Karin Johansson

Educational Escape rooms (EERs) foster learning engagement, but have been criticized for promoting extrinsic motivation and shallow learning by overemphasizing game elements. To address this, it is essential to better align game mechanics with desired learning outcomes and consider the relationship between EER interaction design and pedagogical theories. This work combines educational and interaction design methods to improve escape rooms as a pedagogical format. We introduce an escape room design approach here named the quest room, adapted for informal learning at museums. Using a Research-through-Design methodology, we present three digiphysical quest rooms developed and implemented at museums. Further, we propose an edu-interaction framework that combines five lenses of analysis: playification, embodied aspects, sociality, game mechanics, and interactive storytelling, to analyse the quest room exemplars. The study offers insights for designing and evaluating future EERs.

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.

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.

Interactive storytelling is gaining new possibilities with the rise of novel technology trends, such as extended reality (XR) and AI. In this interdisciplinary one-day workshop, we address the possibilities the interactive technologies and HCI can offer in interactive storytelling and sharing narratives for communities, cultural heritage, and for engaging larger user groups. The workshop also addresses how the future of interactive storytelling is shaped so that the human and more-than-human aspects are not forgotten and pluralism and different voices can be heard. In this workshop, researchers and practitioners will share their research and discuss the current trends and topics in interactive storytelling, where the possible application areas range from cultural heritage to education, entertainment, tourism, and wellness.

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.