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While digital play installations for outdoor use are becoming more common, little work has been done on how such technology shapes play in nature-rich environments. We performed a study of children's self-directed play with access to nature as well as digital installations. Our findings show that play with nature materials and digital installations emerged in different ways. Most notably, imaginative play was observed emerging in close interaction with nature, while the digital installations mostly inspired rule-based play. Furthermore, engagement with digital installations typically involved an active exploration phase which was not observed with nature materials. Nature materials instead engaged the children's senses more immediately, and often offered opportunities for collection and consumption, paving way for fluent play activities roaming large areas. We argue that these differences motivate rethinking the design of digital installations for play in nature and suggest guidelines to this purpose.

Background: Children who are going to undergo radiotherapy have displayed fear and anxiety. Therefore, a web-based serious game was developed as a psychological preparation to investigate if it could affect anxiety levels. In an earlier stage, children with experience of radiotherapy had been part of the developmental process.

Objective: The study aimed to investigate the feasibility in terms of reach, usability, and acceptability of a serious game about proton radiotherapy and to pilot that it did not increase anxiety levels in children aged 5 to 14 years undergoing radiotherapy.

Methods: The design was a randomized controlled pilot trial with predefined feasibility criteria. In total, 28 children were assessed for eligibility, and 23 met the inclusion criteria. They were consecutively randomized into 1 of 2 study arms. One child was excluded after randomization. If randomized into arm 1, the children received the intervention before treatment started. Children in arm 2 were treated as controls. Questionnaires with fixed answers were used to assess anxiety levels (an adapted version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children) and experiences of gameplay (an adapted version of Player Experience of Need Satisfaction [PENS]). The children were asked to answer questionnaires at 5 different measurement occasions during their radiotherapy treatment.

Results: In arm 1, age ranged from 5 to 13 (mean 8.4, SD 2.4) years. In arm 2, age ranged from 5 to 11 (mean 7.6, SD 2.3) years. The sample consisted of 15 girls and 7 boys. The feasibility criterion that the children should play the game for 20 minutes or more was not met. Mean playtime for children in arm 1 was 32.1 (SD 23.8) minutes, where 18 children had played for at least 15 minutes. The criterion that 70% (n=16) or more of the participants should return all of the questionnaires was not met; however, more than 73% (n=16) returned the PENS questionnaires. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children was returned by 73% (n=16) on day 0, 77% (n=17) on day 1, 82% (n=18) on day 3, 82% (n=18) on day 6, and 86% (n=19) on day 15.

Conclusions: All feasibility criteria set for the study were not met, suggesting that adaptions need to be made if a future study is to be undertaken. Further, the analysis revealed that there was no indication that playing increased the children’s self-reported anxiety. The PENS questionnaire adapted for children showed promising results regarding player satisfaction when using the serious game. When studying children with severe conditions and young age, 5 measurement occasions seemed to be too many. Measuring both player satisfaction or experience and knowledge transfer would be preferable in future studies.

Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04728555; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04728555

Using Research through Design, this paper explores how to design a technology augmented outdoor playground installation that utilizes storytelling to create engagement for local wildlife and ecosystems. Through a multisectorial design project a permanent playground installation was developed, implemented, tested and evaluated over a period of six years. The installation is a small play hut, integrated in the natural landscape and augmented with interactive audio stories. The installation was found to invite extended and recurring use, for children and families. The stories and their content seemed to engage children, and they also readapted them through story-informed play. Creating meaningful interactivity proved challenging, as it caused confusion and broke storytelling immersion. We suggest the strong concepts of designing for Story-Informed Play and the Unique Opportunity Effect. Other design implications include to design for; qualitative story content, robustness, playification, screen-free interaction, ambiguity, malleability, intuitive use, multi-user, and extending the experience beyond the installation.

In this work, we explore how programmable playground artefacts can affect social dynamics and power structures in an outdoor play setting. A set of re-programmable artefacts and a graphical programming interface were designed and developed for the study. Twenty children were invited to co-design and explore the interactivity of the re-programmable devices. They tested how they could play with them, and were asked about how they would re-design and repurpose the artefacts and the scripting interface for their way of playing. Through a thematic analysis of the observations and group interviews, it could be seen that an implicit social role emerged, centered around the use of the programming device. This role took on a guiding and supporting role, rather than a leading role. By deliberately designing for this ‘gamemaster’ role, this understanding may be useful in future design of technology for public and outdoor play.

The hybrid, interactive experience "P - our love is the thing that fuels the light" use interactive fiction to explore human-AI relations. P is a hypothetical strong AI, a scripted interactive representation with which you engage in conversation. P is many things that AI is today, but in contrast, P is so openly. P is biased and faulty, not good at exact predictions, malleable, made by humans, and trained on human data. Designed with the concept of radical softness in mind, P wants people to come close, to share intimacy with the machine, and through this expose its weaknesses and the weaknesses we all share as human beings. P embraces vulnerability and empathy and frames these as strengths and perhaps tools to rethink a human-AI future. P helps us to think, and feel, about AI.

Live action roleplay (larp) has a wide range of applications and can be relevant in relation to HCI. While there has been research about larp in relation to topics such as embodied interaction, playfulness, and futuring published in HCI venues since the early 2000s, there is not yet a compilation of this knowledge. In this article, we synthesize knowledge about larp and larp-adjacent work within the domain of HCI. We present a practitioner overview from an expert group of larp researchers, the results of a literature review, and highlight particular larp research exemplars which all work together to showcase the diverse set of ways that larp can be utilized in relation to HCI topics and research. This article identifies the need for further discussions toward establishing best practices for utilizing larp in relation to HCI research, as well as advocating for increased engagement with larps outside academia.

Role-play has long been used as an active learning technique in educational and training contexts. In particular, Edu-larp (a structured, live action roleplay experience that teaches through social enactment and reflection [1]) has been used in therapeutic contexts, training courses, and even an entire course curriculum [4]. We propose to host a workshop at CHI 2023 which will connect CHI attendees of various disciplines interested in this topic, with the outcome to understand how edu-larp might be an effective way of augmenting existing teaching and research within HCI. During the workshop, attendees will participate in numerous edu-larp exercises designed to introduce and orient them to the concept, and facilitate discussion about the different ways edu-larp can be leveraged in the broad domain of HCI.

Outdoor playground design has traditionally involved building installations that after inauguration remain stationary and rigid. New technologies open possibilities to reinvent playground design, but also provide new challenges. This paper focuses on how an outdoor playground can be made malleable through digital technology, and how such a design can increase play values and provide more flexible possibilities for an iterative design process, also after inauguration. During a total period of 5 years, using a Research-through-Design, and more specifically Reflective Design, approach researchers participated in a co-design project where a hybrid Internet of Things-enhanced permanent outdoor playground was developed and studied. The installations have been up and running around the clock, and used daily, for 2.5 years. The study suggests ways to design digitally malleable playground installations in permanent playgrounds. Further it points to areas where malleability functions may be restricted, due to reasons such as municipality policy, security and resources. It shows that the malleability functions were mainly used to increase usability, for educational purposes, to enhance play values, and to allow for appropriation and co-creation. The malleability features enabled an interactive design after design approach, and those possibilities were utilised in several ways, adding values to the playground, compared to rigid playground designs.

Background: Children with cancer who have to undergo radiotherapy can experience fear, because they have no prior knowledge of the treatment. One way of teaching children about the treatment and reducing their fear is to prepare them for it through serious games. Involvement of the end user in the design process within medicine is a way of ensuring that the product being developed will fit the intended user.

Objective: The aim was to outline the contributions made by children and their parents through participatory action research when designing a serious game about radiotherapy.

Methods: By means of participatory action research, children and their parents participated in the development of a serious game about radiotherapy. Nine children (7-10 years old) were included, each with an accompanying parent. A qualitative approach was used that included interviews and participant observation. Six rounds of iterative development process were used with the children and their parents. Meetings with the children were held either face-to-face or online. Each round resulted in a list of suggestions for changes to the game. A thematic analysis was performed based on the list of proposed changes, underpinned by all gathered data, to highlight how the children’s participation changed the game.

Results: Two main themes were identified. The first theme was “The children’s participation was affected by their health and treatment” and included the following subthemes: “an opportunity to share emotions and perceptions of radiotherapy” and “the possibility to participate was affected by the severity of the disease.” The second theme was “participation allowed becoming an active part of game development” and included the following subthemes: “the opportunity to express sentiments about the game,” “the emergence of a playable game through the children’s contributions,” and “the necessity of understanding the text.”

Conclusions: The method used in this study made the children active participants, and our results suggest that this method can be used by health care researchers to cocreate serious games with children. It is necessary to inform the children involved that the process takes time, and that the process can be altered to allow as much participation as possible without placing a burden on them. The children’s illness affected their possibility to take part; thus, it is crucial to accommodate the children’s needs when conducting similar studies. The parents’ participation facilitated the meetings for their children, even though their involvement in the game design was negligible.

This chapter gives an overview of methods and tools for evaluating hybrid experiences in a museum context, and in general, what is gained by doing studies of visitor experiences. It of fers strategies for the why, what, who, where, when, and how of conducting evaluations. This includes goal-setting for multiple stakeholders, formative studies, analyses, and ethics. The strategies cover both quick-and-dirty methods as well as in-depth studies.