Digital Make Believe

Make-believe plays a far stronger role in both the design and use of interfaces, games and services than we have come to believe. This edited volume illustrates ways for grasping and utilising that connection to improve interaction, user experiences, and customer value. Useful for designers, undergraduates and researchers alike, this new research provide tools for understanding and applying make-believe in various contexts, ranging from digital tools to physical services. It takes the reader through a world of imagination and intuition applied into efficient practice, with topics including the connection of human-computer interaction (HCI) to make-believe and backstories, the presence of imagination in gamification, gameworlds, virtual worlds and service design, and the believability of make-believe based designs in various contexts. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges inherent in applying make-believe as a basis for interaction design, as well as the enactive mechanism behind it. Whether used as a university textbook or simply used for design inspiration, Digital Make-Believe provides new and efficient insight into approaching interaction in the way in which actual users of devices, software and services can innately utilise it.

Make-believe plays a far stronger role in both the design and use of interfaces, games and services than we have come to believe. This edited volume illustrates ways for grasping and utilising that connection to improve interaction, user experiences, and customer value. Useful for designers, undergraduates and researchers alike, this new research provide tools for understanding and applying make-believe in various contexts, ranging from digital tools to physical services. It takes the reader through a world of imagination and intuition applied into efficient practice, with topics including the connection of human-computer interaction (HCI) to make-believe and backstories, the presence of imagination in gamification, gameworlds, virtual worlds and service design, and the believability of make-believe based designs in various contexts. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges inherent in applying make-believe as a basis for interaction design, as well as the enactive mechanism behind it. Whether used as a university textbook or simply used for design inspiration, Digital Make-Believe provides new and efficient insight into approaching interaction in the way in which actual users of devices, software and services can innately utilise it.

A Mile of Make Believe examines the unique history of the Santa Claus parade in Canada. This volume focuses on the Eaton’s sponsored parades that occurred in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg as well as the shorter-lived parades in Calgary and Edmonton. There is also a discussion of small town alternatives, organized by civic groups, service clubs, and chambers of commerce. By focusing on the pioneering effort of the Eaton’s department store Steve Penfold argues that the parade ultimately represented a paradoxical form of cultural power: it allowed Eaton’s to press its image onto public life while also reflecting the decline of the once powerful retailer. Penfold’s analysis reveals the "corporate fantastic" – a visual and narrative mix of meticulous organization and whimsical style– and its influence on parade traditions. Steve Penfold’s considerable analytical skills have produced a work that is simultaneously a cultural history, history of business and commentary on consumerism. Professional historians and the general public alike would be remiss if this wasn’t on their holiday wish list.

Representations—in visual arts and in fiction—play an important part in our lives and culture. Kendall Walton presents here a theory of the nature of representation, which illuminates its many varieties and goes a long way toward explaining its importance. Drawing analogies to children’s make believe activities, Walton constructs a theory that addresses a broad range of issues: the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, how depiction differs from description, the notion of points of view in the arts, and what it means for one work to be more “realistic” than another. He explores the relation between appreciation and criticism, the character of emotional reactions to literary and visual representations, and what it means to be caught up emotionally in imaginary events. Walton’s theory also provides solutions to the thorny philosophical problems of the existence—or ontological standing—of fictitious beings, and the meaning of statements referring to them. And it leads to striking insights concerning imagination, dreams, nonliteral uses of language, and the status of legends and myths. Throughout Walton applies his theoretical perspective to particular cases; his analysis is illustrated by a rich array of examples drawn from literature, painting, sculpture, theater, and film. Mimesis as Make-Believe is important reading for everyone interested in the workings of representational art.

This book explores the role of cognition in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) assessing how the field has developed over the past thirty years and discusses where the field is heading, as we begin to live in increasingly interconnected digital environments. Taking a broad chronological view, the author discusses cognition in relation to areas like make-believe, and appropriation, and places these more recent concepts in the context of traditional thinking about the psychology of HCI. HCI Redux will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in psychology, the cognitive sciences and HCI. It will also be of interest to all readers with a curiosity about our everyday use of technology.

An attempt to cover all aspects of children's make-believe. The authors examine how imaginative play begins and develops and provide examples and evidence on the young child's invocation of imaginary friends, the adolescent's daring games and the adult's private imagery and inner thought.

Imagination is highly valued and sought-after, yet elusive and ill-defined. Definitions range from narrowly cognitive accounts to those which endow imagination with world-making powers. Imagination underpins our ability to speculate about the future and to re-experience the past. The everyday functioning of society relies on being able to imagine the perspectives of others; and our sense of who we are depends on the stories our imaginations create. Our soaring imaginations have taken us to the moon and allowed Einstein to race a light beam. Unsurprisingly, imagination underlies every aspect of human-computer interaction, from the earliest conceptual sketches, through the realistic possibilities portrayed variously in well-known tools as scenarios and storyboards, through to the wilder shores of design fictions. Yet, curiously, imagination is very rarely addressed directly in the design and HCI literature (and is wholly missing from virtual reality). This book addresses this gap in our accounts of how we imagine, conceptualise, design and use digital technologies. Drawing on many years of practical and academic experience in human computer-interaction, together with a wide range of material from psychology, design, cognitive science and HCI, seasoned with a little philosophy and anthropology, Imagination + Technology first considers imagination itself and the principal farthings of a new account. Later chapters discuss the role of imagination in the design, aesthetics, use and experience of digital technologies before the concluding chapter focusses on the provocative nature of imagination. The book will be stimulating reading for anyone working in the field of interactive technology and related areas, whether academics, students or practitioners.

Why technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers. In Urban Play, Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez argue that the merely functional aspects of technology may undermine its transformative power. Technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play--in the sense of acting for one's own enjoyment rather than to achieve a goal--that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them. The authors show how creativity emerges in moments of instability, when a new technology overthrows an established one, or when internal factors change a technology until it becomes a different technology. Exploring the role of fantasy in design, they examine Disney World and its outsize influence on design and on forms of social interaction beyond the entertainment world. They also consider Las Vegas and Dubai, desert cities that combine technology with fantasies of pleasure and wealth. Video games and interactive media, they show, infuse the design process with interactivity and participatory dynamics, leaving spaces open to variations depending on the users' behavior. Throughout, they pinpoint the critical moments when technology plays a key role in reshaping how we design and experience spaces.