As human actions continue to threaten wildlife, international organizations stress the importance of global environmental education.Teaching children about conservation is key to shaping their future behaviors.However, it is also important to create experiences that engage children with their local biodiversity while informing them about these issues.Seizing this opportunity, we designed, developed, and conducted a pilot study on an interactive, story-driven game with augmented reality (AR) to engage children aged 9 to 12 with local biodiversity and the impact of human actions on the environment.

Figure 1: Collaborative Gameplay Structure of Mystiria: (a) Adult Child Layout -Each of the players has their own screen, which the other player is not allowed to see.The goal is for both players to communicate with each other through 3 mini-games (b) Aqua's Mini-game; (c) Electro's Mini-game; (d) Verdis' Mini-game.For (b), (c) and (d), the top screen represents the adult's view, while the screen on the bottom is what the child will see.In addition, players can also experience (e) Quiz Example; (f) Exploring Madeira Island; (g) Picture with Characters Abstract Current interventions for climate literacy are fragmented, as they target adults or children, rather than fostering collaboration and

Financial literacy is critical for economic empowerment, yet access to effective financial education remains uneven.Serious games provide an interactive and accessible approach to financial education, fostering decision-making and cognitive development through immersive gameplay.In this demonstration, we present DreamScape, a narrative-driven serious game designed to teach financial literacy through interactive storytelling and puzzle-based mini-games.By leveraging narrative immersion and problem-solving mechanics, this online demo illustrates how interactive systems and creative design can foster economic empowerment, contributing to a more financially literate and equitable society.

Mental health and well-being research increasingly recognizes the potential of data to support preventative care and foster meaningful sensemaking. However, traditional health data visualizations often overlook emotional depth, contextual relevance, and lived experiences. In response, four HCI researchers conducted a 35-day field study, examining their well-being data as participants and co-designers to reimagine their relationship with self-tracking technologies and health data representations. Grounded in participatory, soma-inspired, and design fiction principles, this study encouraged participants to move beyond passive data consumption through creative experimentation, embedding personal experiences and collaborative exploration to challenge conventional representations and reimagine well-being through design. The findings demonstrate how collaborative sensemaking can reframe well-being interventions as creative processes that empower individuals’ lived experiences. By foregrounding reflection and shared interpretation, this work contributes to the discourse on how creative explorations with biodata redefine our relationship with wearable technology, highlighting the role of trust in understanding sensitive data collaboratively.

Migration and technology studies increasingly recognize the importance of incorporating migrant perspectives in design processes. Speculative design methods have emerged as powerful tools for imagining alternative futures, particularly when working with marginalized communities. However, there remains a gap in understanding how to effectively engage long-term settled migrants in participatory design processes that honor their experiences and imaginative capacities. Here we show how integrating feminist care principles with speculative design methods can create more inclusive and empathetic approaches to technology design with migrant communities. Through workshops applying the ''magic machines'' methodology, we demonstrate how participatory speculation enables migrants to articulate their experiences, anxieties, and hopes for technological futures. Our findings reveal the importance of considering diasporic minds and cross-border connectivity in future technologies. This work provides immediate opportunities for researchers and designers to develop more inclusive approaches to speculative design while challenging dominant narratives about technological futures in migrant communities.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a empirically validated treatment for anxiety and depression. By identifying negative thinking patterns (cognitive distortions), individuals are able to reevaluate and reframe thinking patterns for better mental health. Building on previous research in digital health interventions, we explore the use of games and VR for increasing awareness of cognitive distortions. CBT-Darts is an immersive VR game where players match statements to cognitive distortions by throwing darts at balloons. By mixing a physical and cognitive task, we hope to create an engaging and fun way to teach how to identify cognitive distortions.

Financial literacy is essential for personal and national economic well-being, demanding attention in today’s dynamic society. However, a concerning trend persists where individuals may lack basic financial knowledge; this is common even among individuals with a high level of education. This gap is especially concerning for young adults, as it prevents them from making informed decisions, managing finances effectively, and securing a stable future. This paper presents the development and pilot evaluation of a serious puzzle game prototype to enhance financial literacy among young adults. The pilot evaluation (N=7) explores various game mechanics to deliver engaging financial education. Initial findings indicate promising potential for serious puzzle games in facilitating financial literacy. The research aims to contribute insights into pedagogical strategies and game design enhancements, fostering informed decision-making and economic stability among young adults.

Heritage is a dynamic concept, being constantly redefined by those that value it. Modern approaches to heritage bring focus to participatory processes that put communities at the centre of the heritage discourse. For migrant communities, these participatory processes can show the tension of integration versus identity, as migrants integrating into their host country can maintain, adapt or loose connections to their cultural identity. Digital storytelling platforms can offer space for exposing such tensions. In this paper, storytelling is adopted as a practice to engage three communities of migrants (with different socio-cultural contexts) on their relation to heritage. Through workshops, participants created 78 stories (accessible through a Digital Storytelling platform), which were thematically analysed. Using the concept of boundary objects, we discuss how participant's stories reflect heritage discourse and how they are entangled within the wider social, economic, and environmental context.

The gig economy and digital labor platforms, such as food delivery, have become essential while also troubling the current socioeconomic landscape. Delivery platforms promise entry-level work, flexibility, and other benefits. However, researchers remain divided on if these platforms benefit workers and society at large. This study aims to shed light on the comprehensive challenges in food delivery work, uncovering gig worker-centered design opportunities to improve the lives of food couriers. Adopting an exploratory research process, we analyzed 19 ride-along food delivery videos and performed nine semi-structured interviews with food couriers in Portugal. Our findings illustrated the complexity and challenging nature of delivery work due to the entangled physical, digital, social, natural, and human factors. We captured and discussed gig worker-centered opportunities that surfaced from work challenges, echoing the needs of food couriers about supporting work, justice, inclusion, and work vision.

This pictorial outlines findings from a field study part of an inclusive digital storytelling project, which aims to develop digital tools for migrant communities to share their lived cultural heritage (CH). The field study intended to discern migrants’ perceptions of cultural heritage through a one-week story-based photo challenge involving ten young adult migrants in Lisbon, Portugal. We analysed the data highlighting participant values and heritage meaning-making. We highlight the unfolding of cultural heritage thematics through their daily journeys in the hosting country's landscapes. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) strives to secure an inclusive and socially just impact for technology. With a focus on participants’ assets and values, results from this study point towards sensitising concepts contributing to facilitating the design of inclusive digital tools for telling of lived cultural heritage experiences of migrant communities.

As we engaged in designing digital interventions for intercultural dialogues around public cultural heritage sites, we saw an opportunity to surface multiple interpretations and points of view of history and shine a critical lens on current societal issues. To do so, we present the results of a collaborative auto-ethnography of alternative tours accompanied by intercultural guides, to explore sensory and embodied engagements with cultural heritage sites in a southern European capital. By focusing on the differences in how we experienced the heritage sites, we analyse the duality of discomfort, a common concept in HCI, in that it can both be deployed as a resource for designing systems that can transform people’s understanding of history or it can be a hindrance for engagement, having an unequal effect on individuals.

Current cultural policies are evolving from social inclusion (removing barriers and promoting equality for participation in culture) to social cohesion (fostering solid bonds between groups despite their differences). Digital interventions can create spaces that promote social inclusion and cohesion. In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of a cultural heritage and digital storytelling application supporting a participatory approach to culture and hosting society. We evaluate our intervention in three marginalized communities with different social-cultural contexts: migrant women in Barcelona, a community living in a priority neighbourhood in Paris and second and third-generation migrants in Lisbon. Through an analysis of their application use, our findings point at their needs and desires, highlighting how the app can support social inclusion as the first step towards cohesion, but that these are heterogeneous concepts susceptible to nuanced appropriations by the different communities.

Head-Mounted Display based Virtual Reality is proliferating. However, Visually Induced Motion Sickness (VIMS), which prevents many from using VR without discomfort, bars widespread adoption. Prior work has shown that limiting the Field of View (FoV) can reduce VIMS at a cost of also reducing presence. Systems that dynamically adjust a user’s FoV may be able to balance these concerns. To explore this idea, we present a technique for standard 360° video that shrinks FoVs only during VIMS inducing scenes. It uses Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping and peripheral optical flow to compute camera movements and reduces FoV during rapid motion or optical flow. A user study (N=23) comparing 360° video with unrestricted-FoVs (90°), reduced fixed-FoVs (40°) and dynamic-FoVs (40°-90°) revealed that dynamic-FoVs mitigate VIMS while maintaining presence. We close by discussing the user experience of dynamic-FoVs and recommendations for how they can help make VR comfortable and immersive for all.

Visually Induced Motion Sickness (VIMS), when the visual system detects motion that is not felt by the vestibular system, is a deterrent for first-time Virtual Reality (VR) users and can impact its adoption rate. Constricting the field-of-view (FoV) has been shown to reduce VIMS as it conceals optical flow in peripheral vision, which is more sensitive to motion. Additionally, several studies have suggested the inclusion of visual elements (e.g., grids) consistent with the real world as reference points. In this paper, we describe a novel technique dynamically controlled by a video’s precomputed optical flow and participants’ runtime head direction and evaluate it in a within-subjects study (N = 24) on a 360° video of a roller coaster. Furthermore, based on a detailed analysis of the video and participant’s experience, we provide insights on the effectiveness of the techniques in VIMS reduction and discuss the role of optical flow in the design and evaluation of the study.

Orientation is an emerging issue in cinematic Virtual Reality (VR), as viewers may fail in locating points of interest. Recent strategies to tackle this research problem have investigated the role of cues, specifically diegetic sound effects. In this paper, we examine the use of sound spatialization for orientation purposes, namely by studying different spatialization conditions ("none", "partial", and "full" spatial manipulation) of multitrack soundtracks. We performed a between-subject mixed-methods study with 36 participants, aided by Cue Control, a tool we developed for dynamic spatial sound editing and data collection/analysis. Based on existing literature on orientation cues in 360º and theories on human listening, we discuss situations in which the spatialization was more effective (namely, "full" spatial manipulation both when using only music and when combining music and diegetic effects), and how this can be used by creators of 360º videos.

This paper investigates whether location and medium affect the experience of interactive storytelling in the context of mobile Virtual Reality systems. For this purpose, we discuss the development of Fragments of Laura, a location-aware multimedia application in a larger interactive transmedia story, where users can view a 360° narrative in a 3D environment. We conducted a user study with the intention of measuring Presence, Flow and Narrative Transportation and evaluate four scenarios resulting from the combination of two independent variables - location (existence and absence of links between the test location and the narrative location) and medium (tablet and mobile virtual reality with smartphones). Our results show that the user experience while watching a narrative fluctuates depending on the location where is viewed and the device in which is viewed. Locations linked with the content lead to a significantly increased Flow, Presence, and Narrative Transportation.

As 360° immersive Mobile Virtual Reality (MVR) experiences are reaching a wider public, thanks to inexpensive and more powerful mobile technology available on the shelves, it is also rapidly growing as a research arena to investigate how to best design such VR experiences. Adding to this research direction, in this paper we report on an exploratory study designed to evaluate users perception in "Fragments of Laura", a mobile location-aware storytelling experience that uses MVR in a public setting. Results from the study encourage us to pursuit investigation as the experience was well received by the participants and provided an enjoyable experience, however, we discovered that there are still design challenges to overcome in order for MVR to be widely adopted within a public setting. Such as, finding the balance between multimedia and immersive multimedia, providing an "onboarding" time for such media and proper locations for the content consumption.

In this paper we present Lucid Peninsula, an interactive installation designed to immerse participants in a dreamlike, post-apocalyptic story world. The goal of the installation is to offer a way for people to experience the future through a physical interactive installation. To achieve this aim we designed and developed the interactive DreamScope device, while the Time's Up collective designed and built the physical installation. On one side with the Dreamviewer binoculars users will be able to see the world outside and absorb data relating to factors such as air quality, presence of plant and other life forms, etc. On the other side of the installation, the audience will be able to borrow mobile devices (Dreamcatchers) and venture into the actual landscape of the city, in order to "catch" the dreams of the inhabitants of the peninsula, which are mixed with memories of the world before it was transformed.