Titulo Estágio
Designing Play to Extend Children’s Attention Span
Local do Estágio
CISUC Interactive Media Lab
Enquadramento
Digital media has spread across our everyday life and activities, with children being exposed to digital stimuli from a very early age. As “childhood is a crucial period for attentional development” (Silva Santos et al., 2022), there has been an increasing number of studies to address the impact of screen exposure time in the social development of children. Studies have found associations between the attention span of children and their screen-time, connecting a series of attention problems and isolation tendencies that may hinder cognitive development and sociability. Short-form content, such as TikTok, Youtube Shorts or Instagram Reels, feeds this growing tendency of grabbing a viewer’s attention with quick, stimulating content. Adapting to such content can impact the ability to engage in longer activity that demands persistence and patience, and may bring further repercussions in social engagement and mental health.
Objetivo
Play has been studied and applied as a crucial activity through which critical cognitive and social functions are developed (Hedges et al., 2013). Our research is driven by one main question: how can we design playful activities to extend attention span?
The purpose of this proposal is to explore design of gameplay elements that promote sustained attention and engagement with and between players. An inspiration source is the effect with the RPG genre (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons) studying the open-endedness and serendipitousness of its narratives and design of the role-playing opportunities, although dependent on player preference. From there, we intend to explore cooperative narratives that can incite a co-creative attitude amongst players, promoting mutual assistance, sociability and bonding to surpass ongoing challenges. We also aim to study how play can be designed to balance complexity and stimuli renewal, to achieve persistence in each task. Our main target will be children 6 to 10 years old.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
A1. (Sep-Nov) State-of-the-art research - research and document the relevant SoA, publications and software review; detailed characterization of the problem to be solved stating specific goals and requirements;
A2. (Nov-Dec) Design Proposal - conception of the game design proposal, game elements and flow, initial narrative and sound design, the exploration of software architectures and libraries, data and interaction design models.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
A3. (Jan-April) Prototyping - implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype, tuning or corrections based on evaluation results;
A4. (May) Evaluation - definition of evaluation criteria and method; performance of evaluation and analysis of results
A5. (June - July) Statement of Learning - production of paper/thesis with process report and reflection on knowledge production
Condições
N/A
Observações
N/A
Orientador
Mariana Seiça & Licínio Roque
marianac@dei.uc.pt 📩