laura malinverni

Mapocci is a robotic companion for children, created in the juncture of digital art and HCI practices. It was developed during an art residency program at Telefonica R+D. The dynamics of negotiation and collaboration with the R+D team transformed the objectives and methods of the art project. This case study shows this transformation process as well as the contribution that the digital art methods brought to the R+D team framework and vice versa in the HCI project.

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness about the importance of involving children with special needs in the process of designing technology. Starting from this perspective, the paper presents the participatory design process carried out with children with autistic spectrum disorder for the design of a Kinect motion-based game aimed at fostering social initiation skills. By describing the strategies used for the design of the activities, we will suggest possible approaches aimed toward widening the space for contributions of children and including them at a more creative level. Within that, major emphasis will be dedicated to discussing the “empowering dimension” of participatory design activities as an instrument to enhance benefits both for design results and for the children themselves. Finally, the balance between structure and freedom in the design of the activities will be discussed.

Integrating requirements from experts and children is a challenging task, especially when we design technology for children with special needs. This paper describes the use of the “narrative-based elicitation” as a method to facilitate the process of requirements’ elicitation for the design of a Kinect game for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The use of narrative resources to structure meetings with experts and participatory design with children allowed a smooth orchestration between different disciplines, generations and contributions.

In recent years an increasing awareness has been posed on the relationship between gender and game design. Starting from the question about “What a feminist perspective can bring to the design of video games?”, this paper describes a case study about the application of feminist methodologies into a game design workshop. Through the description of the methods used in the workshop, our research suggests how methodological contributions could represent a crucial element for critically reformulating game design and expanding the possible imaginaries and practices.