This participatory study utilizes the IDC 2026 Research & Design Challenge on sustainability to explore how middle school youth, with varied backgrounds and experiences with emerging technologies, develop maker identities and responsible technology design skills through a series of co-design workshops. We engaged a team of three youth participants and four adult researchers, to develop Milfoil Milly, an AI-powered robotic fish system for detecting invasive milfoil. The process of developing Milfoil Milly through co-design offered an opportunity to investigated (Q1) how designing technology solutions shapes youth identity as technology creators, (Q2) their conceptualizations of sustainability in design solutions, (Q3) their consideration of responsible technology development, and (Q4) how the co-design process impacts both the learning and design experience for youth.

The video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (AC:NH) launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and families turned to it as a game to play together during isolation. This interview study of 27 families considered how families used AC:NH for Joint Media Engagement (JME), where family members engage with media content together, interacting with each other and bringing additional meaning to the experience. We find that the design of AC:NH well facilitates Takeuchi and Stevens's six conditions for productive JME. Furthermore, we identify and discuss additional conditions that contribute to productive JME: variety and flexibility in play styles that amplify mutual engagement, support for disentrained play that enables new forms of "joint" engagement, and scaffolding for affective interactions. This is followed by an exploration of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected JME. We conclude with design implications for building games to support productive JME for families through design for persistent shared spaces, flexible in-game progress, and social life simulation.

Mainstream location-based games (LBGs) highlight three foundations-exercise, exploration, and social interaction-which were hugely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This genre has already had access issues depending on the player's region, identity, ability, and technology, which the pandemic also amplified. Thus, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to re-imagine the design of LBGs to preserve player benefits while challenging these foundations. We conducted a two-week diary study with 11 LBG players coping with difficult life circumstances, followed by remote co-design sessions. Participants continued to play primarily to maintain community connection while adjusting the mode of socialization, finding meaning through virtual exploration, and support mental health and personal growth. Participants discussed ways to enhance the experience by expanding the range of physical activities during social distancing, reimagining proximity-based social interactions, and exploring via social construction of places while expanding beyond how the three foundations are currently supported in LBGs.

Raiding is a format in digital gaming that requires groups of people to collaborate and/or compete for a common goal. In 2017, the raiding format was introduced in the location-based mobile game Pokémon GO, which offers a mixed reality experience to friends and strangers coordinating for in-person raids. To understand this technology-mediated social phenomenon, we conducted over a year of participant observations, surveys with 510 players, and interviews with 25 players who raid in Pokémon GO. Using the analytical lens of Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl's theory of small groups as complex systems, we identify global, local, and contextual dynamics in location-based raiding that support and challenge ad-hoc group formation in real life. Based on this empirical and theoretical understanding, we discuss implications to design for transparency, social affordances, and bridging gaps between global and contextual dynamics for increased positive and inclusive community interactions.

Currently, there is no structured data standard for representing elements commonly found in transmedia fictional worlds. Although there are websites dedicated to individual universes, the information found on these sites separate out the various formats, concentrate on only the bibliographic aspects of the material, and are only searchable with full text. We have created an ontological model that will allow various user groups interested in transmedia to search for and retrieve the information contained in these worlds based upon their structure. We conducted a domain analysis and user studies based on the contents of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Marvel Universe, and Star Wars in order to build a new model using Ontology Web Language (OWL) and an artificial intelligence‐reasoning engine. This model can infer connections between transmedia properties such as characters, elements of power, items, places, events, and so on. This model will facilitate better search and retrieval of the information contained within these vast story universes for all users interested in them. The result of this project is an OWL ontology reflecting real user needs based upon user research, which is intuitive for users and can be used by artificial intelligence systems.