Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals using cochlear implants (CIs) often have regular jobs or enroll in mainstream education where they face complex social challenges. While first HCI interventions targeted this group's communication skills, or compensated for limited sound perception, we instead focused on experiential aspects like fatigue and feeling different from others. We moved beyond individual-focused design by engaging interaction-partners to share responsibility for overcoming social barriers. This work identifies generative, intermediate-level design knowledge, addressing common interaction-level challenges. A design-oriented, thematic analysis of interviews with 14 CI users revealed four subsequent themes: invisible, shifting hearing demands; misunderstandings and social impact; strategies for managing interaction barriers; and emotional, relational costs. Mapping these themes to HCI concepts like seamfulness, social translucence, and proxemics highlights open-ended, concrete design opportunities that support socializing beyond functional access. Framing interaction success as shared responsibility broadens inclusive design discourse for DHH populations and wider disability design spaces.

Video games have been used as tools for non-entertainment purposes, including research contexts. This paper defines ‘academic games’ as games that are used and developed within academic institutions for the generation, evaluation, or dissemination of knowledge. Broad intentions related to this unique use of games are rarely explicitly discussed. When they are mentioned, they tend to be specific to an individual game’s implementation, or the field of study in which it is situated. This article maps the different fundamental purposes that motivate the use of games in research contexts: involvement as stimulus, intervention, incentive, or as modeling platform. A compact review of existing literature is provided, complemented by a discussion of different facets shaping the use of games in research contexts: the flow of information, the dependency between academic effort and game artifact, and the specificity that is required. This discussion is informed by the analysis of various example games from previous work. A research agenda for the future professionalization of academic game development and its discourse concludes the article.

Video games frequently feature 'open world' environments, designed to motivate exploration. Level design patterns are implemented to invoke curiosity and to guide player behavior. However, evidence of the efficacy of such patterns has remained theoretical. This study presents an empirical study of how level design patterns impact curiosity-driven exploration in a 3D open-world video game. 254 participants played a game in an empirical study using a between-subjects factorial design, testing 4 variables: presence or absence of patterns, goal or open-ended, nature and alien aesthetic, and assured or unassured compensation. Data collection consisted of in-game metrics and emotion word prompts as well as post-game questionnaires. Results show that design patterns invoke heightened exploration, but this effect is influenced by the presence of an explicit goal or monetary compensation. There appear to be many motivations behind exploratory behavior in games, with patterns raising expectations in players. A disposition for curiosity (i.e. 'trait curiosity') was not found to influence exploration. We interpret and discuss the impact of the conditions, individual patterns, and player motivations.