A Breathtaking Journey. On the Design of an Empathy-Arousing Mixed-Reality Game

Martijn J.L. Kors, Gabriele Ferri, Erik D. van der Spek, Cas Ketel, Ben A.M. Schouten

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

38 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Persuasive games exist for a wide variety of objectives, from marketing, to healthcare and activism. Some of the more socially-aware ones cast players as members of disenfranchised minorities, such as migrants, prompting them to 'see what they see'. In parallel, a growing number of designers has recently started to leverage immersive technologies to enable the public to temporarily inhabit another person, to 'sense what they sense'. From these two converging perspectives, we hypothesize a still-uncharted space of opportunities at the crossroads of games, empathy, persuasion, and immersion. Following a Research through Design approach, we explored this space by designing A Breathtaking Journey, an embodied and multisensory mixed-reality game providing a first-person perspective of a refugee's journey. A qualitative study was conducted with a grounded theory/open coding methodology to tease out empathy-arousing characteristics, and to chart this novel game design space. As we elaborate on our analysis, we provide insights on empathic mixed-reality experiences, and conclude with offering three design opportunities: visceral engagement, reflective moments and affective appeals, to spur future research and design.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI PLAY '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages91–104
ISBN (Print)9781450344562
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Oct 2016
EventCHI PLAY '16: The annual symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - Austin , United States
Duration: 16 Oct 201619 Oct 2016

Conference

ConferenceCHI PLAY '16: The annual symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAustin
Period16/10/1619/10/16

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