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This article proposes a widened view of fictional games by considering the game guidebook Vermis I –Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods (2023) by Plastiboo. Through a kaleidoscope of theoretical concepts hailing from playfulness, aesthetics, design, narratology, and literary reception, the authors engage with the issues of literary play and imaginary games. This con-clusion is drawn: Vermis exemplifies a fictional game existing both parallel to a secondary world and within its own secondary world created by afactual book. Its format invites a lit-erary play activity showcasing the playful power inherent in fictional games.

Essentially all academic research of today relies on analysis of data from a wide range of sources. Several underpinning, and rapidly developing, technologies are supporting the analysis of this data. Visualization serves as an interface to this ecosystem of tools and methods and integrates them into environments supporting scientific workflows, effectively sharing cognitive load between computers and humans. There is, however, a gap between the state-of-the-art in visual data analysis and current wide-spread academic practice. Support for the introduction of new, improved and tailored, visual data analysis environments thus has the potential to address challenges involving large and complex data, creating competitive advantages for researchers. To fill the gap and capitalize on this opportunity, the InfraVis initiative has been created in Sweden with the mission to operate an infrastructure consisting of visualization experts, software solutions, and access to high-end visualization laboratories. Users of InfraVis are offered assistance through a national helpdesk with rapid response times as well as more in-depth projects addressing specific data and software challenges. InfraVis provides software solutions based on development within connected research groups, curation of international software and best practice, and user training in the form of courses, seminars and on-line documentation. To build an infrastructure with national coverage, we have pooled together nine visualization environments in Sweden interconnected in a nodal structure. The nodes are hosted in proximity to research environments in visualization, which enables direct access to the research front as well as to state-of-art facilities. The governance structure of InfraVis is based on the leading researchers in visualization in Sweden as well as an international advisory board.

Whereas hackathons are widespread within and outside academia and have been argued to be a valid pedagogical method for teaching interdisciplinarity, no detailed frameworks or methods are available for conceptualizing and organizing educational hackathons, i.e., hackathons dedicated to best achieving pedagogic objectives. This paper is dedicated to introducing EDUCational Hackathons for learning how to solve Interdisciplinary Challenges (EDUCHIC) through: (1) defining the fundamental principles for framing an activity as an EDUCHIC, integrating principles from pedagogical methods, hackathon organization, and interdisciplinarity processes; (2) describing general properties that EDUCHIC possess as a consequence of the interaction of the fundamental principles; (3) developing operational guidelines for streamlining the practical organization of EDUCHIC, including an exhaustive end-to-end process covering all the steps for organizing EDUCHIC and practical frames for carrying the key decisions to be made in this process; and (4) a demonstration of these guidelines through illustrating their application for organizing a concrete EDUCHIC.

We are part of a post-pandemic world, where previous lockdowns and restrictions forced us to consider, address and explore new paths for methods in research and design. During the pandemic, dietitians in Sweden rapidly had to change from physical, to digital video meetings with patients. This paper presents an example of using Photo Voice in a self-reported photo-study observation where five dietitians were encouraged to use metaphors and illustrations, to express experiences, emotions, and present perspectives on and examples of their changed work conditions. Findings from the study bring forward early stages of research with aim to address methodological reflections when conducting observations in difficult-to-access communities.

This roundtable brought together a diverse group of participants from research and practice, representing perspectives on the digitalization of society, AI legalization, AI in education, children’s development, and children-technology relations. One focus of this roundtable was on how AI technologies impact children at an early age. In northern Europe, most children have grown up in a world that is intimately connected to technology. They have been exposed to various devices, from home computers and smart-phones to digital games and social media platforms. These technologies have provided children with pre-designed interaction possibilities that are limited to the parameters set by the designers. However, with the advent of AI-powered devices, children now have the opportunity to interact with a system that can learn by input and act as an artificial companion.

It is becoming more common to replace or augment human-based decisions with algorithmic calculations and evaluations using artificial intelligence (AI). Facial analysis systems (FA) are examples of how AI in particular is intertwined with both the most mundane and the most critical aspects of human life. Exploring images for the purposes of face detection, recognition and/or classification, FA shows an entanglement between human identity, self-presentation and computation. In this chapter, we discuss automated facial analysis technology from a queer theoretical standpoint, focusing on the concerns and risks when systems like FA are used in a binary way to categorize, measure and make decisions based on computerized assumptions about gender and sexuality. Further, we discuss issues of privacy, bias and fairness related to FA technology as well as potential improvements, for example, by using participatory design. Finally, this chapter suggests that a queer perspective on FA can create new ways to relate to technology.

This paper reports a study of pilots of a robotic telepresence system, exploring the relationship between the pilots' experience of physical presence, overall user experience, and task parameters. The pilots (N=12) performed a set of tasks characterized by different Task Focus (Process vs. Outcome) and Navigation Difficulty (Low vs. High); their experience was assessed by using a set of subjective rating scales. It was found that the experience of being physically present in a remote location positively correlated with self-reported gaming skills, objective indicators of navigation efficiency, as well as feelings of being safe and relaxed. No significant effects of task focus and navigation difficulty were found.

The covid-19 pandemic has severely limited the possibility for people to meet physically, which forced many individuals and organizations to employ online meetings as their predominant mode of communication. A potential problem with the unprecedentedly central role of online meetings in a wide range of everyday activities is the disruption it may cause to intersubjective experiences, an intuitive mutual understanding of the participants and their thinking of themselves as a group, a "we". To address this problem, about half a year into the pandemic we conducted an exploratory study, in which the informants (N=36) completed a survey, comprising a set of Likert scales and open-ended questions focusing on "team spirit", moment-to-moment coordination, emotions, and the sense of presence in online and physical meetings. The results indicate that online meetings may present particular challenges regarding the experience of "we-ness", and different types of online meetings can be experienced differently. Implications of the results for further research are discussed.