by genovefa.zourkou -

3.8 IMPULSE #8

So, this is the last blog post I’m writing for this semester and, essentially, for my studies here at FH. In this post, I want to reflect on the pre-research phase I’ve been working through over the past three months: what I kept, what I changed, what new directions emerged, and what I will do next.

Throughout these posts, you might notice some gaps in how I describe my progress and decisions. I treated this series more like a space to think out loud than a clean research documentation. Still, it shows my process in a raw and honest way.

My writing has been heavily focused on Play. Before even naming social anxiety as a core research pillar, I already knew I wanted to explore play and closely related topics like gamification, board games, and video games. In the end, I did not directly include those formats in my topic. However, play remained central. I now treat it as a design perspective rather than as something tied to traditional definitions of play. I am especially interested in social play, since social anxiety is deeply connected to relationships between people and to how we experience ourselves in social spaces.

Social Anxiety, which I dedicated post #2 to, is what has shaped my theoretical frame so far. I am no longer trying to “represent” social anxiety as a state or a label. Instead, I am moving toward designing for social comfort and emotional safety through interaction. To do this responsibly, I still need to research its characteristics and emotional qualities more deeply through literature, as well as through interviews with therapists or practitioners. This will allow me to ground my design decisions in real experiences rather than assumptions.

From the beginning, I imagined Tangibility, or Tangible Interaction, as the main way people would engage with my artefact. Lately, I’ve realised that tangibility alone may not automatically serve what I want to achieve. What has started to matter more to me now is not just what people touch, but how their body is involved in the interaction. This is where Embodied Interaction comes in for me.

Instead of thinking only about screens, objects, or interfaces, Embodied Interaction looks at how meaning is shaped through the body. Through posture, movement, distance to others, breathing, and the way we physically respond to situations. That feels very close to social anxiety, because anxiety is not only something you “think.” It shows up in the body: in tightness, in hesitation, in avoiding eye contact, in staying still when you want to move, or moving when you want to disappear.

Working with the body allows me to explore these qualities in a more direct and experiential way, instead of only talking about them.

This is also where Soma Design fits into my thinking. It builds on Embodied Interaction but focuses even more on awareness, sensation, and subtle bodily shifts. It helps me pay attention to what is felt, not just what is seen or understood. RtD gives me a structure to think through making, Soma Design gives me a sensitivity to lived experience, and prototyping becomes the way I actually think, not just the way I produce outcomes.

I am also beginning to explore empathy not just as understanding, but as something that can be felt through the body. My goal is not to explain social anxiety, but to create conditions where people can sense what it is like to navigate difficult emotions in social situations. Playful, gentle, and subtle interactions can act as entry points into these experiences without forcing people into exposure.

Wearables are a possible direction here, not as gadgets, but as tools for private, intimate interaction that combine the analog and digital by directly involving the body. They can support embodied, somatic experiences that remain personal rather than performative.

How my way of thinking has changed:
At the beginning, I focused mostly on the outcome: what technology to use, how things might look, what form the artefact could take. Now I understand that this comes after the conceptual work, which is shaped by the theoretical framework and the methods. I am learning to let meaning lead form, not the other way around.

So far, this is the theoretical base I’ve ended up with:

  • Social Anxiety: characteristics & emotional qualities
  • Embodied Interaction
  • (Social) Play
  • Soma Design – Kristina Höök
  • Research through Design (RtD)
  • Prototyping
  • Analog-Digital
  • (Empathy)
  • (Wearables)

Over the next few months of developing the thesis, I want to continue working in this way, moving from reading and reflecting into small material experiments.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.7 IMPULSE #7

On 30/1/2026, I had another coaching session, but this time with Martin Kaltenbrunner. I shared my thesis topic again, but after my last conversation with Hort Hörstner, I had refined it a little. This time, I was asking new questions and exploring my updated path. It felt like I was slowly discovering a clearer direction for my research.

During our conversation, a term came up that really caught my attention: Soma Design, developed by Kristina Höök.

To understand it better, I watched a seminar from Stanford University (you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwBTNAq8Qy8).

Here’s what I learned:

Soma design is a design approach that puts the felt, living body at the center of the process. It comes from somaesthetics, a philosophy that connects our sensing, moving body (soma) with the idea of paying attention to our sensory experiences (aesthetics). In design, this means focusing on how people feel, move, sense, and interact with the world, rather than only what they think or say. It’s a way of designing that listens to the body.

Höök explains that aesthetics here is not about beauty, but about a skill: the ability to notice and attend to the world through all your senses. By doing this, you can feel more pleasure, interest, and awareness in everyday life. I found this idea inspiring, and it connects closely to my topic. Social anxiety is something we experience through the body. So I started asking myself: What if design could help people become more aware of their own bodies?

She shared two examples that really made the idea clear. One was Breathing Light, a lamp that changes brightness with a person’s breathing. The other was Soma Mat, a heated mat that reacts to touch. Both are simple, but they create an immediate connection between the body and the environment.

This gave me an idea for my thesis. Instead of only showing social anxiety visually or conceptually, I could measure bodily responses, like breathing or heart rate, to help people understand how the body reacts in uneasy social situations. By letting the body “speak,” design could create experiences that help people explore, reflect, and become aware without forcing them to explain or perform.

Soma design changed the way I think about my research. It is less about controlling or representing a problem and more about creating a space where people can feel, sense, and explore. I’m excited to see how I can bring these ideas into my prototypes, letting the body guide the design and helping people connect with their own experiences in a gentle, human-centered way.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.6 IMPULSE #6

Today, 29/1/2026, we had what was called a “Final Crit.” It wasn’t really a class, but rather a 25-minute one-on-one meeting with Horst Hörtner from Ars Electronica. I went into it still feeling unsure about my master’s thesis topic, and I left with a much clearer sense of what I am not doing anymore, and where I need to look next.

Most of our conversation focused on how I have been framing my topic so far: communicating social anxiety through tangible interaction. While this sounds coherent on paper, I realized during the discussion that it doesn’t fully translate to what I actually want to achieve. Social anxiety is a broad and complex subject. It is experienced differently by everyone, and it can easily become abstract or even misleading if you try to “represent” it too directly.

When I talked about my project, I noticed that I kept drifting into the technical side: how to visualize anxiety, how to show it, how to make it interactive. But that is not really my core intention. I am not interested in creating a visual metaphor of anxiety. What I care about is how people feel in certain spaces and situations, and how interaction design can shape that experience.

One of my initial ideas was to create a space that does not make people feel like they are performing or being put in the spotlight. The feeling of being watched, judged, or evaluated is something many people with social anxiety experience strongly. I wanted to avoid designing something that forces visitors to act, react, or expose themselves. Instead, I imagined a space where interaction is optional, slow, and self-directed.

At the same time, the meeting reminded me of something important: there is no single experience of social anxiety. Some people feel uncomfortable around strangers, while others feel safer with people they do not know. Some enjoy attention, others avoid it. We can never fully know how someone feels when they enter a space. That makes the task more complicated, but also more interesting. It means I am not designing for a fixed emotion, but working with uncertainty, subjectivity, and difference.

What became clearer to me is not a final answer, but a shift in how I need to think about the topic. Instead of trying to “show” social anxiety, I need to rethink what my role is as a designer in relation to it. The question is less about representation and more about how my own perspective, values, and experiences can shape the way I approach this subject.

I don’t yet know what the final form of the work will be. But I do know that I need to move away from purely technical solutions and spend more time clarifying what I actually want to communicate through interaction, space, and material.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.5 IMPULSE #5

It’s been a while since my last blog post, and in that time, my thesis has taken a much more concrete shape. At its core, my research is about social anxiety and emotional tension, and how these inner states can be expressed, explored, and softened through interaction, technology, and tangible experience.

I’m interested in how design can create environments of social comfort rather than pressure. Spaces where people don’t have to perform, explain themselves, or be “good” at interacting. Instead, they can approach their emotions through doing, touching, moving, and experimenting.

Even though the topic sounds serious, play is still at the heart of it. Not play as entertainment, but play as a method. A way to interact with uncertainty, vulnerability, and anticipation in a gentle and non-judgmental way.

That’s why I thought it was a good idea to watch the episode “Cas Holman: Design for Play” from Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design. Cas Holman is a play designer who creates open-ended tools and environments for children. Watching her work again felt surprisingly close to what I’m trying to do in my own practice. She doesn’t design toys with instructions, but situations and possibilities.

One sentence from the episode really stayed with me:
“We don’t design the play, we design for the circumstances of play to arise.”

This is exactly what I’m trying to do in my thesis.

My goal is not to tell people how to feel or how to behave. It’s to design the conditions in which certain interactions and emotions can appear on their own. Cas Holman does this with wood, plastic, and other physical materials. I do it with technology, interaction, and systems. Different kinds of materials, but a similar intention.

Her work creates spaces where children feel free to explore without being judged. In my case, I’m interested in creating environments where people can engage with their own tension, vulnerability, and uncertainty, especially in relation to social anxiety. I don’t want to design “solutions” to emotions. I want to design spaces where those emotions are allowed to exist and be explored.

Even though my thesis is not about children, play is still my method. For me, play means:

  • not having to be right
  • not having to perform
  • not having to explain yourself immediately

It’s a way to approach difficult feelings gently, through interaction rather than conversation.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.4 IMPULSE #4

On November 6th, I visited CoSA as part of the Project Work 3 gamification lectures. We explored “FLiP”, an exhibition about financial literacy. A topic that doesn’t naturally interest me, but still, I thought that seeing it through an interactive format might make it easier to understand and maybe even enjoyable. But even though the exhibition was interactive, I found it hard to stay engaged.

The exhibition used a lot of quizzes, screens, and points to keep visitors engaged. In theory, that sounds fun, but for me, it didn’t really work. Every time I answered a quiz, I earned points, but that didn’t make me feel more curious or motivated. There was just too much information on each screen. Sometimes I clicked random answers just to move on, not because I wanted to, but because I was overwhelmed. The same thing happened with the exhibit featuring a rotating screen, where you had to answer yes-or-no questions. This alternative screen made me feel dizzy after a while, so I couldn’t stay until the end. The interaction was simple, but the information behind it was again too much and hard to follow.

This experience made me think more about accessibility in interactive exhibitions. What happens when someone gets dizzy or tired, or just feels overloaded by too much information? What about kids or people with dyslexia or ADHD who might find all the text and flashing visuals too much? And what about visitors with visual impairments? I didn’t notice any tactile elements that could help them experience the exhibition in a different way.

Even though the exhibition didn’t fully capture me, there were still parts I really liked. I enjoyed the overall layout and the color coding of the different finance topics. One exhibit asked you to manage the expenses of an average Austrian family. That one was quite fun and easy to understand. I liked how you could see the results of your decisions immediately, visualized in a balance scale that showed expenses and savings in real time. It made the topic feel more concrete and relatable. Another moment I remember was the bicycle exhibit. I don’t remember exactly what it was about, but you had to use a bicycle pedal with your arms for the experience to continue. It was tiring but also fun and one of the few moments that felt truly interactive in a physical way, and that helped me connect more to what I was doing.

Looking back, I realized how important it is for exhibitions to make learning feel light and approachable. Just adding interactivity isn’t enough if the experience still feels heavy or confusing. Interaction should make you feel part of something, not just like you’re completing tasks. Clear visuals and thinking about different kinds of visitors can make all the difference.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.3 IMPULSE #3

Growing up as a shy kid, I often wished that people, whether peers, teachers, or other adults, would just let me process things in my own way and on my own time, but that rarely happened. Because of this, I’ve become interested in exploring topics for my thesis, like anxiety and social anxiety, which feel closely connected to who I am and how I move through the world. It also makes me wonder: how might playful interactive experiences help ease feelings of anxiety or make social situations feel safer?

For this blog post, I wanted to expand on the previous impulse about inclusivity. So I listened to three episodes of the podcast Speaking of Psychology, which broadly explore the topic of anxiety.

Here are my thoughts:

Episode: “Why are some kids shy? with Dr. Koraly Pérez-Edgar”
In the episode, Koraly Pérez‑Edgar explains that shyness is a natural temperament that shows up early in life and affects how kids interact with the world. Shyness isn’t something that needs to be fixed; it’s just a different way of engaging with people and activities.

Episode: “Anxiety and Teen Girls with Dr. Lisa Damour”
In the episode, the conversation questions the way society frames anxiety: as something abnormal or in need of fixing. Dr. Damour emphasizes that anxiety is a natural part of being human, yet the growing expectations placed on girls today can turn it into something harmful. Many feel pressured to excel academically, maintain a perfect appearance, and stay kind and composed, while social media intensifies those expectations.

Episode: “How to help with math anxiety, with Dr. Molly Jameson”
In this episode, Dr. Molly Jameson talks about math anxiety, a common fear that affects how people feel and perform when doing math. It often begins with negative school experiences or strict teaching methods that make students associate math with embarrassment or failure. Over time, this fear can block people from accessing knowledge they already have, and it’s sometimes reinforced by cultural stereotypes like “boys are better at math.

My Reflection
Listening to these episodes made me think about how deeply anxiety connects to the environments we grow up and learn in. It isn’t always about the person themselves, but often about how expectations, pressure, or fear of judgment shape how we act and feel. That makes me wonder: if anxiety is such a natural part of being human, what would it mean to design for it rather than against it? Could design create spaces that accept anxiety instead of trying to remove it?

For my thesis, I’m curious about how play might offer a way to do that. What if playful experiences could make social or learning situations feel safer: less about performing and more about exploring? How could interaction design give people permission to engage at their own pace, to choose how visible they want to be, or to participate quietly without pressure? Maybe play can become a tool for inclusion, helping people connect and express themselves in ways that feel natural to them.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.2 IMPULSE #2

This year, on 15th October, I attended the World Usability Congress in Graz and listened to a talk titled “How to accessible usability for neurodivergent people?” by Alide von Bornhaupt. Her presentation focused on how neurodivergent individuals are often overlooked or excluded when designing digital experiences. She shared 3 practical tips for creating more inclusive systems, but it wasn’t the tips that stayed with me. What stuck with me was the underlying idea: how important it is to include people the system was never designed for in the first place. That thought made me pause and reflect on who I could design for in my thesis.

At the beginning of her talk, Alide showed a slide called “Dimensions of Inclusion”, which grouped people based on different traits and abilities. Seeing it made me realize how easily design can fall into the trap of serving only an “average” user, even though such a person doesn’t really exist. It also made me consider neurodivergent individuals, or people who think, learn, and process the world differently, as a meaningful focus for my work. Although I’m not diagnosed as neurodivergent, I recognized parts of myself in what she described. That realization led me to look back on my own experiences and how they shaped my sense of comfort, participation, and expression.

Growing up, I often felt uneasy in social situations. Being surrounded by strangers, answering a question in class when I was the only one who hadn’t raised my hand, or even saying a simple hello to a cashier, all of it felt much bigger than it probably was. I remember watching others interact so easily and wondering why it didn’t come naturally to me. Over time, I noticed that I often withdrew before anyone could exclude me, almost as if I wanted to protect myself from doing something wrong. I wasn’t the loudest or most talkative person, but deep down I knew that this quiet version of me wasn’t all that I was. When I felt safe and comfortable, I could open up, be playful, and connect freely.

Thinking back on this made me more aware of how much our surroundings, whether physical, social, or digital, shape the way we take part in things. Sometimes all it takes is a small detail: the tone of a message, the layout of a space, or a word choice to make someone feel either welcome or invisible. Listening to Alide helped me see that by designing with neurodivergent people in mind, I could also create something that speaks to people like me, those who sometimes feel out of place or unsure how to belong. I want to design experiences where those feelings don’t become obstacles, where participation feels gentle, natural, and safe.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

3.1 Reflection & IMPULSE #1

Reflection on the last two semesters
This semester, my focus in Design & Research will be on the pre-research phase of my master’s thesis. During the first semester, I identified the broader research area as the combination of analog and digital technologies. In the second semester, I explored microcontrollers and hands-on prototyping more deeply.

For this semester, I am still interested in the fusion of analog and digital elements, as well as prototyping with microcontrollers. However, there is still one key factor that is missing: a purpose. For this reason, I will roughly use the framework “5Ws and 1H” (What, Who, Why, Where, When, How) as a loose structure to help me define the direction of my thesis more precisely.

Some of the topics I want to explore include:

  • Play & Playfulness, sense of adventure,
  • Gamification, serious games, video games, board games, toys or toy-like
  • Education, learning, inclusivity
  • Memory, nostalgia, archiving, pop culture
  • Tangibility, systems, collections,
  • Microcontrollers, Building, Prototyping

For each impulse, I will use the 5Ws and 1H framework to organize my thoughts and clarify what kind of design direction or insight it offers.

So, for my first impulse, I watched 3 talks about Play, and here are my thoughts about them:

Talk #1: The Role of Play in the Development of Social and Emotional Competence by Peter Gray
In his talk, Peter Gray argues that free, self-directed play is essential for children’s emotional and social development. Drawing from research on hunter-gatherer societies, he shows how children in these communities were trusted and allowed to explore freely, learning vital skills such as empathy, cooperation, and self-regulation through play. In contrast, modern societies often limit children’s autonomy through structured activities and constant supervision, reducing opportunities for natural learning and independence.

My Reflection:
This makes me think about how I could use ideas from hunter-gatherer play, like freedom, choice, cooperation, and learning through challenge, in design. For example, when creating games, interactive experiences, or educational tools, one could consider how users can make their own choices, how activities can encourage working together instead of competing, and how challenges can help people learn and grow in a safe way. Rather than dictating a single path or outcome, the design could invite open-ended exploration where discovery happens naturally through action. That sense of self-direction becomes a key principle for how I want to design, shaping interactions that give users autonomy, space to experiment, and the freedom to define their own experiences, much like the unstructured play of hunter-gatherer communities.

Talk #2: Creating Inclusive Environments with Play by Gary Ware
In this talk, Gary Ware explores how play can build safe, authentic, and inclusive environments in workplaces and collaborative groups. He began his talk with a playful exercise, showing how shared experiences can quickly create connection and trust. Ware emphasized that people often divide their “home self” and “work self,” which prevents genuine belonging: trying to fit in is not the same as belonging. He highlighted how play encourages vulnerability, creativity, and collaboration, ultimately fostering psychological safety and empathy.

My Reflection:
This made me think about how play could inspire designs that foster inclusion and trust. Could an interactive system help people feel accepted and comfortable being themselves? Activities like improv, drawing, or dancing already create natural connections, and I wonder how technology might extend that same sense of shared joy and safety into everyday interactions.Thinking this way helps me see where playful design could have real impact: in shared spaces like classrooms, workplaces, or public areas. These could become places of playful connection, where design cultivates belonging through interaction.

Talk #3: The Power of Play to Heal and Connect by Amy Work
Amy Work explains that play is a child’s natural language, a way to express feelings before words are available. While adults communicate through conversation, children process their inner world through play. Quoting Gary Landreth, “Play is the language of children, and toys are their words,” she highlights how play helps children express emotions, face fears, and make sense of their experiences in a safe, symbolic way. Parents who join in that play build stronger emotional bonds and open lines of communication. Work encourages adults to observe and name emotions during play, helping children develop emotional literacy, while letting them lead and set the pace.

My Reflection:
This talk reminded me that play isn’t just about learning, but also a form of emotional communication. It made me wonder how interaction design might support non-verbal expression, how people could externalize feelings or memories through playful, tangible engagement. Seen this way, play becomes a bridge between inner and outer worlds. That perspective also hints at who my designs might serve: people who communicate or process emotions differently like children, neurodivergent users, or anyone drawn to expression beyond words.

AI was used for corrections, better wording, and enhancements.

by genovefa.zourkou -

Proseminar Task III: Analysing a Master’s Thesis

The thesis that I am analysing is titled “Exploring games to foster empathy” by Alice Blot (2017), which investigates empathy in games and explores how to create a game that fosters empathy.

Production of the Artifact
The thesis presents two interactive artifacts. The first is a mystery-style escape room for two players, where the goal is not to escape but to uncover and understand the personal stories of the characters. The second is a single-player interactive narrative that combines elements of LARP and escape rooms, allowing the player to take on a character role and progress through a story that unfolds both within and beyond the physical space. These artifacts are well documented in a dedicated chapter through written descriptions and photographs that explain the development and playtesting process. Although the prototypes themselves can only be partially accessed in the appendix, the documentation provides enough clarity for readers to grasp the concepts without needing additional context. The theoretical framework is clearly connected to the practical work, showing a consistent progression from concept to implementation. User scenarios and testing outcomes are presented in a direct and understandable way. While the artifacts effectively reflect the thesis’s main goal of exploring empathy through interactive design, the overall theoretical discussion remains somewhat limited. The concept of empathy, being complex and abstract, is not examined in great depth, which slightly weakens the level of academic criticality expected at the master’s level.

Overall Presentation Quality
The thesis is cohesive in structure and includes visuals that support understanding. However, minor inconsistencies, such as the informal tone in certain parts of the practical chapters, slightly reduce the level of professionalism expected at the master’s level.

Degree of Innovation
The topics explored in the thesis have been examined previously, but the combination of LARP elements with an escape room format to investigate empathy is original and engaging.

Independence
The author demonstrates autonomy in the design process. This is particularly evident in the iterative development of the prototypes, where changes were made based on feedback from playtesting participants.

Organization and Structure
The chapters are logically ordered and easy to follow. However, placing the design process and analysis earlier in the thesis might have created a clearer connection between the theoretical foundation and the artifact development.

Communication
The writing is understandable, but some sections would benefit from a more professional tone. Certain parts of the practical documentation contain redundancy or missing punctuation, which affects overall clarity.

Scope
The thesis maintains a balance between theoretical discussion and practical exploration. While the scope of both components is appropriate for a master’s project, certain theoretical sections would benefit from greater analytical depth, especially given the abstract nature of empathy as a research topic.

Accuracy and Attention to Detail
Attention to formal writing conventions, such as grammar, punctuation, and formatting, could be improved. There are sections with redundant phrasing and missing punctuation. These minor inaccuracies do not hinder understanding but affect the academic precision expected in a final thesis document.

Literature
The literature review includes relevant and somewhat recent sources for the time of publication. Although not comprehensive, it provides a useful foundation. The author also introduces her own set of parameters for empathy-driven game design, which shows initiative and original thinking.

Overall Assessment

Strengths

  • Innovative combination of narrative and spatial interaction to foster empathy.
  • Clear documentation of prototypes and design decisions.
  • Strong independence shown in the iterative design process.

Weaknesses

  • The theoretical depth is limited, especially considering the abstract nature of empathy.
  • Some sections lack academic tone and precision.
  • The accessibility of the artifact is partial and relies heavily on interpretation.

Conclusion
Overall, this thesis offers an interesting and original contribution to the intersection of game design and emotional engagement. While it could benefit from deeper theoretical analysis and more critical discussion of empathy as a concept, the work is valuable for its creative approach and its emphasis on player experience as a medium for emotional understanding. It opens up important questions about how intangible concepts like empathy can be embedded into gameplay, not through winning conditions, but through storytelling, embodiment, and reflection.