In this work, we trace and analyze some production and design choices taken during the developing of Progetto Ustica: a serious game about memory. The game tells the story of the Itavia civilian flight shot down over the Mediterranean Sea, near the island of Ustica, on June 27th, 1980. We aim at discussing …

Playfulness intertwined with city-related themes, such as participatory planning and civic media are becoming more popular. In the last ten years, game designers have taken up the theme of play in relation to the urban environment. In this paper, we present a conceptual mapping of “urban play,” through …

Abundant HCI research exists on the many assistive technologies that provide help with everyday physical and cognitive tasks. However, while a purely assistive approach often casts aging people in passive roles, recent studies suggest that adults may be ‘flourishing’ way into advanced age, even though …

Games are designed with different objectives in mind. Some primarily for entertainment, others also to educate, motivate or persuade its players. Games with the latter objective, that of persuasion, are designed not only to be entertaining, but also with the intent to shape how players think and feel …

Many argue that there is a reproducibility crisis in psychology. We investigated nine well-known effects from the cognitive psychology literature—three each from the domains of perception/action,memory, and language, respectively—and found that they are highly reproducible. Not only can they be reproduced …