Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation

Computer programming is more than a tool for the artist. Writing code is manipulating a medium: a medium that is like no other. This chapter discusses the importance of coding and shows how it is enabling principled investigations into inventing new forms, creating new experiences and extending the nature of engagement with art works. It shows how formal ways of making art, from perspective to the 20th century use of systems, geometry and mathematics, have pointed to the value of programming. This is a direction that has defined the work of a range of artists. The chapter discusses the use of the medium of code by artists who talked about their art making process. They include pioneers Aaron Marcus, Harold Cohen and Manfred Mohr and other artists, some of whom are live coding practitioners.

This chapter is about the different kinds of relationships that creative practitioners have with digital technologies in the making of artworks. Four types of creative process are described in which the role of the digital is differentiated as tool, medium, mediator and partner. In many cases, the digital technology performs more than one role: practitioners are using ready-made tools for making interactive works and at the same time writing algorithms to create digital partners with whom they perform. In this kind of creative practice, the technology is often the material of the creative works as well as the means by which they are made. It can enable a wide range of aesthetic qualities as well as facilitate different kinds of experience for both creators and audiences. This is a journey that many artists are taking in the 21st century contemporary digital arts world. The discussion is illustrated by the works of creative practitioners for whom digital technology is integral to the way they work.

Shook (2007) informed how Human experience is the ultimate source and justification for all knowledge. Experience itself has accumulated in human memory and culture, gradually producing the methods of intelligence called “reason” and “science.” Having a focus on such experiences as opening theme for this work communicates the ‘human-at-center’ perspectives of this volume. Scholarly perspectives are presented that illustrate across disciplines and cultures.

How do you harness a “level” of emotional connectivity from audience/participants? Questionnaires, focus group discussions, interviews and other qualitative methods gather retrospective thoughts of the participant and may miss important insights or connections that could be discovered if a real-time response is recorded. The aspiration for real-time audience data recording is problematic in many areas of research, in particular performing arts where the work/research presented is time bound. In addressing this problem within research into the design of novel musical controllers, custom “sliders” were used to measure and examine real-time audience response to short musical performances. The audience moved their sliders in response to the performance, producing continuous data that was recorded into music software and timestamped. The initial test results have shown promising insights and usefulness for real-time data collection and examination. These results and possible methods of data analysis are presented along with discussion on how this approach may be applied in other research contexts.

This paper synthesizes the latest design knowledge accumulated with the Comicubes service design tool and solution prototyping method, and shares some of the lessons learned during the multiple workshops organized. The physical prototyping tool combines two-dimensional sketching with a three-dimensional and open-ended play medium – the cube. The method incorporates key aspects of service-oriented interaction design. We have used Comicubes to facilitate co-creation to generate new ideas, solutions or approaches to various design challenges related to the gamification, toyification and playification of services. This study summarizes four case studies where Comicubes has been employed as a platform for 3D prototyping, testing, and simultaneously, a tool to stimulate, envision and co-create interactive user experiences. The findings of the four case studies summarized indicate that the Comicubes tool and method are suitable to be used in design processes interested to facilitate co-creation and innovation of products, services and experiential spaces.

This paper presents insights from a collaborative design research project, in which a zoological aqua park in Denmark integrated multiple gamified digital installations in their new exhibition design. We document how these designs are in a tension between allowing game-based interactions, and the didactic communication about facts in the exhibition. We study the implemented solutions based on qualitative interviews with visitors, and with quantitative data from the backend game analytics of the installations. From triangulating these data sets we show how attempts to deliver purely fact-based information through didactic design elements fail to succeed in engaging the visitors, while stealth learning sparks enlightenment about the subject matter. Our results suggest that this is true both in cases in which users fully understand and play through the intended interactions, as well as when more negotiated interpretations of the digital installations are performed. From this our contribution are guiding principles for the balance, between experience and enlightenment in gamified exhibition designs.

The recent push for more detailed graphics and realistic visuals in animated productions has sparked much debate around the new films’ photorealistic visual style. Some critics argue that the new “live-action” versions of movie classics such as the Lion King are not as visually stylish as the original ones, and the photorealistic characters are not as likeable, fun and intriguing as their stylized counterparts. This paper reports ongoing research whose goal is to examine whether it is possible to apply traditional animation principles to photorealistic animated animal characters in order to make them more expressive, convincing and ultimately entertaining. In particular, the study reported in the paper investigated the extent to which varying degrees of exaggeration affect the perceived believability and appeal of a photorealistic talking cat character performing a series of actions in a high detail environment. The study included 82 participants and compared three levels of exaggeration applied to the cat’s motions, e.g. no exaggeration, low exaggeration and high exaggeration. Findings show that subjects found the no-exaggeration clip more appealing and believable than the exaggerated versions, although the difference in appeal was not statistically significant. When comparing the two exaggerated clips, participants rated the high exaggeration clip higher for believability and appeal than the low exaggeration one.

Couples living in long-distance relationships (LDRs) may lack ways to keep emotionally connected. Previous research has presented a wealth of systems and user studies that offer insights of individual systems and their user interface designs. These studies have revealed a multitude of design attributes of the relatedness strategies of LDRs and the user interfaces used in computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems for LDRs. In this paper, we synthesise the multitude of different design attributes, and present a design framework that addresses the five main areas of LDR systems: users (the remote couple), the LDR itself, the used technology, the design of the device, interaction, nature of messages and supported connectedness strategies, and the context of the use. We validate the framework by analysing and presenting a set of six existing systems and prototypes in light of this framework, and show how they take into account the central design attributes. As a conclusion, we propose that this framework can be used to assist in designing and evaluating the user interfaces of CMC systems for emotional communication to support LDRs.

It is always challenging for people with disabilities, particularly having speech inhibition to communicate. In this research article, we explored the case study of the resident at the neurological centre, having a complication in conveying messages due to physical and speech paralysis. For making effective communication, we have developed a user-centred communication pad where the resident needs to swipe a finger on the pad with printed alphabets and digits (we called it communication pad). A camera placed over the communication pad detects the finger movement of the resident and extract the message to display on the computer screen or the tablet. Our tracking method is robust and can track the fingers even in varying illumination conditions. This paper also covers the main steps of design methods with various design prototypes and its user feedback. Result analysis of different design modules and user experience evaluation shows that our designed system has provided independence and convenience to the resident in conveying a message successfully.

Within the field of human-robot interaction (HRI), robots designed for social interactions are not only evaluated in terms of efficiency and accuracy. Factors related to the “personality” or “cognitive” ability of the robot such as perceived likability and intelligence are important considerations because they must engage with their human counterparts in deeper, more authentic and sometimes creative ways. Interactive art allows for the exploration of such interactions, however, the study of robots in interactive art remains relatively less commonplace and evaluations of these robots in creative contexts are similarly lacking. In this paper, we present an interactive robot inspired by Norman White’s The Helpless Robot (1987), which has been endowed with a cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect and the ability to collaborate with participants in a creative drawing task. We evaluate the participants’ interactions with both biased and unbiased versions of this robot using the Godspeed Questionnaire Series (GQS), which has been modified to include measures of creativity, and relate these findings to analyses of their collaborative drawings. Our results indicate a significant difference between the versions of the robot for several measures in the GQS, with the unbiased version rated more positively than the biased robot in all cases. Analysis of the drawings suggests that participants interacting with the biased robot were less inclined to collaborate in a cooperative manner.

Many artists produce and mix their virtual reality, game, or screen media audio productions only with headphones, but deploy them to stereo or multi-channel loudspeaker setups. Because of the acoustical and perceptual differences, listening on headphones might sound very different compared to loudspeakers, including the perception of sound sources inside the head (externalisation problem). Nevertheless, by using Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) and accurate movement tracking, it is possible to simulate a loudspeaker setup with proper externalisation. In this paper, an infrared-based positional tracking system with non-individualised HRTFs to simulate a loudspeaker setup is conceptualised, designed and implemented. The system can track the user with six degrees of freedom (6-DOF); an improvement over current commercial systems that only use 3-DOF tracking. The system was evaluated on 20 participants to see if the additional DOF increased the degree of externalisation. While tracking increased the externalisation in general, there was no significant difference between 3-DOF and 6-DOF. Another test indicated that positional movement coupled with positional tracking may have a greater effect on externalisation compared to positional movement coupled with only head movement tracking. Comparisons between these results and previous studies are discussed and improvements for future experiments are proposed.

The value of a landscape is often associated with its visual aesthetic value, but a landscape goes beyond that. It has other important values, such as historical or social value. The guides and tourist itineraries are useful to help visiting monuments but as far as reading and experiencing a landscape, these are still insufficient. This work consists of developing a mobile application with gaming and social features, to support the experience of visit and reading places with valuable landscapes. The paper describes the design principles used and presents the main issues of the study conducted during the development process of the application. It also presents the results obtained by the tests carried out to evaluate the user experience when visiting and appreciating the value of a landscape with the application. The experiments were carried out in the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, considered world heritage since 1995 [6].

Realities, Intelligences and Interfaces …. from Augmented, through Virtual, and Mixed; Artificial, Machine, and Natural …. technologies are here to stay and are investigated across disciplines. This contribution introduces studies and applications from various countries that are both creative and thought provoking to inspire and motivate readership and scholarship toward furthering this fast-advancing field.

Is human hosting essential to social touch in the public space of merging realities? This paper explores the role of hosting in art and design for mediating social touch in public space, social robotics, virtual reality and tele-matic environments. The question of whether human hosting is essential to social touch was the focus of three experiments held during performance of artistic orchestrations designed for social touch in public space for which the effects of different hosting designs have been analyzed. These internationally presented orchestrations, Saving Face (2012) and Master Touch (2013), purposefully disrupt and re-orchestrate multi-sensory connections in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways, to evoke shared reflection and shared sense making in public space, mediated by a host.Saving Face was orchestrated internationally in museums, urban public spaces and theatres, including; 56th Venice Biennale 2015; Connecting Cities Network Ber-lin/Dessau 2013; 3th TASIE Art-Science exhibition, Science & Technology Museum Beijing 2013; Beijing Culture & Art Center BCAC 2015-2016. Master Touch was orchestrated at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 2013. This paper extends the multi-sensory interaction model for social touch described in (Lancel et al. 2019e) to explicitly include the role of a host. The question this paper addresses is whether the host needs to be human.This paper calls for future design of disrupted social touch in merging realities to consider hosting processes of shared sense making. Such design should facilitate new forms of reciprocal embodied interaction, that support descriptive self-disclosure, dialogue and shared reflection on experience of social touch in merging realities.

Looking at artworks, experiencing nature, and being in virtual reality (VR) environments can relax people. We tested if the relaxation from viewing art and nature images with music for ten minutes while sitting in a recliner chair in a VR setup is different from experiencing the same content on a TV screen. Participants experienced this relaxation intervention after having finished a Montreal Imaging Stress Test. All tested conditions relaxed people but we found no significant differences between them from neither subjective nor objective measures in a between subjects study. However, trends in subjective and HRV measures pointed towards VR being more relaxing than TV.

A current research topic within virtual reality is to allow the user to move by natural walking in a virtual environment that exceeds the size of the tracking area. Multiple approaches to overlapping architecture dealing with this issue already exist, but they are either custom made for a specific tracking area size or require a tracking area too large to work efficiently for personal use. This paper proposes a method to make scalable overlapping architecture by procedural generation of tile-based mazes that seamlessly teleport the user using portals. We evaluated how the tile size of the overlapping maze affects the user’s spatial awareness of their physical position. 23 participants of Aalborg University students completed the Spatial Awareness Task of finding a tile that overlapped with their starting tile in a 3 $$\times $$ 3, 4 $$\times $$ 4, and 5 $$\times $$ 5 tile maze. Between condition 3 $$\times $$ 3 and 5 $$\times $$ 5, and condition 4 $$\times $$ 4 and 5 $$\times $$ 5, participants were more confused in the 5 $$\times $$ 5 tile maze compared to 3 $$\times $$ 3 (p = .0015) and 4 $$\times $$ 4 (p = .0295) tile mazes.

Previous implementations of self-overlapping architecture tried to hide the characteristics of their non-Euclidean environment from users. To test the outcome of showing these characteristics to users, we propose a virtual reality system with a play area of 3 m $$\times $$ 3 m and procedurally generated rooms, which are connected by portals. The aim of the portals is to provide seamless transitions between rooms and render overt self-overlapping architecture for players to experience. Participants were tasked with reporting their experiences and discoveries during the playthrough. Based on this information and recordings of their view, we could determine whether they noticed any transitions. Additionally, the participants were asked specific questions regarding their experience with the overt self-overlapping environment, and how they interpreted the size of the virtual environment in relation to the physical one. The results showed that only 2 of the 20 participants who completed the full playthrough noticed any transitions, while each playthrough consisted of a minimum of 20 transitions. Therefore, we conclude that the transitions were seamless. The system did not induce significant motion sickness in participants. Most participants felt good about navigating the overt self-overlapping environment, and the general consensus was that the experience was strange, yet interesting.

As virtual reality becomes more popular to be used in semi-public spaces such as museums and other exhibition venues, the question on how to optimally stage such an experience arises. To foster interaction between participants and bystanders, to lower the primary threshold in regards to participation and to moderate the transition between real and virtual worlds we propose to augment a virtual hot-air balloon ride by a large scale floor projection in addition to a physical basket and other extras. Exhibited at a venue in Stuttgart, Germany a total of 140 participants evaluated our approach. We could confirm that adding a floor projection helped to attract additional users, to increased the overall motivation on using the installation, and to established a connection between the real and the virtual worlds.

There is more to humor than jokes. Humor can be created in jokes, in cartoons and animations, in products, commercials, and movies, or in stand-up comedy. However, also during our daily activities, we often smile and laugh because we experience interactions and events as humorous. We can experience such events; we can also initiate such events. Smart environments offer us tools that allow the customization of urban environments to potential and personalized playful and humorous experiences. Sensors and actuators in smart urban environments can be addressed and configured in such a way that they initiate and facilitate playful and humorous events in the real world, but it is also possible that without physical changes in the real world, our imaginations are triggered to give humorous interpretations of events in the real world by observing or imagining how they could be different. In this paper, we look at humor that can be experienced by imagination, by suggestions, by changes in the environment, and by changing the environment using digital augmented and diminished reality tools. The views expressed here can help to add humor to urban play, urban games, and daily activities in public spaces using augmented reality technology.

The language used in interaction design is affected by the wide array of academic backgrounds of interaction designers. Therefore one word may have several meanings, which can be confusing when conducting research in this field. In this paper, we define three levels of interaction: macro-, micro- and nanointeractions, the latter of which is the focus of this study. We use Buxton’s three state model to break down common gestures on touch interfaces into nanointeractions, thereby identifying where in the process of a gesture its signifiers can appear. This is useful when overloading controls in small interfaces. We conducted an experiment to determine whether the temporal placement of a signifier before, during, or after a gesture made any difference for the discoverability of a double and long tap affordance. No clear tendencies were found regarding the temporal placement of the signifier. However, the concept of nanointeractions can be a valuable tool for interaction design.

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its latest developments in deep learning, has been influencing all kinds of disciplines such as engineering, business, agriculture, and humanities. More recently it also includes disciplines that were “reserved” to humans such as art and design. While there is a strong debate going on if creativity is profoundly human, we want to investigate if creativity can be supported or fostered by AI—not replaced. This paper investigates if AI is capable of (a) inspiring designers by suggesting unexpected design variations, (b) learning the designer’s taste or (c) being a co-creation partner.To do so we adopted AI algorithms, which can be trained by a small sample set of shapes of a given object, to propose novel shapes. The evaluation of our proposed methods revealed that it can be used by trained designers as well as non-designers to support the design process in different phases and that it could lead to novel designs not intended/foreseen by designers.

This paper compares the test results generated by applying the method for the authentication of paintings by Portuguese artist Amadeo de Souza Cardoso in the interest of exploring the generalisation properties of the algorithm on other artists or genres. This sets the base for the method to be improved and developed accordingly in future applications for a broader audience in a wider setting. The obtained results show that the classifier obtained from the algorithm using paintings appears not to be directly applicable to drawings of the same artist. When the classifier is retrained for a different genre like Chinese paintings or artists like van Gogh, the algorithm appears to perform as well as the classifier on Amadeo paintings, i.e. the algorithm is sufficient for the classification of a specific type of artist or genre.

In this paper we review the overall process for the design, development, and deployment of “What I See Is What You Get”, an experiential installation that creates live interactive visuals, by analyzing human facial expressions and behaviors, accompanied by text generated using Machine Learning algorithms trained on the art collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The project is developed by students and faculty in an academic environment and exhibited at the Getty Museum. We also study the pedagogical process implemented to address the curriculum’s learning outcomes in an “applied” environment while designing a contemporary new media art piece. Special attention is paid to the level and quality of the interaction between users and the piece, demonstrating how advances in technology and computing such as Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing can contribute to deeper connections and new layers of interactivity.

Games as entertainment, leisure, recreational, serious or otherwise where game-based designs of use such as gamification are discussed alongside access and inclusion for all to be able to enjoy and play and have fun. In-built to games are mechanics and motivational factors that are both intrinsic and extrinsic. Such factors can be influential to impact human emotions in playing a game and reaching a state of ‘Flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) where immersion is total. Potentials of game-based intervention across industries is being explored with good effect as is evident in this contribution.

The conventional patient education model for heart failure patients assumes that increasing knowledge leads to self-management behaviour changes, but patients need motivation for changing their behaviour. Telerehabilitation technologies can provide a digital toolbox for engaging in self-management, and adding gamification on top may increase motivation to improve the telerehabilitation experience. This paper analyses how adaptive gamification can promote long-term motivation in a telerehabilitation program and discusses design opportunities and challenges within an adaptive approach within patient education of heart failure patients.

This paper describes the structure and outcome of a workshop organized to co-create conceptual gamified motor rehabilitation experiences based on virtual reality and exercise bikes for older adults. Five physiotherapists from two different healthcare facilities, participated in the workshop and contributed to valuable insights and ideas to potential exergaming concepts that could be integrated at the facilities to promote more motivation and adherence in the rehabilitation process.

While many studies have been done about creation of accessible games, they have mainly been conducted in an academic context and represents a gap between game research and the game industry. The pilot project presented in this paper (PowerUp) addresses inclusive design by involving both the game industry and disabled people. The goal is to identify activities that constitute the biggest obstacles to realising sustainable design processes for inclusive game design (IGD). Four activities were identified through two full-day workshops with the game industry and game studios, disabled people and authorities: 1) Find opportunities for IGD with disabled people; 2) Handle integrity and security of disabled people; 3) Recruit the right competence among disabled people; and 4) Adapt workplaces and tools for IGD processes. These activities are tentative and will hopefully be subject to discussion and further development to achieve sustainable inclusive game design.

In this paper, we present a head-mounted display based virtual reality game developed to teach street-crossing skills to children and adolescents diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The virtual reality street-crossing training game is co-designed with four teachers who work with children diagnosed with autism on a daily basis. The teachers specified a set of requirements for the gamified training application that is described and discussed in this paper alongside the plans for the future itterations.

The World Wide Web have changed learning culture and brought with it, massive open online courses (MOOCs). Open Badges is an open standard which allow MOOCs to create digital course diplomas. Badges gamify education and act as a statement of achievement to reward learners as they reach goals and sub-goals in learning. Existing badge frameworks offer conceptual design guidelines, but does not provide granular support to the visual badge design process. This paper reports on a work-in-progress case study which aim to design badges targeted MOOCs for the creative industry. We report and exemplify the differences between gamification badges used internally in MOOCs and certification badges used by learners as genuine evidence of skill acquisition to employers. Finally, we contribute a visual breakdown of badge characteristics which can be used in conjunction with existing conceptual badge design frameworks.

There is a recognised need to improve recycling rates. One current issue is that knowledge and incentives to recycle are sometimes lacking. Mechanisms of gamification can be used to motivate and engage people to recycle, but this has not been thoroughly explored to date. To address this issue, four focus groups were conducted to bridge the gap between gamification and recycling behaviour. Results from these focus groups showed that functional solutions are preferred and that gamification can preferably be implemented digitally to bridge the gap between behaviour and knowledge. Feedback, awards, achievements, collaborative and competitive elements, as well as supplementary functions are gamified mechanisms that can be used for this purpose. This study contributes to the understanding and implementation of gamification for use in waste management and to influence positive recycling behaviour.

The ‘Our Museum’ board game (referred to as ‘the game’ throughout this paper) is a dialogical tool for museum professionals, researchers, exhibition designers and developers. The game is designed and developed through a coordinated effort between museum professionals and researchers. The work presented here will detail the conception of the game and establish parts of the theoretical background for the game design, offset by two iterations that are based on insights from two separate playtests. These insights have been reworked and implemented into the current version of the game. With the game, we aim to offer a tool-supported method to tackle user-centered challenges in the exhibition space, by bringing different roles together and provide a medium to form a shared language as a part of the design process of creating exhibitions. The work here could be interesting to both practitioners as well as researchers working within the museum context and to an extent within the fields of games and gamification.

As the game industry continues to grow in size and revenue, the cost of creating games increases as well, and the successful outcome of game development projects becomes ever more important. In traditional software engineering, it is generally agreed that a successful requirements engineering process has a significant impact on the project. In game development, requirements engineering methods do not seem to be commonly used. As the development of digital games includes specialized aspects of software development, it seems likely that game developers could benefit from adopting these techniques and processes. In this paper, a thorough reading of central and current academic research on the topic is performed to form a holistic picture of the central issues and problems preventing the adoption and widespread use of requirements engineering processes and methods in game development. Additionally, algorithmic analysis of 340 post-mortems written by game developers and published on industry websites is conducted. These post-mortems discuss the factors which contributed to or hindered the successful outcome of these game development projects, and the analysis further supports the identified central issues.

Due to the popularity of video games in modern society, serious digital games have the potential to promote prosocial thoughts and behaviours, as well as increase empathy and helping behaviour. However, to make a successful prosocial game a number of good game principles need to be met to make the game as immersive and engaging as possible. This paper discusses how the design decisions and overall game framework used to develop a serious, prosocial game that aims to help raise awareness and promote prosocial behavioural changes towards intimate partner violence in the United Kingdom, successfully meets these good game principles to create an effective educational, immersive and engaging game experience.

Gamification of education is a fact in recent years. This method for imperceptible learning is used in many countries and schools all over the world. The advantages and disadvantages of the educational games according, to students and teachers, are shortly explained here. The paper describes an intelligent video maze-game that is a container for various mini-games that bring the essential educational content and challenges for learners. It also presents a model of a student (as a learner and as a player) and the framework for providing a personalized learning experience in the context of an educational game. Thus, the presented maze game can fit different learning and playing styles of a particular user. The process of personalization is in line with the preliminary results from an online survey exploring students’ views about educational video games. The findings reveal their preferences about many issues such as types of mini-games, embraced learning content, and the willingness to repeat the game with the same or increased complexity to improve the overall results or acquired knowledge.

In work such as presented herein one can ask what the art is; who is the artist…. when is it art – why it’s art (Brooks 2019)? Truly international research is presented in that delegates working across national divides and diverse forms are represented. This section closes the ArtsIT contribution and leads into the Design, Learning, and Innovation sections of this book.

From the perspective of safeguarding Chinese Cultural Heritage, this paper discusses how to enhance the appreciation of traditional Chinese puppetry through the support of interactive technology. The author analyses extensive, yet current case studies, based on the findings described in the interactive systems for puppetry performances and interactive technology for puppetry appreciation. The author summarises four aspects of how to enhance the appreciation of, and engagement with, traditional Chinese puppetry: (1) maintaining originality is necessary for the design phase; (2) it is crucial to explore how to use interactive technology in order to design a way for adults to appreciate this form of art; (3) it is also necessary to determine ways to support adult audiences in grasping the cultural significance and folk customs of traditional Chinese puppetry; and (4) the study’s further main research goals are to investigate ways to use emotional expressions, digital storytelling and other methods in conjunction with interactive technology to help multi-cultural users comprehend traditional Chinese puppetry.

In this paper, we set out to explore how to design for spontaneous group formation, as part of shared encounters in a public installation. Spontaneous group formation describes a phenomenon where pedestrians form groups with other pedestrians, to whom they are previously unacquainted, for the purpose of interacting with an installation. This was accomplished by developing a 5 by 5 m version of the game based on the Simon game, with flashing lights and oversized buttons, designed to encourage spontaneous group formation by giving an advantage to larger groups, up to a maximum of four. Over three days of testing, the prototype was found to generate 11 spontaneous group formations out of 161 total use cases, showing evidence that effective lures are one of the key factors behind the phenomenon.

In this paper we explore how social aspects of group interaction and the physical affordances of interactive technology may be exploited to enhance the participation of people with a disability in creative, artistic activity. Participation per se is conceptualized using a current framework known as the family of Participation Related Constructs—fPRC, an ecological approach derived from a biopsychosocial health model. Taking an integrative approach, we blend current theory on participation, interaction design and community art to explore how group play and performance can foster inclusive participation in the arts and contribute to a positive change in personal (and collective) wellbeing. We describe two interactive arts projects called Resonance and Wheelchair DJ that provide examples of participation and performance in communities with a disability and reflect upon the workshop models that facilitate the creative expression of individuals and the group. We conclude with a discussion on the potentially transformative effects of participation in the arts by people with a disability and our gaps in our understanding of how to evaluate the notion of participation as a means—a medium through which person-related attributes and creative activity are developed in the longer-term.

Access to leisure and wellbeing can be difficult to arrive at due to constraints in health, income, location and time. With shifting demographics (inversion of the aging pyramid) and increasing urbanization, there is an increasingly urgent need to improve access to leisure activities, particularly for those living in crowded cities or who have limited mobility.We propose the use of 3D capture of majestic nature scenes and their display in a therapeutic context, as an affordable way to enhance well-being and to provide care to those lacking adequate access to leisure and wellbeing. Our approach to the application of VR-based nature therapy involves immersive media interfaces employing either contemplative (mindfulness-based stress reaction - MBSR) or active (mind/body based behavioural activation) approaches, both using environmental cues salient to end-users and developed within an inclusive design paradigm. The end goal is to employ immersive virtual reality and suitably designed human-machine interfaces to allow individuals of varying ages, means and abilities to continue to enjoy an optimal level of presence and engagement in the real world to preserve quality (and perhaps quantity) of life.

Huge balls (see Fig. 1). is a game art project created by Group Jean-Luc (A game art group based in Paris, composed of three artists/researchers of EnsadLab (Art & Design Research Laboratory at Ensad): Daniel Pata, Pierre emm and Guofan Xiong) supported by Ensadlab for the exhibition Jonglopolis at the Carreau du Temple in Paris 2018. The general idea is to transform juggling movements into an artistic digital installation with conceptual gameplay in it. Maintaining balance while being disturbed by the distractions inside the game space is the heart of its gameplay’s mechanics, and looking to further question our understanding of gameplay. How are the visuals and the rules of this game art perceived by the players? How the players’ own experiences and backgrounds alter them? How can artists use those elements to play with players/visitors? How the installation piece invites the players to perform, just like juggling as a form of performance? (see Fig. 1).

In this paper we present a field study that took place in the environment of the exhibition “Stefanos Rokos: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ No More Shall We Part, 14 paintings 17 years later”, hosted at the Benaki Museum (May 2019). A group of visitors played the game “Find the Artwork behind the Story!”, crafting stories over the displayed artworks and sharing their thoughts, reasoning and emotions. Then the artist, Stefanos Rokos, joined the group and a new game round was played. We investigate how the artist’s participation affected the group experience, examining both the visitors’ and the artist’s perspective. Our findings show that the visitors were willing to share their stories and highly appreciated their gameful interaction with the artist. We observed that the artist behaved similarly to the rest of the players, rejecting our hypothesis that he would take on a leading role in the discussions. The artist expressed his enthusiasm for the game experience, stating that his participation in the game helped him better understand how the visitors see and discover his artworks. Overall, both sides reported that the game fostered the interaction between them, providing an engaging social cultural experience. Finally, we summarize how the results of the study drive the next iterations of the mobile application so as to support the artist’s participation in the game, and we describe our future steps.

In this chapter, contributions from DLI 2019 show that a design process is not given to its form, structure, or qualities. Rather, design work is given form by designers’ and technology developers’ own considerations and actions inspired and guided by people’s voices, desires, habits, and practices.

A story app is a children’s digital book which takes advantage of the multimedia and multimodality resources of mobile interaction devices. However, the poorly design of the interactive areas (hotspots) in story apps can compromise the reading activity and children’s literacy acquisition. This is even more serious in mediated reading between children and parents, since the latter may not know how to use the hotspots or even feel that their presence is superfluous due to the digital resources. Outgoing from this scenario, we have carried out a user study with six parent-child dyads to investigate the effects of hotspots on the readers’ experience during mediated reading of three-story apps to identify design problems and opportunities. The study measured five aspects of the interaction with hotspots, namely: 1) understanding, locating and recognizing hotspots; 2) balanced versus unbalanced number of interactions; 3) reading flow versus reading difficulties during the interaction; 4) engagement versus distraction in reading caused by the interactions; 5) distance versus closeness in mediation. The analyses indicate that hotspots are usually not designed for mediated reading, which may lead to parents’ disengagement. Poorly located or misrepresented hotspots caused navigation errors negatively impacting reading. Contrary to findings reported by previous studies, we observed that the interactive game areas can provide a common point for intergenerational convergence stimulating mediated reading.

Smart and robotic toys introduce more possibilities than ever for building interactive settings for playful learning. Here we explore their use for supporting the development of storytelling skills in children. Previous research on interactive storytelling prototypes has already shown their potential to this end. However, the focus has often been set on technical implementation issues or using very specialized hardware that may limit their potential to go outside the lab. The lack of a general and integrated application with off-the-shelf affordable components has encouraged our research on how to combine a tablet application with an existing smart robotic toy, so that it supports the creation of structured stories and children’s reflection on them. Thus, this paper reports on the design and development of a multimedia storytelling application that includes a smart robotic toy, adopting a user-centric approach with iterative design and user-testing cycles.

In this paper, we present a non-light-emitting electrochromic ambient display, Our Little Secret, for supporting the communication in long-distance relationships (LDRs). The unobtrusive display technique was prototyped with an interactive picture frame, which was used as a probe to chart the possibilities of the technique in an interview-based user study (n = 12) and an in-the-wild deployment (one couple) of people living remotely from their partner. The salient findings showed positive response especially on the non-light-emitting nature of the display, and indicates that this type of solution has the potential to support LDR communication and relationship through a pair of private, meaningful, and always-on yet calm displays.

Digital libraries are one of the primary sources of sharing scientific knowledge. Presently, an article is located on the main interface of a digital library, which contains information about the publication, authorship, references, abstract, along with the indexed full text in PDF. However, how do scholars imagine the ideal design of this interface to be? What’s more, which features could the library provide to enhance the scholar’s reading experience and, consequently, the acquisition of knowledge? Along these lines, this study sought participatory design approaches to discuss and find interesting possibilities for an interactive scientific publication interface. A contribution to this endeavor is included in three consecutive steps: a participatory design workshop, a follow-up exercise, and a prototype to demonstrate designing solutions. Finally, it presents lessons learned about the interface that the scholars conceptualize, suggesting demands to be incorporated into publications as well as a discussion to drive changes regarding how to present and communicate scientific results.

The paper aims at reporting early findings from engaging in participatory and speculative design methods with rural women in Bihar, India. The research outlines a contextualized workshop that includes participants as equal contributors to the design of their futures. Many cultures like India are not naturally democratic and are comprised of politics and power structures within their setting. The paper highlights that in such contexts, participatory and speculative design methods can help give voices to the marginalized and uncover these complexities to gain a nuanced understanding. The findings of this paper are important for researchers, designers, and technologists who aim to uncover key factors that affect the functioning of complex systems to design sustainable interventions.

This sixth part of the volume elaborates on questions related to how people can be prepared for as well as acting and learning in a digital world. In doing so, it contribute to defining effective and collaborative practices where stakeholders participate in technology-rich contexts as well as in environments that mix digital technologies with a ‘making’ or design approach.

The paper addresses some issues related to the preferable attributes of e-learning resources according to teachers’ views. The first part introduces general requirements to educational materials, with emphasis on their relations to particular characteristics. The authors assert that the design of learning materials depends on a variety of factors such as educational goals, teaching approach, learners’ profile, and subject matter. Further, they should meet teachers’ needs of quality flexible resources that support an effective teaching process. The second part of the research presents the findings of the empirical survey conducted in Bulgaria in 2017–18. Teachers assess the attributes of e-learning resources in two directions: which are their essential characteristics so that to be easy to use and which of them they would like to be able to change. The results are analyzed both according to the school subject (STEM or Humanitarian) and educational level. A discussion on some of the essential research findings is provided.

Emerging from studies of innovative educational-technology designs for disabled students, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has established principles to bridge special needs education and regular classroom teaching. Although UDL has been around for some 40 years, apparently, only one empirical UDL study of language classrooms exists before Kasch, and no studies before him in lower-secondary language classrooms. Only Kasch has worked on integrating Computer-Assisted Language Learning and UDL in a pedagogically informed cross-pollinated Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and UDL design.The present paper examines a sui-generis innovative language learning design and learners’ interaction with it, affording the digital scaffolds: 1) multimodal bilingual comprehensive, 2) contiguous (words-in-context) and non-base-form glossing, 3) text-to-speech with highlighting functionalities as well as 4) bilingual retelling functionalities for individual Ebook pages and 5) learner response functions.The hypothesis explored is that multimodal UDL digital scaffolds can be pedagogically integrated in language instruction materials and will help to bolster language acquisition in a variability of learners. The paper presents the findings from semi-structured interviews in a stratified sample (n = 9), appearing to offer support to the viability of the sui-generis CALL and UDL language learning design.

Due to rapid technological development and fast-changing working environments, organizations active in such context find themselves facing internal change and adaption processes. Originally prominent among start-up or IT-companies, the use of management concepts to steer such change processes and to increase efficiency also spread among humanitarian organizations preoccupied with crisis management. In this regard, concepts retrieved from the domain of Organization Development offer a great potential to facilitate change processes and to enhance learning among practitioners. The notions of Learning Organization and Quality Management are combined with the theory of Argyris and Schön’s Levels of Learning. This combination then serves as a theoretical decision-making base used in a simulation game at the University of Applied Sciences OTH Regensburg. Within this scenario-driven exercise, Quality Management, virtual collaboration and digital skills are trained. During the simulation game, participants are encouraged to think critically, to utilize new technologies and to apply their problem-solving skills to real-life examples, which ultimately aims at preparing students for a dynamic working environment within the era of digitization.

Digital technologies in combination with creative activities have been introduced in schools as a strategy for learning and teaching activities offering scaffolding opportunities. In recent years digital game-based learning (DGBL) activities also has been tried out in schools. In this paper, we examine how collaboration between school children is configured in problem solving activities whilst developing digital game designs. The study is based on a case of a creative workshop with school children (9–10 years of age) where game design activities were applied. Game design activities with the participating children, creative materials and technologies and children’s actions as well as interactions are analysed by using interaction analysis and parts of content analysis. The research questions concern the patterns, features, and challenges that emerge among 9 to 10-year-old school children when collaboratively engaged in problem solving activities? The results of the study show that a sense of community emerged when the children worked on solving the problem of designing and producing a digital game. Hence, when designing for mutuality, the design should allow for the participants’ experience acknowledging an affective awareness of a shared purpose.

Digital competence has become a concept that gradually has been addressed in classroom practices as well as in policy documents. This is due to educational reforms regarding the digitisation of educational practices. How, then, can teachers make sense of these changes putting pressure on improved quality of their educational outcomes? The paper informs of a work-in-progress paper, which aims to shed light over how teachers in preschools and schools participated in professional learning to become digital competent. The overall research question addresses how teachers can be supported in their professional learning and digital technology integration through an action research approach, in particular inspired by Schön’s perspective on designing and learning, focusing on the initial design process. We investigated teachers’ tensions and sensemaking strategies regarding integration of digital technology in their educational practice through a model of participation, involvement, and responsibility (DIA model). Methodically, the paper is based on outcomes from two baseline questionnaires. The results unfold the importance of a context-conscious leadership as well as promoting team learning and collaboration between teams to create dynamics between the teachers.

The number of people with diabetes is increasing and today more than 8.5% of the adult population is diagnosed with diabetes. People with diabetes must make significant changes to their life and habits and adjust it to the recommendations for diabetic treatment to avoid or delay complications related to the illness. In this paper, we present empirical data from a survey, experience sampling data and interviews that addresses people with type 1 diabetes’ adherence with the recommended blood sugar measurements, their physical activity level and motivational factors. This information is used to understand and explain people with diabetes’ adherence to follow the recommendations using theories about self-efficacy and motivation. Finally, we give recommendations for how digital solutions can be designed that can aid the users and motivate them to follow the recommendations and hereby potentially improve the quality of life for diabetes patients.

This section of the volume explores potentials in new technologies suggesting that this requires involvement of various disciplines across societies. Specifically, the society faces a considerable challenge in fostering new ecosystems of innovation to harness holistic agile development processes for new technologies targeting more inclusive societies, where solutions are tailored to users and their specific needs.

In this paper we discuss our experiences developing mediated learning situations in a VR-filmed context. This requires solutions where co-design and innovative teams with knowledge and skills from different areas join forces. Here we try to make use of previous projects in collaborative design to develop forms for mediated learning situations in a VR-based context. We design a process where stakeholders in different roles are engaged in all or some parts of the process in which learning occurs, from scriptwriting for interactive media to creating and editing the case studies in an interactive VR format to in the end having students experience, discuss and evaluate them. The cases we employ are developed from the need for more experience-based knowledge in the field of Work Integrated Learning (WIL).

In this paper, we present a study investigating the feasibility of using Virtual Reality (VR) to reduce disruptive classroom behavior of a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The child shows extensive, aggressive behavior in the classroom, making it hard for the teacher to teach him and his classmates. Even when receiving one-to-one lectures by a professional teacher, without the presence of other students, the child shows disruptive behavior. However, when receiving lectures in a virtual environment by a teacher, the child was calm, focused, and capable of working on his assignments without showing any disruptive behaviors. Even if the study has been applied to one single child, the promising results can be extended to more children showing similar behaviors.

This paper describes an explorative case study that investigates the declining use of a bespoke VR-based treatment tool for biking-based rehabilitation, through interviews with four physiotherapists and in situ observations of patient-therapist interactions, in a Danish municipal outpatient health center. Thematic analysis was used to identify pain points and challenges related to the integration of VR in both hardware, software and operation resources. Prospective solutions are proposed to increase usability of the system. Moreover, site-specific proposals, including knowledge translation and co-production initiatives, are suggested to increase the health worksforce’s incentive to use the VR-supplied service, and endorse it to the patients who attend treatment in the health center.

Internet of Things (IoT), one of the latest technological advancements, will transform our future in ways we can only imagine. The necessity for young people to understand and design with IoT technologies seems unequivocal; however, there is currently limited integration of IoT in K-12 education. To address these gaps in current research, we conducted a mixed methods, multiple-case study during a five-day “maker” camp focused on the informal design of IoT passion projects. Our research sought to understand what participants learned about IoT, as well as how they designed basic IoT artifacts within a constructionist context. Results indicated several factors contributing to a successful design, including guided inquiry, detailed planning documents, access to knowledgeable support in the form of peers or facilitators, and perseverance. Participants also experienced substantial gains in IoT knowledge and skills resulting from their experiences designing and creating IoT artifacts, which will be valuable as IoT becomes more prevalent in society. However, the inquiry-driven model also posed several challenges relevant to educators in formalized settings, including wide variability in the level of scaffolding and support required, progress paralysis resulting from a context with limited instruction and restrictions, and the impact of time constraints on students’ learning and designs.

The ECAS framework seeks to transform social design theory and practice through an emergent instructional paradigm of heritage-led, local learning ecosystem approaches, to leverage on diverse assets of people in community settings. This includes the cultural, social, sexual and religious diversity of locals. Such reconfiguration of design for social change, and our collective mindset, will create the conditions for more dynamic and powerful collaborations that stimulate and enable social innovation, entrepreneurship, and inclusion. The conceptual backdrop draws on the concepts of affinity spaces and embodied learning, incorporated into local learning ecosystem ideas that support viable, integrated and participative urban regeneration. This paper addresses the theoretical backdrop of how such ecosystems can be co-designed, implemented and evaluated, to include disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, such as minorities, women, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, to empower them as lifelong learners and change-makers. We introduce the ECAS framework and how it can present an inclusive and open instructional paradigm that improves design for social change, innovation and entrepreneurship in practice through the framework, conditions, and support mechanisms developed.