Workshop

Lajv as a tool for design, education, and society

24 May

Malmö universitet

Embodied role-playing experiences for empathy building

Live action role play (Larp or Lajv in Swedish), is a long-standing format of collective play, in which participants engage a subject matter by taking on particular roles and/or personas and enacting situations and scenarios to create immersive experiences. Lajv is deeply emotionally engaging, and a powerful tool which allows for perspective taking and empathy building to both deepen connections to others and ourselves. Lajv can be used as a tool in design and tech spaces to help with better understanding user experiences, creating a playful and creative atmosphere, overcoming social barriers, rapid prototyping, and exploring myriad subjects in playful ways. Lajv is already used in many parts of society particularly in the Nordic countries, such as at museums and within high school and police educations.

In this workshop, we will explore the broad usage of Lajv with a focus on perspective taking and empathy building, in line with SSDD's theme of CARE. We will run participants through a series of activities that will highlight the importance of embodied experiences and lajv as a teaching tool that can be useful for practitioners, designers, educators, and society in general. The workshop will take place at Malmö Universitet Orkanen - Storm (Room A122 - https://use.mazemap.com/#v=1&campusid=94&zlevel=1&center=12.994870,55.611309&zoom=19.6&sharepoitype=poi&sharepoi=1037006 ).

Please register with the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/7NBGQyExun?origin=lprLink

Registration required

Malmö universitet

Nordenskiöldsgatan 1

211 19 Malmö

Show on map

Fri 24 May 15:00 - 18:00

Digital design

Game design

Experience design

Participants

Alberto Alvarez

+ Show more

Alberto Alvarez is Associate Senior Lecturer at the faculty of technology and society at Malmö University. His research focuses on exploring and developing Human-AI collaborative systems to co-create games and creative content, investigating Human-AI roles, properties, and interactions. His research interests and past work includes Human-AI collaboration systems, PCG, Quality-Diversity Algorithms, and Designer Models. He is also interested in making computer science topics such as Artificial Intelligence more accessible to society and other fields. Google scholar.

Raquel Robinson

+ Show more

Raquel Robinson is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the IT University of copenhagen. She received her PhD in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan, her dissertation work focusing on designing and creating affective games, or games that are influenced by a player’s emotional state. She previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz, leading the design and deployment of an educational live-action role playing (larp) camp aimed at middle school girls for the purpose of increasing their perceived competence and interest in computer science/coding. Raquel is particularly interested in all aspects of games, and how they can be used to connect people. Google Scholar

Jose Font

+ Show more

José is Associate Professor in Computer Science at Malmö University and holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. His research focuses on artificial intelligence and computational intelligence in games, exploring the ways in which AI can be a productive and creative tool during the video game development process, such as procedural content generation and mixed-initiative creative tools. He is also active in gamification, e-learning, and purposeful games. Google Scholar

Mikaela O'Bryan

+ Show more

Mikaela O’Bryan is currently a PhD Student in Computer Science at Malmö University, initiating a research journey focused on the intersection of digital solutions and sustainability. The primary objective is to explore how digitalization can facilitate the transition to a more sustainable society, emphasizing the central role of humans. Mikaela holds a MSc in Computer Science from the master’s program Innovation for Change in a Digital Society, with a primary research interest in understanding the impact of technology on societal change.