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Collecting memorabilia has been a longstanding practice as it evolved around cultures and societies. Despite existing research about preserving memorabilia, meaningful preservation methods remain unclear due to the individual and idiosyncratic nature of practices [18,22,40,43,47,59]. Migrants who collect memorabilia face challenges in preserving them due to unavoidable circumstances such as lack of transportation, physical measurements and weight of memorabilia. In 2020, 281 million people migrated globally, accounting for 3.6% of the world's population, and as this issue continues to grow, finding practical solu tions is crucial [36,38]. The aim of this study is to explore ways to digitally preserve memorabilia to maintain their material qualities and meaning across diverse geographical contexts (RQ1). The study also focused on understanding what objects migrants regard as worth preserving (RQ2) and how digital memorabilia can be designed to serve as memory tokens (RQ3). The research employed an exploratory case study approach, focusing on first-generation Sri Lankan migrants [11,30]. Qualitative data was collected through interviews and the use of 3D printing and augmented reality was evaluated through prototype testing using a research-through-design approach [29,58]. Results revealed that souvenirs encapsulates sentimental, economic and aesthetic values that provides a symbolic meaning to its’ owner and contributes to constructing their identity. Migrants were willing to try new technologies and augmented reality was recognised as a satisfying experience. To transfer memorabilia meaningfully among different geographical context, a holistic solution for memorabilia preservation was expected by migrants where physical protection of memorabilia is emphasized. Further research in this study involves utilizing photogrammetry scanning and 3D modeling to closely replicate real-life memorabilia and further evaluating mixed-reality user interactions such as augmented reality. 

Given the subjective nature of trust as a phenomenon and its unified multifaceted contributions for every individual context,the development of a computational model of trust proves to be a difficult endeavour. In this study, we investigate mutual gaze as a behavioural measure of social trust and liking in child-robot interaction. Developing on a prior user study involving 52 children interacting with a robot with variable human-likeness and lexical alignment in two interaction contexts (task-based and dialogue-based), we investigate the effects of human-likeness and lexical alignment on mutual gaze, associations and correlations between metrics assessing social trust and liking, and the development of mutual gaze as an objective measure of social trust and liking. We achieve this through several statistical analyses between the percent of mutual gaze in each interaction, human-likeness, lexical alignment, scores from social trust and liking metrics, self-disclosure content, age, and time. The main findings of our study support the use of mutual gaze as an objective measure for liking, but there is still not sufficient evidence to supportthe use of mutual gaze as an objective measure to identify and capture social trust as a whole. Furthermore, we found that human-likeness and lexical alignment do not significantly affect mutual gaze in an interaction, but the interaction context does. Moreover, it seems that age plays a role in the amount of mutual gaze in an interaction, where older participants engage in less mutual gaze compared to the younger participants. Alongside this, the amount of mutual gaze the participant engages in is stable across periods when they are not interacting with the robot, changing more towards the first half of the first interaction and the second half of the second interaction. Based on the study, our findings suggest using different objective behavioural measures for social trust compared to its related concepts such as liking. Also, our results have found that there may be other constructs intertwined with liking, such as attention and interest, which may need to be addressed with separate metrics.

Mainstream video games retain players' interest with dynamic updates of graphics such as game characters, levels, themes and other game inventory items. For visually impaired players, updates in graphics for player retention are not very efficient. Video games for people with serious visual impairment rely heavily on audio. The players are presented with either frequent audio instructions or 3D audio to be able to roughly judge the state of the game. In both cases, the players could either overwhelmed by frequent audio instructions or might lose interest in the game after some time. A possible reason could be that there are limited ways to evolve these games to keep the players interested as compared to games developed for sighted players. Multiplayer functionality can potentially bring a continuous stream of challenges and competitive situations in games. The research question investigated in this thesis focuses on whether the addition of multiplayer functionality in 3D audio game will increase the level of player interest. The hypothesis was evaluated by performing an experiment. The results of the study showed that multiplayer functionality can significantly increase the level of player interest and enjoyment in 3D audio based game for people with serious visual impairment.

In this pictorial, we turn to culture and traditions to present an annotated portfolio of play-food potentials, i.e. interesting design qualities and/or interaction mechanisms that could help promote playful and social engagement in food practices. Our portfolio emerged from a one-day workshop where we played with and analyzed a collection of 27 food traditions from diverse cultural backgrounds and historical periods. We highlight play forms and experiential textures that are underexplored in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research. Our contribution is intended to inspire designers to broaden the palette of play experiences and emotions embraced in HFI.

Play and playfulness permeate our daily lives and are often the target of interaction designers. Yet, designing for play while embracing the idiosyncrasies of users and their contexts is challenging. Here we address recent calls for new situated and emergent play design methods by turning to social media, which is currently a source of inspiration for arts, crafts, fashion, and more. We present @chasing.play: an exploration of how Instagram may help designers capture and share instances of mundane playful engagement to inspire play design. We report on the findings of a pilot study where we experimented with the tool, and raise a challenges and open questions we plan to address in the future. Our work can trigger discussions among researchers about the potential of social media as a design tool and inspire action towards collectively defining strategies to leverage that potential.

This thesis sets out to explore why people engage in, and how to design for, play in a public setting. It does this by separating design for play from design of games, describing play as a socially and mentally understood activity, and a playful approach to engaging in that activity. It emphasises that while play is voluntary, design can help shape the players’ mode of engagement.

The thesis uses a qualitative and inductive approach to research, with an understanding of knowledge as being constructed in the individual. The research is grounded in human computer interaction and interaction design, and closely related to game studies and design science.

The research question concerns how design can influence the player activity in order to create a desired player experience in public, by harnessing playful engagement. It’s foundation is a theory of play which describes play as a framed, or hedged-off, activity with a fragile border; where knowledge and feelings can leak both in and out of the activity, and affect the play as well as what is around it. The theory of enjoyment of play is discussed, and the problem of treating this as ‘fun’ is addressed, concluding in a presentation of how playful engagement can be harnessed through design.

The theory is applied in five design cases: I’m Your Body, a locative storytelling app; Codename Heroes, a pervasive game of personal empowerment; Passing On, a slow-paced game about communication; Busking Studies, which involves observing street performers and their shows; and DigiFys, an architectural design exploration of playgrounds and play paths.

Finally, three concepts, or design tools, are presented, which address: 1) a structure for understanding a design through three layers, constructs designed by the designer, inspiring play activity with the player, leading to experience; 2) an approach to designing invitations to play; and finally 3), a four faceted structure for understanding play engagement when players engage in non intended ways.