and usefulness of passive and active teaching resources – presentations, simulations, virtual laboratories, and learning games. Furthermore, based on a mathematical approach grounded in the utility theory and stochastic approximation the researchers develop a quantitative model. This model presents a utility function that reflects the teachers’ preferences for employing ICT tools and their impact on two of teaching approaches – passive and active. The derived utility functions help to reveal the sub-optimal proportions of the considered technological resources in the classroom education. The authors also provide some discussions, suggestions, and conclusions.

This paper investigates the interaction of developmentally disabled adults with a mediated multisensory virtual reality experience within a familiar social context. This was done as part of an exploratory case study. To this end, a media technological artefact was derived from the Snoezelen concept, a multisensory environment for stimulation and relaxation. This system is comprised of an HTC Vive based virtual reality environment tailored to the specific requirements of the case and its stakeholders. Play sessions were conducted at Udviklingscenter Ribe, a residence and development centre for the disabled. After compiling passive and participant observations from the sessions, and interviews with key staff, a series of guidelines were proposed. These guidelines encapsulate the project’s concerns and overarching trends and provide a future basis of study when designing and developing an interactive multisensory virtual environment.

The Prototyping Puppets project presents a craft-based prototyping project for STEM education of early middle school level students in informal learning. The project combines crafting and performing of hybrid puppets. It was pilot tested in two expert workshops (n = 6 and n = 10), which focused on crafting practices and materials and two student workshops (n = 8 and n = 9), which included performance elements. The resulting data back the main design concept to combine craft and performance in a STEM-focused maker project. They suggest particular focus on key elements of our educational scaffolding that focus on material performance in combination with crafting. We close with an outlook toward emerging changes as references for related work.

Quietude [1] is an EU funded project that aims at creating interactive fashion accessories and jewellery for deaf women to experience and make sense of sounds. Through Participatory Design, a series of prototypes were developed to scaffold design inquiry and develop human-centred solutions. Deaf women and women with different levels of hearing impairment were involved in various activities throughout the design process, from in depth interviews, inspirational workshops, and co-design activities, through to body storming with experienciable prototypes. Each design iteration consolidated the theoretical grounding and the definition of new forms of design support. The latest suite of accessories addresses a number of needs of deaf people, from functional needs like ambient awareness and safety, to hedonic needs like aesthetics, curiosity, possibility to express a personal sense of style when accessorizing the body.

This paper introduces a seven-country international partner consortium project carried out under the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. The project was titled L.U.C.A.S. (Links United for Coma Awakenings through Sport). Targeted user-group was acquired brain injured, spinal cord injury, and patients recovering from coma – many being profoundly impaired some being vegetative state. Elaboration and sharing of rehabilitation models to consider best practices targeting physical exercise, especially adapted sports, was catalyst of the project theme investigating a posited methodology. L.U.C.A.S. ran from January 2015 to December 2016 and was built upon an earlier Lifelong Learning European Program funded five-country project titled L.U.C.A. - Links United for Coma Awakening having its focus on learning and dissemination of good practices.The specific focus of the contribution is to briefly share both the Scandinavian research element of the project as well as the holistic outcomes to enable others to use, reflect, and critique the methodology. The paper also introduces the annual European Day of Awakenings that emerged under the L.U.C.A.S. project.

In this paper, we present a study conducted to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of Virtual Reality (VR) for teaching money skills to adolescents diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Through a user-centered design, in collaboration with teachers at a special school for adolescents with mental disorders, a VR money skills training application was developed. A pre- and post-VR training evaluation was conducted on five students diagnosed with ASD using real coins and bills. The data triangulated with observations during the VR training sessions illustrates some potentials and benefits in using VR as a mean to teach money skills to adolescents diagnosed with ASD.

This paper addresses theoretically the challenge of establishment of a networked learning architecture appropriate for the sustained design of both continuing and professional education. Bringing in theoretical concepts, together with affordances of digital technologies, and using an action research meta-methodology of critical research, the paper attempts to elucidate make transparent the type of considerations and discussions needed as a prerequisite for forming a general concept/model for pedagogic design for professional and continuing education. The study finalizes with a suggestion for a conceptual model for producing innovative learning processes within professional and continuing education.

This study is based on a survey study distributed in the fall of 2017 in Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The study was designed by a group of researchers from the Nordplus Horizontal project: Digital Computer Games for Learning in the Nordic Countries, to uncover teachers’ perceived obstacle in regard to using digital game-based learning in teaching situations. The results indicate that the teachers included in this study did not have enough information and knowledge about games and gamification tools to be used in teaching. The findings show that technical obstacles are the most experienced hurdle among the respondents in all three countries when it comes to applying games or gamification tools in teaching activities. There are not many differences to be observed gender wise. A common difference that is worth noticing, is the difference between women and men regarding their reporting on the obstacle ‘knowledge/skills’, where more women claim this to be an obstacle. From these results, the paper proposes three types of digital game-based learning guidelines, namely (1) rhetoric framing of usability and learnability, (2) engagement and (3) creating a guidance area – building a DGBL infrastructure. In conclusion, the paper calls for further empirical studies on the actual situation presented in this paper, to reach an informed discussion about questions that are of real concern for many parties, including teachers, school leaders, children and researchers.

The presence of digital technologies in classroom settings is relentlessly getting stronger and has shown to have powerful playful qualities. In recent years, digital game-based learning (DGBL) have been introduced in schools. In this paper we investigate an innovative approach to game-based learning, namely to use game design activities as motivators for developing children’s creative and social skills as well as other kinds of learning scenarios, e.g. computational. It is based on two cases, where game design activities by means of a narrative approach were applied in both analogue and digital form. The unit of analysis is game design activities. Hence, game design activities with the participating children (3rd graders, 9–10 years of age), creative materials and technologies, and children’s actions as well as interactions are analyzed. The research questions posed in this study are: (1) What activities develop when school children design games in two cases, as an analogue activity, and as an activity including technology?; and (2) How do the learning environment, including the artefacts, employed mediate these activities? The outcomes of the study indicate that the game design workshop session which included both creative material and technology unfolded more combinational activities, which indicate that the inclusion of technology facilitated a more critical design decision making. However, the game design workshop session including only creative material exhibited a more thorough knowledge about what the material could do and what the children themselves could do with the material, which seemed to result in more playful interactions between the children.

This study evaluated the effectiveness and usability of a developed collaborative online tool (chit-chat) for children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). We studied whether this tool influenced children’s Knowledge and experience exchange, motivation, behavioral abilities and social skills while using another learning tool, ACTIVATE. A total of seven Saudi children with ADHD aged from 6 to 8 years were assigned to the collaborative intervention using iPads. They were asked to play mini games that positively affect children with ADHD cognitively and behaviorally, then chat using our developed collaborative online tool, for three sessions. Progress points were measured and quantitatively analyzed before and after the intervention, thematic analysis was applied on the qualitative data. Participants showed improvements in overall performance when using the learning tool ACTIVATE. E-collaboration was found to be effective to children with ADHD and positively influencing their knowledge, experience, motivation and social skills.

This article presents the development of a serious game targeting secondary school students, that uses Augmented Reality (AR) to visualize, manipulate and explore mathematical concepts, particularly linear, quadratic, exponential and trigonometric (sine and cosine) functions. The motivation behind the development of the AR application was to provide students with learning materials that facilitate the exploration of a mathematical subject that is often considered difficult to learn. Whereas traditional resources for teaching and learning mathematics use manuals and scientific calculators to solve problems, the application, named FootMath, simulates a 3D football game, where the users can manipulate and explore the different functions using parameters with different values to score goals. Additionally, we discuss the potential of AR games as educational and engaging tools that can be used to facilitate learning, especially problem based learning and logical reasoning.

This paper explores augmented tangible user interfaces (ATUIs) as a new educational paradigm for teaching special need children concepts from abstract domains. Case study being presented focuses on learning concepts of musical notation through constructivist multisensory AR experience utilizing TUI. The study was conducted in collaboration with Speciální Základní Škola Vysoké Mýto (Czech special needs school), where the experiment with such learning method using proposed ATUI called ARcomposer was held. In a user study with 22 participants, it was found that ATUIs are not only useful for children with intellectual disabilities, but that most of the children also yield great educational gains. The results of the study were concluded in a form of quantitative research in cooperation with pedagogues specialized in teaching students with intellectual disabilities.

The year 2017 was relatively tragic concerning the fires in Portugal. The scourge that settled in the country and the loss of countless human lives were engraved in the Portuguese memory. Due to extraordinary weather conditions and a lack of powerful means to immediately respond to the tragedy, more than a hundred citizens lost their lives in forest fires, some of them in severe conditions, in the middle of the forest and without a chance of escape, burned in cars as they fled. This paper presents the development of an integrated visualization system, exploring data acquired over the period of last ten years of Portuguese Forest Fires. The data was extracted from multiples of official public sources and formats, analyzed and classified accordingly. Advanced graphics and data-intense processing techniques provide distinct outputs, results, and correlations on acquired sources. This project contributes to innovative data analysis and reports perception, and it is intended to fit the expectation and needs of forest fires experts in crisis scenarios, representing an add-value for transformative co-decision.

The field of pervasive games is gaining importance in the last times. These games are characterized by exceeding the usual dimensions of time, space and social component that are present in traditional games. These games are usually played in an interactive space, in which several user interfaces following a multimodal approach work together to obtain the pervasive game experience. Pervasive games have proven to be useful in several fields, including the educational one. Here, we introduce The Fantastic Journey, a pervasive game directed towards children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The game has been designed with the help of pedagogues so that it really matches some educational goals. The game is made up of some missions that integrate different kinds of interaction: gestural, tangible, etc. The game has been developed following a methodological approach developed as a previous work. In this paper, the main features of the game, focusing on its different missions and their educational goals, are explained.

Virtual Reality (VR) might give us a glimpse of what it feels to have a different from human shaped body and how to orientate ourselves in virtual environment (VE) with it. Bats’ wings structure has anatomical similarities to a human hand; yet would it be possible to achieve a compelling illusion of virtual body ownership (VBO) over bat’s avatar is questionable. Hence our main aim of research is to imitate bat’s sonar system and achieve embodiment of anatomically similar but morphologically different body – a body of a bat. Test results showed a possibility to achieve VBO illusion using bat’s avatar. VBO was significantly higher when steering through VE, as opposed to steering without a virtual body and exposing to involuntary movement through VE. With our research prototype, users will be able to navigate with echolocation system and fly through a virtual cave.

We present the concept, design and first prototype of CodeCubes, a hybrid interface that combines physical paper cubes with Augmented Reality (AR) for promoting computational thinking. Additionally, we reflect on the potential of combining digital games with new interaction paradigms in the context of the classroom for introducing students to programming concepts in a playful, engaging way, this way promoting student’s interest and engagement for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math).