ERP larp is a live-action role-play game designed to make exposure and response prevention therapy for people who have obsessive compulsive disorder more accessible. Although it is not meant to substitute therapy, it is a self-help guidance that can be applied at home. The research and design combine studies regarding OCD, game design core loops, and larp studies and is an experimental game design. In-depth interviews, quantitative data from the playtester and autobiographic observations are applied to assess its effect on the playtester. The analysis demonstrates that ERP larp is successful in lowering the effect of OCD on the playtester by lowering their anxiety and improving their sense of agency / control. However, the results are not conclusive. It is a pilot study conducted with one playtester and as only two playtest sessions were conducted and data shows that the changes are not substantial. Future research and additional playtests are required to develop and assess the efficacy of ERP larp.

En undersökning utfördes av hur väl designmönster som fokuserar på autonomi och utforskning skapar uppfattning av icke-linjäritet hos spelare. Genom användningen av tidigare undersökta mönster och principer inom level design skapades en artefakt i form av ett datorspel med tre nivåer som undersökte dessa designmönster. Resultat utvärderades genom en mixad metod med åtta deltagare. Respondenter fick bedöma hur icke-linjärt de upplevde att de olika rummen i artefaktens nivåer kändes och hur de vägleds genom nivåerna. Respondenter upplevde både känslor av linjäritet och icke-linjäritet från alla använda designmönster i artefakten. Slutsatsen dras att leveldesignmönster inte av sig själv kan skapa känslor av icke-linjäritet hos spelare utan att denna känsla kan påverkas av spelaren själv, dennes mål och spelvanor. Framtida arbetebör undersöka dessa relationer i samband med känslor av icke-linjäritet, samt iterera på metoden som används i denna undersökning. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p><p>There are other digital material (eg film, image or audio files) or models/artifacts that belongs to the thesis and need to be archived.</p>

This report mainly introduces how I, as a designer, use the meta-design theoretical framework and design methods to explore my board game design. Introduction “The most important challenge today and in the future concerns sustainability – to create a world that is good for both people and the environment, locally and globally”. -Linnaeus University I am a design student from China studying in Sweden. It is a challenge for me to go abroad and come to a new country and city to study and live, but also an interesting change. This thesis was inspired by some of my experiences in Sweden. As a newcomer to another country. I have no particular knowledge of Swedish. Although I did some research before coming to Sweden, all I know is that Sweden is a neutral country. It is a country that likes to maintain social distance. It is a country that pays great attention to environmental protection and sustainable development. It is a country with a very lovely language. But just knowing these things cannot help me to study and live in Sweden well. I realized I needed some help from the locals. So here came my first question. How can I get in touch with the locals? For me as a student, the best connection resources are already in front of me. That is my classmates. But as a new student who just arrived in the class, I did not have enough courage to take the initiative to ask the local students about how to live in Sweden. However, I was lucky. Most of my classmates are very enthusiastic. From the conversations with them, I can feel their curiosity about me. Maybe it was because we are about to spend three years studying together, or maybe it was out of kindness to others. Compared with my luck, other friends around me who also came to Sweden to study felt a little bit lost. They found it difficult to integrate with local students. They did not know how to open the topic, and they did not know how to find a common language. They found that local students were more likely to hang out with friends from their own country. During the two years I spent in Sweden, I felt the warmth of the local people. Of course, there are also many cultural differences. I also heard from many friends around me that they think it is difficult to really integrate into Sweden. They could feel a sense of social powerlessness. So, I started thinking, as a design student, what design changes can I make for this? Is it possible to use design to make an experimental intervention game? For example, integrating the simple board games we used to play as children, and redesigning and integrating them into an activity that can be made and played together in a social place. Of course at the same time, I also discovered some small games that Swedish students like to play at parties. Like an icebreaker, everyone is happily participating. But the materials these games require are not particularly environmentally friendly. For example, disposable plastic cups, plastic ping pong balls. Especially during the epidemic, every time a party was held, some students were infected with the virus. So, I was thinking, what kind of games do not require close physical proximity, are interactive and are environmentally friendly and can be used sustainably? With this question, I started my game design journey.

Co-play of digital games between parents and their children is a beneficial but underutilized media mediation strategy. Previous research on this topic has resulted in various design recommendations meant to support and encourage co-play. However, many of these design recommendations have not been applied and validated by subsequent research endeavors which created co-play focused games. This project endeavors to address this research gap by following prevalent design recommendations in an attempt to improve the co-play experience of an existing Roblox digital game, Funomena’s Magic Beanstalk. This was accomplished by employing a subset of applicable design recommendations to redesign two of Magic Beanstalk’s mini-games. The redesigned mini-games were evaluated by parent-child dyads in a qualitative evaluation, comparing the co-play experience of the original and redesigned games. The evaluation found that the new mini-games engendered an overall better co-play experience in comparison to the original mini-games. / Co-play i digitala spel mellan förälder och barn är en fördelaktig men underutnyttjad ”media mediation strategy”. Tidigare forskning i ämnet har utmynnat i designrekommendationer avsedda att främja och uppmuntra till co-play. Efterföljande forskning som skapat co-play-fokuserade spel har dock inte tillämpat och validerat många av dessa designrekommendationer. Detta forskningsprojekt strävar efter att åtgärda detta forskningsgap genom att tillämpa rådande designrekommendationer och på så sätt försöka förbättra co-play-upplevelsen av ett befintligt Roblox-spel, Funomenas Magic Beanstalk. Detta åstadkoms genom att använda en undergrupp av tillämpliga designrekommendationer för att designa om två av Magic Beanstalks minispel. De omdesignade minispelen utvärderades av förälder-barn-dyader i en kvalitativ utvärdering, där dyaderna jämförde upplevelsen av de ursprungliga spelen med de som designats om. Utvärderingen visade att de nya minispelen, i jämförelse med de ursprungliga minispelen, gav en övergripande bättre co-play upplevelse.

Regular savings behavior is critical for low-income Americans to achieve financial mobility. New technology tools are being used to improve personal awareness and attention to financial goals. This thesis reviews mobile learning (mLearning) research and leading commercial personal finance smartphone apps, both of which inform the design of Financial Forest, a savings app. Participants in the 4-week Financial Forest savings study are found to have a statistically significant improved perception of the difficulty of building an emergency fund.

A problem representation is a cognitive structure created by the solver in correspondence to the problem. Sketching representative diagrams in the domain of physics encourages a problem solving strategy that starts from 'envisionment' by which one internally simulates the physical events and predicts outcomes. Research studies also show that sketching representative diagrams improves learner's performance in solving physics problems. The pedagogic benefits of sketching representations on paper make this traditional learning strategy remain pivotal and worthwhile to be preserved and integrated into the current digital learning landscape. In this paper, I describe AR Physics, an Augmented Reality based application that intends to facilitate one's learning of physics concepts about objects' linear motion. It affords the verified physics learning strategy of sketching representative diagrams on paper, and explores the capability of Augmented Reality in enhancing visual conceptions. The application converts the diagrams drawn on paper into virtual representations displayed on a tablet screen. As such learners can create physics simulation based on the diagrams and test their "envisionment" for the diagrams. Users' interaction with AR Physics consists of three steps: 1) sketching a diagram on paper; 2) capturing the sketch with a tablet camera to generate a virtual duplication of the diagram on the tablet screen, and 3) placing a physics object and configuring relevant parameters through the application interface to construct a physics simulation. A user study about the efficiency and usability of AR Physics was performed with 12 college students. The students interacted with the application, and completed three tasks relevant to the learning material. They were given eight questions afterwards to examine their post-learning outcome. The same questions were also given prior to the use of the application in order to compare with the post results. System Usability Scale (SUS) was adopted to assess the application's usability and interviews were conducted to collect subjects' opinions about Augmented Reality in general. The results of the study demonstrate that the application can effectively facilitate subjects' understanding the target physics concepts. The overall satisfaction with the application's usability was disclosed by the SUS score. Finally subjects expressed that they gained a clearer idea about Augmented Reality through the use of the application.

Visual cues are a technique used for the purposes of guiding a viewer towards points of interest. Most commonly this is done with the use of color and contrast to make objects stick out more from its environment. Within the context of video games, visual cues are implemented to guide player actions in otherwise complex scenarios. Due to the steady increase of high-fidelity graphics in video games, visual cues are becoming more important for players so that visual clarity can still be maintained. In the video games analyzed in this thesis this is primarily done by adding a glowing outline (highlight) around the object or entity that the game designers want the player to interact with. Thus, this thesis attempts to explore two different qualities of visual cues: color and glow intensity, to see their effects on player performance and experience. To do this, an experiment was conducted in a scaled-down version of an FPS game with the purpose of testing these different qualities in four different scenarios and how they may influence both reaction time and player satisfaction. The results from this study indicate that neither of the tested qualities had any significant impact on a participant’s ability to complete their task. On the other hand: color had a big effect on player experience where one color, purple, was deemed irritating by most participants. Finally, the differences in glow intensity went unnoticed in most of the tested scenarios which points towards color being the more important quality of the ones tested in this study.

This paper investigates the most effective ways of handling cultural differences in the Japanese-to-English game localization process. The thesis advocates for applying the Skopos theory of translation to game localization; analyzes how topics such as social issues, humor, fan translation, transcreation, and censorship have been handled in the past; and explores how international players react to developers' localization choices. It also includes interviews with three Japanese-to-English translators who have worked with major Japanese game companies to gain insight into how the industry operates today. Through the deconstruction of different aspects of Japanese-to-English localization, this analysis aims to help the game industry better fine-tune Japanese media to Western audiences while still sharing valuable aspects of Japanese culture. The thesis concludes that if Japanese game companies work to improve the localization process by considering more diverse international perspectives, hiring native speakers as translators, and approaching the English script as a creative endeavor in itself, they will be able to both broaden the minds of their global audiences and more effectively capitalize on the worldwide fervor for Japanese video games.

The interactive nature of video games offers players unique playthroughs of the same game. Choices made during gameplay, despite going through the same narrative story, create a journey that differs from other players. Music can help support a player's connection to the game's characters and narrative while also providing information to the player to guide their decisions. Ludomusicological studies in the past have shown how music can support a game's narrative, while also serving to inform players of changes in game states. The usability function of music, while crucial in this overall sonic experience, is not the sole purpose that music can fulfill. An area in ludomusicological research that's less explored is understanding how a composer's intent for their music is not indicative of the player experience but rather influences the way players play the game and how they are emotionally impacted by the music. Combat scenarios are an effective area that showcases the usability aspects of music as well as its impact on player presence, which will be demonstrated through the game Xenoblade Chronicles. By combining the principles of presence, immersion, engagement, topic theory, and adapting the dual semiotic approach of Iain Hart, this thesis seeks to analyze the composer's intent behind musical choices and how it shapes the overall player experience.

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