The team of the game ‘Mutation Madness’ have dropped a release date for a much-anticipated game about viral infections. The game launches on July 14 for PC gamers and testing open on the same day.

Mutation Madness is the name of a much-anticipated shooter action game in which the player is invited to embark on an adventure with the scientist Mike and help him fight the Madvirus and its variants.

Beyond the releasing date, the team also dropped a trailer, which shows the Mike taking action and fighting off different virus variants. The game was developed in Unity by the master’s students in Multimedia Communication, Frederico Proença and Ana Passos, with the guidance of both researchers from University of Aveiro – DigiMedia and Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária, I.P. – INIAV, I.P.  Figure a shows the digital game announcement.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3C-MBH4nEg

The game is available in the following link and the team is recruiting participants to play the game and assess the game experience on 14^th July at room 40.2.10.

The pilot project “Citizen Arenas for improved environmental quality & resources use in SMART-ER cities” is a multidisciplinary project that brings together six partners of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities ECIU: University of Aveiro, Dublin City University (DCU, Ireland), Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Toulouse (INSA; France), Kaunas University of Technology (KTU, Lithuania), Linköping University (LiU, Sweden) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB, Spain).

Pedro Beça and Mónica Aresta are two of the researchers of the University of Aveiro team, and will be leading the activities related with Production of digital materials (e.g. games, videos).

More information: https://www.ua.pt/en/noticias/9/75883

Carlos Santos (DigiMedia member) participated in the Switch to Innovation Summit (Valongo, 30^th June), invited by the organization to integrate a Round Table about “Innovative Projects with Technology in Education”.

The DigiMedia researcher presented the Avila Crew project as a way to promote collaboration between students for the development of social skills, but also technical skills. In the second part of his participation he presented the adaptation of this project to the 3^rd Cicle of Basic Education and to Secondary Education, highlighting the Ana Raquel Carvalho’s PhD project.

Other participants at the Round Table were: João Cunha from Agrupamento de Escolas de Freixo; Francisco Gouveia from United Lisbon International School; and Rui Oliva Teles from Escola Superior de Educação do Politécnico do Porto.

This Round Table was moderated by other DigiMedia member, Filipe T. Moreira.

Three members of DigiMedia participated and contributed to the organization of the TIC@Portugal’22 (that took place in Tarouca, 7^th July) – Carlos Santos, David Oliveira and Filipe T. Moreira.

Carlos Santos also presented the project “Espaços de mentoria entre pares no projeto Avila Crew” (Peer mentoring spaces in the Avila Crew project).

Another DigiMedia project presented at the event was “STEAM City Kits – Um projeto para o 1.º CEB” (STEAM City Kits – A project for Primary School), whose authors were Rui Raposo, Mário Vairinhos and Filipe T. Moreira.

TIC@Portugal event aims to reflect on the practices of using ICT in Education. It also aims to hear from educators and teachers who use ICT in the field, through the presentation of their work, and invites experts to contribute the latest knowledge in this field.

This initiative of EDUCOM – APTE (Portuguese Association for Educational Telematics), through its ICT Competence Centre and its Teacher Training Centre, this year had the title: Education, Training and Technologies today: challenges of the Digital Transition.

As in previous years, TIC@Portugal had a national and decentralized character in collaboration with several ICT Competence Centres of ERTE/Direction-General of Education of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Institutions (located in various parts of the country) that integrate and complement, with local and videoconference sessions, involving around 500 participants.

The local event in Tarouca was jointly organised by the CCTICs of the University of Aveiro and the ESE/IP of Viseu.

The book chapter “Playable Characters Attributes: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Theoretical Proposal from Katherine Isbister and Ernest Adams” by Tânia Ribeiro (DigiMedia PhD student), Gonçalo Ribeiro and Ana Isabel Veloso (DigiMedia member) was published within the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2022: HCI in Games pp. 84-100.

Abstract:

Citation:

Ribeiro, T., Ribeiro, G., Veloso, A.I. (2022). Playable Characters Attributes: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Theoretical Proposal from Katherine Isbister and Ernest Adams. In: Fang, X. (eds) HCI in Games. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13334. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05637-6_6

More information available HERE

Catarina Lelis (DigiMedia member) participated in the international conference of the Design Research Society, that took place in Bilbao, from June 25 to July 3, being chair of the panel “Retail and Brand Innovation & Intelligence and presenting the workshop Anticipating the impact of design projects: contributions to the SDGs.

Anticipating the impact of design projects: contributions to the SDGs

Creative Industry professionals often receive several briefs simultaneously, having to priori- tise or choose the one to work on at that moment, usually by considering aspects such as budget, time frame, strength, and longevity of the relationship with the client, but also, the project itself, its message, challenge, values, and purpose. These situations involve difficult decisions and anxious moments, due to the lack of 1) a supporting and defining framework for said decision, and 2) a system for reflecting on how each of the possible projects to choose from can become a more or less impactful, meaningful and pleasurable action.

The Impact Plan operates as a Determine heuristic, which is to happen prior to Discover stage of the Double Diamond framework, for rapid project impact assessment, grounded on surfacing desired identities: the individual’s or a team/brand’s identity, and the identities of those benefiting from the possible outcomes of said projects.

The tool involves a canvas and a deck of 20 cards, aiming at supporting the design-related project or activity selection’s “moment of truth”, namely, when having to choose from a pool of many possibilities; it presents a system for early strategic decision-making, individual or group continuous development planning, and impact-centred thinking. It does so by matching the projects’ anticipated impact with the motivations, capacities, ambitions, and perceptions of value of those involved in its execution, making them consider not only the usual aspects mentioned above for choosing a project, but also their perception that they can (by choosing this project rather than the other), to some extent, contribute to a better world — especially if considering the now in force UN’s 17 Goals for Sustainable Develop- ment that we all should observe.

Within this half-day workshop, delivered exclusively face-to-face, the main concepts and problematic is initially shared with participants, who will be given time to reflect on the construct of purpose and any current generic-societal dilemma (so they can prepare their hikigai), and then a team-based positioning is to be instilled. The teams are then given a few topics of possible design projects, and the time to assess the anticipated impact each project might have on them — teams constituted by individuals with both individual and shared (sometimes conflicting) agendas — and on humanity.

In an event that aims to recognize the work developed by the teams of the different projects involved in this first edition, the final students@DigiMedia #01 event will take place on July 14th at 15h00, in the CCCI auditorium (DeCA, UA).

The event is integrated in the UA Research Summit, and the program will be as follows:

15h00: Opening
Vice-rector for research
DeCA’s direction
DigiMedia Coordination
students@DigiMedia Coordination

15:15: Edition #01 – projects’ presentation

16h45: Preview of students@DigiMedia#02

17h00: Posters presentation and final meeting

students@DigiMedia is an initiative designed with the purpose of fostering students’ participation in scientific research activities.

In the first edition 17 proposals were submitted by 32 researchers. This event will present the 13 ongoing projects, involving 31 students from all study cycles (CTC area) and 24 DigiMedia researchers.

The session is open to all Academic community!

Ana Margarida Almeida and Oksana Tymoshuchuk (DigiMedia members) participated in the Learning Activity, Hilives – Including and Connecting in Higher Education: networking opportunities for independent lives in Reykjavík Iceland, School of Education, University of Iceland, from June 27 to July 1.

Hélder Caixinha (DigiMedia member) presented “Linha do Vouga – a photographic narrative about the landscapes of a decaying railway line”

Abstract

The Linha do Vouga, whose initial section was inaugurated in 1908, is the only Metric Gauge railway line still in activity in Portugal. Currently connecting, through two separate stretches, the towns of Aveiro/Sernada do Vouga and Oliveira de Azeméis/Espinho, this line shows a pale image of its glorious past when it played an important role in the economy and mobility of people and goods in the Aveiro and Viseu regions. Its decline in recent years and plans, always postponed, for a promised revitalization, brought the demand to document the line and the human and urban landscapes that encircle it. To fulfil this demand and within the scope of a social intervention project, promoted by 4iS -Platform for Social Innovation, a photographic workshop – Vouginha Storytelling – took place from November 2018 to April 2019, where under the supervision of the renowned photographer Constanze Flamme, each participant developed a photographic narrative based on a personal exploration of that context. This paper reveals and examines: the process of developing one of these photographic narratives; the human, urban and cultural approaches that grounded it; and the final dissemination carried out, through a collective photographic exhibition and in a digital format through an Instagram account.

Carlos Santos (DigiMedia member) and Lorena Sousa, DigiMedia PhD student and  student of the Doctoral Programme in Multimedia in Education, participated in The Sixteenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning 2022 (JTELSS 2022), which took place in Greece, from 21 to 28 May. This summer school gathered 120 participants, among doctoral students and experts in the field of TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning), and was organized by the European Association of Technology-Enhanced Learning (EATEL).

It also gathered the members of the project Doctoral Education for Technology-Enhanced Learning (DE-TEL), of which the University of Aveiro is one of the 10 European partners, being locally coordinated by Luís Pedro, DigiMedia researcher.

Among other activities, they conducted the workshops Gamification and TEL research (Luís Pedro and Carlos Santos) and Creating Open Educational Resources with the H5P tool (Lorena Sousa, Luís Pedro and Carlos Santos).

The DigiMedia Dialogs#6 took place on June 13 with an interesting session on Immersive Web Environments: the “tools” being used, how we can use them in an educational setting and figuring out if they work and how they work in envolving students in school activities. Three PhD students – Maria Ferreira, Bárbara Cleto and Ricardo Carvalho -, an Italian Doctoral student – Michelina Occhioni-, and three undergraduate students (within the Students@DigiMedia initiative) work together to see this research through and presented the result.