Applied Games and Engaging Technologies

We currently have:

10 actively researching SCEBE members
Four associate collaborating members from the Yunus Centre, SHLS, WISE and GSBS
13 PhD students in (SCEBE and in collaboration with SHLS, WISE and Yunus Centre).
Four dedicated lab facilities.

Vision

We apply the tools and techniques of Games and Emerging Technologies to engage users with serious contexts from supporting health and wellbeing and addressing humanitarian challenges, to raising awareness of contemporary social issues and training people in applied contexts.

Our members span expertise in Games Design, Development, User Research, UI and UX, Human-Computer Interaction, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Music Psychology, User Psychology, 3D Visualisation, Artificial Intelligence, Sentiment Analysis, Values Development, Audio and Music Technology, and Haptics.

In collaboration with national and international industry, community and academic partners, our recent funders include EPSRC, AHRC, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, NIHR, Nesta, IOSH, BBC, Alzheimer Scotland, Edinburgh and Lothian Health Foundation, The Andrew W.Mellon Foundation, the European Union. Our recent Industry Partners include: BBC, Ingenious Knowledge, Mercedes, SingFit, Sony, ABC Music, Freestyle Games, Denki, No Code, Steely Glint Games, Wellcome Trust, BBFC, Dore, YooStar, FutureLab, Bunnyfoot and Fragor Games.

Our vision is to establish a holistic interdisciplinary approach to joining up design intent with user experience evaluation, applying appropriate tools and techniques from across our areas of specialism.

Our objectives are to:

Innovate and integrate approaches in Applied Games, Music Psychology and User Psychology to better understand games user experience and inform best practice in design, development, evaluation and research
Create and apply New Models of game design practice for behaviour change thatbetter integrate design teams and researchers to create games that can support meaningful and lasting change
Design and develop new methods for capturing key user characteristics to enable designers to better understand their audience
Design adaptive and dynamic game sound and music systems focusing on enhancement of the user experience.

With world-leading User Experience and Serious Games labs, design studios and development facilities, our services include:

Facilitating preliminary user research events that drive towards identification of key player motivation and goal motivations
Applied Game Design Consultancy and analysis to better integrate the principles of an intervention with game design goals
Rapid prototyping of core applied game concepts with an emphasis on behaviour change and augmented reality
User Experience analysis using our state of the art UX facility: the UX eMotion Lab
VR and AR design, development and evaluation
Audio and music systems design and development, subjective sound assessment/evaluation.