Complex problems brought on by climate change can be approached through a combination of Research through Design (RtD), co-design, and Serious Games (SG) by inviting affected communities to take part in developing iterative, gameful solutions and exploring their potential impact. I propose a framework for community-centered game design based on HCI literature. Core elements include supporting diverse discussions, interdisciplinarity, valuing local knowledge, and aligning concepts with gameful elements and interactions. Following this framework, I developed a gameful intervention to support wildfire resilience in communities at the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) which integrates local knowledge from communities alongside expert knowledge from fire science, social science, and engineering. Multiplayer cooperation in the game encourages discussion between friends, community members, and intergenerational conversations within families. My research explores what game design has to offer to address wicked problems, with specific approaches to better serve communities facing complex risks associated with a rapidly changing climate.
Digital media creators, including game developers and live streamers, face growing pressure to produce high-quality, engaging content at a relentless pace. I propose rethinking how tools can adapt to the needs of game developers and streamers without compounding workflow complexity. My thesis formalizes the concept of creator trails and introduces trail-aware tools as a new design approach. Digital creation inherently generates a creator trail; an evolving record of ideas, intermediate artifacts, metadata, and creative decisions. While many HCI systems implicitly leverage such data, there is little discourse on how to harness it effectively or generalize design insights. I will address this gap by developing a framework for trail-aware design that treats trail data as a first-class design material for aligning tools with a creator’s intent, style, and process. By framing digital creation as a data-rich process, this thesis advances our understanding of designing adaptive tools aligned with the non-linear, iterative nature of creative work.
This dissertation explores how video games can support personal growth and foster wisdom. Grounded in developmental psychology, the project bridges psychological theory and game studies to investigate video games as emotionally meaningful, reflective experiences. The research is structured in three parts: a conceptual framework connecting video games to contemporary models of wisdom; two mixed-methods studies examining life insights gained through gameplay and their real-life integration; and an autobiographical interview study mapping players’ developmental trajectories across the lifespan. Findings suggest that video games can foster wisdom-related capacities through mechanisms such as simulation, emotional processing, and narrative reflection. Insights range from intrapersonal to existential, with narrative-rich games offering more potential for growth than fast-paced or competitive ones. The work targets the research gap between psychology and HCI by proposing that simulated experiences, when immersive and emotionally resonant, can complement real-life development and offer design-relevant implications for fostering reflective and transformative player experiences.
Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) are accounts of connected events (a story) represented on digital systems. Through interactivity, IDNs afford ways for users to directly engage with the information embedded in the system’s rules in an accessible manner that taps into the user’s conscious, reflective learning abilities. IDN research is relatively new and there is much to be done to harness IDNs’ storytelling potential, requiring insights from fields such as Human-Computer Interaction, Digital Media & Communication Studies, and Narrative Studies. This workshop brings together researchers from these and other related fields to develop practical, communal knowledge for Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) design. Our focus is storytelling structures, techniques, and traditions that could support digital audience/user-interactions. By developing communal knowledge, we can assist IDN designers in the creation of engaging, impactful narrative experiences and guide IDN researchers toward future areas of study.
In museums, playfulness enriches engagement, and contributes to visitor wellbeing and repeat visits. However, there is a lack of systematic exploration into the broader structures and common characteristics of playfulness in museums. Understanding this is important for designing better exhibits and creating meaningful visitor experience. Focusing on playful interactions between visitors and digital exhibits, this research aims to develop the first framework of ‘playfulness’ in the museum context. It explores playfulness from three perspectives: as a personality trait; as a mindful state of engagement; and as a design affordance of exhibits. Using mixed methods, the study collected 239 visitor responses and conducted expert interviews at two museums in the UK and China, focusing on five digital exhibits. Finally, 17 common characteristics of playfulness are identified within the museum context. The framework will offer guidance for playful experience design for more cultural institutions.
