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 -

3.5 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 Selina Allerstorfer -

Impulse #1 – CoSA

Last week I visited CoSA – Center of Science Activites in Graz. CoSA offers twelve different areas, where visitors can explore technical and scientific relations and phenomena in a hands-on way. Instead of a strict and typical ‘do not touch’ they follow the rule of ‘please touch’, encouraging a playful discovery. I visited three of the areas: The Experimentarium, The MedLab and Technology.

The Experimentarium is a playful, curiosity-driven space full of scientific phenomena and hands-on surprises. Introductions and exhibits were hidden, and you needed to find the tiny drawers and covered elements spread throughout the room. The space felt like a playground and as a visitor you got invited to poke around, test things, explore and discover at your own pace.

In the MedLab you could discover the world of medical research. You could slip into the shoe of a medical professional, either as a doctor or a lab technician. There were three patients that needed to be examined, and you could even take a blood sample with real liquid in the syringe. The blood sample needed to be analyzed in the lab to find out the correct diagnosis, which made the experiment surprisingly realistic.

In the Technology Area focused engineering and mobility. You could build your own vehicle by selecting the different components needed for a car. For each component there were even different options to use, like a diesel engine, gasoline engine or electric motor. Once the car was assembled, you can test it in a racing simulation and fine-tune it based on the performance. It was a fun and very interactive way to learn about something complex as a vehicle.

I completely lost track of time during my visit and felt totally immersed in the exhibition. I was genuinely fun. When I reflected on why I enjoyed the exhibition so much, I realized it gives visitor a place to experiment, explore, and play. I felt a bit like a curious kid again.

And that feeling connects to what I want to research about in my master thesis: how interaction design can foster playful, imperfect and low-pressure creativity. We live in a world which pushes us towards productivity, efficiency and optimization and I think we all forgot how it feels to simply just mess around and play without expecting a result. As children playing was our way of learning, discovering new things and processing our environment and I think unfortunately we lost that as adults.

And maybe that is what we should bring that back in our lives. Play more, experiment more and just try things, without judgment and without pressure. This is where the idea for my project is coming from: I want to create an interactive web playground for creatives. A digital space where the goal is not to produce something ‘useful’, but to create something without pressure, where we can set our perfectionism aside and simply create something for the joy of creating.

So, I think this is a reminder for myself, that play isn’t a distraction of creative work, maybe it is a form of creative work; and the kind that brings back energy, curiosity, and inspiration.

AI was used to check spelling and grammar and better clarity.

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.