Embodied design is fostering relevant advancements in novel design methods for learning and innovation. Nevertheless, practice and research show that teaching and facilitating embodied design is a challenging task. This paper presents a playful approach for conducting embodied design sessions, which adapts existing card-game mechanics to improve the accessibility and usability of existing embodied design toolboxes during a design session. Our approach hypothesizes that card-game mechanics can address usual pitfalls common to card-based facilitation toolkits by adding structure, guidelines, and playfulness. We also envision that such toolboxes, that have become popular in the research in participatory and co-design contexts, can seamlessly incorporate card-game mechanics like the ones we propose. We describe the setting of the design session, as well as present and discuss the results obtained from observation and participant questionnaires. Finally, we also outline the next steps for designing an embodied workshop in sustainability based on the results from this study. We strive to analyze our proposed method by its capacity to blend into the structure and materials of a card-based toolbox, eliciting the playfulness embedded in the leveraged card-game mechanics to implicitly provide support and guidance through the session, to both facilitators and participants, without disrupting the flexible and open flow of an movement-based design session.

In line with the 10 years of CHI PLAY theme, we propose a playful BINGO game to activate the community to reflect on the past, present, and future work at the conference both in terms of how and what knowledge we value, and how that knowledge is articulated. In this interactivity, we present a customized BINGO card for participants to carry to sessions on-site at the venue, with the goal to spark reflection of genre conventions, how they shape the work produced at the conference, as well as facilitating interactions and discussions between speakers and attendees.

More-than-human approaches to HCI design research have gained traction in recent years, facilitating a need to employ new methods that decenter the human perspective. We propose live-action roleplay (larp), as a method and practice within HCI that can support perspective taking and empathy-building with non-humans actors. In this paper, we discuss a local community workshop where we facilitated numerous body-based and larp activities surrounding the theme of sustainability, and reflect on the strengths larp offers in service of decentering the human perspective.

Literature reviews (or "lit reviews" for short) have become a popular way of knowing in HCI, yet there has been little reflection as to what we want from these reviews and how they can benefit the HCI design research community. Pushes toward more rigor and adopting standards within lit reviews often seem inappropriate and at odds with ways of knowing within the design research community. In this paper, we present critiques and associated risks of these viewpoints, and reflections towards a more thoughtful engagement with literature reviews in HCI design research. We open a discussion of how literature reviews currently inform research, and how we think they could better do so in the future.

Most currently accepted approaches to evaluating Research through Design (RtD) presume that design prototypes are finalized and ready for robust testing in laboratory or in-the-wild settings. However, it is also valuable to assess designs at intermediate phases with mid-fidelity prototypes, not just to inform an ongoing design process, but also to glean knowledge of broader use to the research community. We propose "formative situations"™ as a frame for examining mid-fidelity prototypes-in-process in this way. We articulate a set of criteria to help the community better assess the rigor of formative situations, in the service of opening conversation about establishing formative situations as a valuable contribution type within the RtD community.

As of 2023, education surrounding game design has become a fixture in university education systems around the world. As the teaching of game design is an inherently interdisciplinary subject with many connections to the arts and humanities, there are a diverse range of perspectives as to what the focus of each curriculum should include. In this essay, we argue that game programs with a more technical focus should include both design and play-focused approaches embedded into the pedagogy. We present two case studies drawing from our education journeys studying games as well as our experiences teaching in both game and computer science programs, and discuss the resulting benefits of integrating these concepts into our practice.

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 paper, we synthesise 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 utilised in relation to HCI topics and research. This paper identifies the need for further discussions toward establishing best practices for utilising larp in relation to HCI research, as well as advocating for increased engagement with larps outside academia.

Games have always been popular for connecting people, from local single-player and couch co-op, to massively multiplayer online. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, remote games that involved and fostered social interactions and connections were a highlight among strategies for staying connected. For this year’s games and play SIG, we come together to discuss the relevant and timely topic of social and playful technologies, and how they can be designed to best foster meaningful social connections over a distance. We bring together attendees from not only the games community, but also those in the broader field of CHI focusing on social and playful technologies.  

Now more than ever, people are using online platforms to communicate. Twitch, the foremost platform for live game streaming, offers many communication modalities. However, the platform lacks representation of social cues and signals of the audience experience, which are innately present in live events. To address this, we present a technology probe that captures the audience energy and response in a game streaming context. We designed a game and integrated a custom-communication modality—Commons Sense—in which the audience members’ heart rates are sensed via webcam, averaged, and fed into a video game to affect sound, lighting, and difficulty. We conducted an ‘in-the-wild’ evaluation with four Twitch streamers and their audience members (N=55) to understand how these groups interacted through Commons Sense. Audience members and streamers indicated high levels of enjoyment and engagement with Commons Sense, suggesting the potential of physiological interaction as a beneficial communication tool in live streaming.

Social closeness is important for health and well-being, but is difficult to maintain over a distance. Games can help connect people by strengthening existing relationships or creating new ones through shared playful experiences. We present the design and evaluation of ’In the Same Boat’ (ITSB), a two-player infinite runner designed to foster social closeness in distributed dyads. ITSB leverages the synchronization of both players’ input to steer a canoe down a river and avoid obstacles. We created two versions: embodied controls, which use players’ physiological signals (breath rate, facial expressions), and standard keyboard controls. Results from a study with 35 dyads indicate that ITSB fostered affiliation, and while embodied controls were less intuitive, people enjoyed them more. Further, photos of the dyads were rated as happier and closer in the embodied condition, indicating the potential of embodied controls to foster social closeness in synchronized play over a distance.