Games for Health and Well-Being

MMH 723 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What can play offer to the pursuit of health and well-being beyond quantification of eating habits and wellness apps playing sea breeze sounds? This course offers a hands-on exploration of the role of playful experiences to this subject through analysis and design. Students are familiarized with the theoretical and methodological foundations of interaction design and design exploration, as well as practical approaches to working with physical and digital design materials. Each student chooses a topic that they explore through iterative prototyping. As the ideas solidify into artifacts, we engage in critique, refinement and knowledge dissemination through play. The course is taught as a studio class with on-demand lectures and instruction, collaborative exercises, discussion seminars, and peer critiques of individual projects. There is a strong emphasis on co-learning between students as health subject matter experts and the instructor as game design expert and the facilitator of knowledge and artifact co-creation.