Ben Schouten (Google Scholar, personal webpage) is a proffessor of Playful Interactions in Smart Environments at Eindhoven University of Technology and a lector of Play & Civic Media Research at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His work focuses on play and design for social innovations, citizen empowerment, and culture as well as toy development for the purpose of rehabilitation.
In this episode, Ben and I covered what serious games are, his work in incorporating playful interactions in medical settings, the powerful use of mixed-reality games to "step into someone's shoes", and the importance of participatory design.
Links to some of his work:
Assessing Children’s Fine Motor Skills With Sensor-Augmented Toys: Machine Learning Approach (link)
Magic Monster (link)
Mixed-Reality Work (link)
Participative societies creating new challenges for the water sector (link)
Sept 2016 "Games and Playful Interaction" talk (link)
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The transcript for this episode can be found here.