Like the palm of my hand: children and public space in central Athens

Urban public spaces, just as the external physical environment in general, are well acknowledged in relevant literature as highly important for children, and yet as highly contested, regarding their accessibility and their use by children. Children’s accessibility to and perception of public space is very relevant to issues of children’s citizenship rights, and may provide the ground to raise questions as part of an ongoing, longitudinal and cross-national study into children participation in public life, the Connectors Study. In this paper I discuss some of the uses of public space that children make in central Athens, and how this may transgress both the limitations that are set forth by the schemes of urban municipal planning as well as the imagined borders between the public and private spheres. Drawing from a case study of a 10-year-old boy living in Exarcheia, I explore the mismatch between his and officials’ views of the neighborhood as well as Iason’s actual playful, creative and often transgressive relation to the public space. In addition, and since the focus is on the district of Exarcheia, where indeed strong activist and solidarity initiatives are at work, it provides a valuable opportunity for a discussion of how the issue of children’s participation is treated not only in official municipal urban planning, but also in alternative, citizen-led initiatives, and as such, allows us to consider children’s participation within wider processes of social change

A framework and serious game to support those with mild cognitive impairment

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonCognitive decline is common in the elderly. As a result, a range of cognitive rehabilitation games have been proposed to supplement or replace traditional rehabilitative training by offering benefits such as improved engagement. This research project focuses on mild cognitive impairment (MCI), an initial stage of cognitive decline that does not affect functioning in daily life, but which may progress towards more serious cognitive deteriorations, notably dementia. Unfortunately, while a variety of serious game frameworks and rehabilitative serious games have been proposed, there is a distinct lack of those which support the distinctive characteristics of MCI patients. Consequently, to optimise the advantages of serious games for MCI, the research proposes the MCI-GaTE (MCI-Game Therapy Experience) framework that may be used to develop serious games as effective cognitive and physical rehabilitation tools. The framework is derived from a combination of a survey of related research literature in the area, analysis of resident profiles from a nursing home, and in-depth interviews with occupational therapists (OTs) who work with MCI patients on a daily basis to help them overcome the disabling effects so that they can carry out everyday tasks. The conceptual framework comprises four sectors that may be used to guide game design and development: an MCI player profile that represents the capabilities of a player with MCI, core gaming elements that support gameful and playful activities, therapeutic elements that support cognitive and physical rehabilitation through tasks and scenarios according to the player’s abilities, and motivational elements to enhance the player’s attitude towards the serious tasks. Together, they provide tailored support for rehabilitation needs and may also serve as a set of comprehensive and established criteria by which an MCI serious game may be evaluated. To demonstrate the use of MCI-GaTE, an immersive and gesture-based serious game, A go!, is designed that exploits the framework to enable MCI-diagnosed players to undertake a series of tailored therapeutic tasks supported by an assigned OT. To this end, a goal-directed design approach is employed, whereby personas, scenarios and journey maps are developed that satisfy the goals of both the MCI player and their OT, and enable the derivation of functional requirements leading to a visual design. A-go! is realised as a responsive and interactive high-fidelity prototype that supports gesture recognition and 3D game objects from a first-person perspective to facilitate immersion without the need for additional worn devices, such as headsets, which would prove impractical for the targeted elderly players. Evaluation with OTs revealed that the immersive game potentially offers more effective and tailored support to MCI patients than traditional methods, contributing new possibilities for enhancing MCI rehabilitative training, while a comparative assessment of MCI-GaTE demonstrated that it provides a comprehensive approach not currently offered by state-of-the-art rehabilitative frameworks.GRACE Healthcare Ltd. & Hong Kong Caritas in Evergreen Home and Integrated Home Care Services, TWGHs Fung Yiu King Hospital HA, Kwai Chung Hospital HA, and TWGHs Jockey Club Rehabilitation Comple