Critical Change Lab

In the past months, I’ve partnered with Tactical Tech to trial a critical pedagogy – Critical Change Lab. It aims to develop critical literacy for young people in Europe. This pedagogical workshop model uses participatory, creative and critical approaches to encourage young people to think about their relationship to everyday technologies (e.g., social media platforms, apps, mobile phones) – in order to act on them. Through exploring the concepts of ‘influence’, ‘influencers’, ‘hidden influencers’, ‘persuasive design techniques’, we navigated the contemporary digital landscape critically and reflectively in a series of workshops. We asked ourselves some mundane questions: What has driven us to stay on YouTube longer? What has prompted us to spend more money on Amazon? What is recommending content to us on social media platforms such as TikTok?

During the trial period, two big news happened: The US House of Representatives has passed a divest-or-ban law that could lead to total TikTok ban. The European Commission opens proceedings against TikTok under the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding the launch of TikTok Lite in France and Spain, and communicates its intention to suspend the reward programme in the EU. The former highlights the tension between freedom of speech and national security, whereas the latter reminds us of the lack of effective age verification mechanisms and the suspected addictive design of the social media platforms. These real-life episodes gave us much to discuss in the workshops.

Today (as of 8th May 2024), Ofcom has published their draft Children’s Safety Codes of Practice which require tech firms to have more robust age-checking measures, and to reformulate their algorithms to steer children away from what it called “toxic” material. There are more than 40 practical measures which regulates what online services should do to meet their legal responsibilities to protect children online. While it is a step towards full implementation of the enacted Online Safety Act 2023, many (parents of children who died after exposure to harmful online content, in particular) have described the proposed new rules as “insufficient”.

Indeed, I’d argue that we need greater transparency and more information to monitor the progress and changes made by tech firms in order to investigate what algorithms (persuasive design / addictive design techniques) have been implemented by these social media platforms and apps to enable and enhance their services (for advertising or other purposes). Tech firms should transparentise what algorithms they remove or configure and how. They need to do more than instrumentally inserting pop-up messages to warn under-18s about overuse of social media or harmful content, which can easily be ignored. The regulators have to steer tech firms to be more proactive and responsible in dealing with the socio-technical challenges.

Critical Change Lab or similar educational initiatives (please get in touch if you know any of such initiatives, no matter what scale they are at) are doing a tremendous job in addressing the socio-technical challenges from the bottom up. Only when humans retain our agency and autonomy, we will not be retired by algorithms / machines. I’d propose to ask tech firms to donate at least 1% of their global revenues to invest educational initiatives such as Critical Change Lab – it’s a fair ask and it’s for the long-term good of human race.

CCL workshop participants (cohort 1) shared their ideas about what the word ‘influence’ meant to them during Session one.

CCL workshop participants (cohort 2) shared what the word ‘influence’ meant to them and how they were being influenced.

CCL workshop participants envisaged how they could influence people using existing social media platforms and persuasive design techniques.

Climate Calling

On this year’s International Women’s Day, I took part in a trial of a participatory workshop that aimed to develop critical thinking skills for understanding the intersectionality of climate, environment and race.

Natalie Lartey and her team at Wood & Water led us to think about how colonial histories, lived experience, identities and power structures shape one’s relationship with climate change.

The workshop was split into three parts. The first part involved going around the room, exploring selected visual images and tangible objects. There are also QR codes that link to webpages, explaining what the objects are, such as Stethoscope, Air Quality Diffusion Tube, Water Purification Tablets, Pineapple. Then, we discussed our memories of and experiences with these items and the systems that produced them.

Air Quality Diffusion Tube

It is what it is, really. It’s a pineapple.

The second part involved a deep-topography / psycho-geography walk around two bordering neighbourhoods in London that have distinctively different demographies. As we walked around, we noticed different landscapes, skylines and street scenes. Participants were invited to make visual images as they went along, evidencing the observations. On the walk, we were informed of some statistics such as air pollution, life expectancies, etc. This affective approach allowed us to focus on marginalised populations in the neighbourhoods.

The last part of the workshop involved creative production of a cultural product that reflects our thoughts and observations of the topics. I had an idea of making a short animation or a comic strip that challenges and deconstructs people’s obsessions with perfect fruits and vegetables when shopping at supermarkets in order to cut food waste.

‘An intersectional analysis of climate change illuminates how different individuals and groups relate differently to climate change, due to their situatedness in power structures based on context-specific and dynamic social categorisations. (Anna Kaijser & Annica Kronsell, 2014).

In the wake of the call for extending the critical lens of intersectionality to the field of climate justice (Mikulewicz et al. 2023), we need innovative and renewed theoretical and methodological frameworks to connect intersectionality and climate change studies. I think Wood & Water‘s approach has helped ground this challenge and develop a personalised critical thinking path that’s empowering.

It’s just a beginning, but it looks promising.

Global Game Jam 2024

The Global Game Jam 2024 had a theme called ‘Make Me Laugh’. We made at least 4 games in 6 hours, mostly about how to make people fall over or including falling over in the games, as most of the participants said that seeing people falling over make them laugh.

1. Intergalactic Girl

This is a game that I made with Kate Bancroft, Library Adviser at Roehampton University. We started brainstorming by going through some Sainsbury’s Disney cards, which are very useful tools for creative activities (see below). We also identified that we’d like to make a Twine game. We got some inspirations from interactive games such as Her Story. Here’s the prototype.

Sainsbury’s Disney Cards are very useful for brainstorming.

2. Pretzel or Lederhosen? (a card game)

With Kate Bancroft and Abhishek Tiwari , we used Sainsbury’s Disney Lego cards to pilot a card game. This is a 2 players game – one person is the main player, the other is the narrator/game master.

The main player will choose their character, Sam or Daredevil, to go on an adventure to see their choice of character: Pretzel Girl or Lederhosen Guy.

To reach their destination, they will be travelling in four different modes: walking, tractor, water scooter, and helicopter.

In each mode, they will have 2 obstacles to face, but can also receive help.

To determine if they’ll be challenged or to get help, they have to pick one of the 3 cards at random. If they pick a help card, they can go straight to the next mode of transport. However, if they receive an obstacle card, they must choose between another 3 cards:

• Hula Lula – sing
• Kitty Pop – play air guitar
• Caterpillar – fall over!
• Rainforest Frog – froggy jump

The detailed instructions can be downloaded here.

The set-up for the physical card game ‘Pretzel or Lederhosen? ~~ Your adventure, your choice! ~~

3. A pom pom blowing game

A team led by Helen Savage developed this ‘pom pom blowing’ game. Blowing Pom Pom has been reported to be good for toddlers to build their speech muscles. In this case, it’s a game that’s designated to make people laugh.

This game can be played by 2 or more people. The materials you need are some craft supplies:

1. pom pom balls of different colours;
2. pipe cleaners of different colours to make a ring / an area;
3. straws.

Players are given 60 seconds; the more pom pom balls one can blow into the ring will win.

Brainstorming the pom pom blowing game

4. Blindfold Maze (Trust Walk)

Another physical game that the students “made” during #GGJ24 is ”Blindfold Maze (Trust Walk)’, essentially guiding blindfolded people to go from A to B. This is a popular teambuilding activity, and it’ll make people laugh.

You need four players (2 teams). In each team, one player is blindfolded and the other verbally guide them to avoid the obstacles on the way from A to B. The first team to reach the destination wins. (Risk assessment is needed to play this game).

Two blindfolded players ready to go on a test trial run.

In conclusion, we had a fun day packed with actions. Four (or more) games designed, made and played on #GGJ24. #RoeGGJ

Thinking Place

This term, we are working with the Alton Estate in Roehampton to design communication materials for engaging young residents on the Estate in the consultation process of the regeneration of the Alton Activity Play Centre.

But how do we conceptualise and define a place like ‘the Alton Estate’? Or the Alton Activity Play Centre’? What role does ‘community’ play in a design process and indeed, what do we mean by ‘community’? These are some of the key questions that the module ‘Design and Community‘ explores.

The current exhibition ‘Thinking Place’ by Dr Mark Riley provides some inspiration. ‘Thinking Place’ is an exhibition about five philosophers huts; it’s about how small, inconspicuous places contributed to the development of some of the world’s important theories and philosophies.

We are grateful that Dr Mark Riley gave us a guided tour to his exhibition at the Sir David Bell Building at Roehampton University. The exhibition is aesthetically attractive and deeply meaningful. It helped re-think the meanings of a place, such as the Alton Activity Play Centre. Perhaps one day the Alton Activity Play Centre will be mentioned in history as a cradle for making one of the world’s leading figures.

Real Life Datafied

As we delve into the topic ‘datafication’ and ‘the datafied society’, I asked the students to think about how their daily activities were datafied. In addition to transactional data, some also went poetic and philosophical to suggest dairies and tattoos were data about real life. Quite true.

The results of the mid-term module evaluation survey for the Level 5 ‘Digital Cultures’ are now available. I’m so glad to hear the positive feedback. They make me feel that teaching in HE is a rewarding job and my expertise and effort is appreciated. Thank you, my lovely students 🙂

“I particarly like the real life examples used to show the off the content. They are up to date, and recent events that have happened. This is refreshing to see, espically because we are doing a media course and there is so many examples out today. One example of this was the mentioning of the Liver King and his scandal. And the documentary about the girl who faked having cancer.“

“I enjoy how the lectures are mixed with discussions and games (like Kahoot) to test our understanding and keep us engaged. I like that we have access to the slides so that we can take notes and make sure we do not miss something.“

“I think the links to different videos and websites on the powerpoint are really engaging. Also the debates when we’re split into groups and have to argue for or against a point that links to the work we’re doing in that class. The cahoot games are also very engaging as they test us on the knowledge and make us think.“

“I like how organized the class is. It follows the slides posted and is easy to follow along. Each week it begins with explaining what we will be talking about which I like knowing at the beginning of the class. Overall very well organized.“

“I really enjoy how all the course is going so far. How the teacher explain every session is very good and it’s so nice that we can have some interactive activities that complement what we are doing in class.”

Students drawing how their daily activities are datafied in class.

Autumn leaves

I like bringing little creative activities into classroom to encourage visual thinking and creative thinking. Last week, the students on the ‘Design and Community‘ module were asked to go and collect some autumn leaves on campus. In the classroom, we used these natural materials to build and decorate animal figures. This little exercise helped introduce the concept ‘texture‘ in design. One of the students said in the mid-term module feedback: “I like how engaging the class is like playing mini games and how interactive it is. It makes me understand the content more which I like.“

#EyeOnTAMK23 #AI Game Jam (Day 3)

Results! We have successfully made 5 playable games at the end of the 3-day game jam.

AI Dilemmas

Now-Next about AI

SurvAIval – The Game

The Human Image Generator

Can you guess what this is?

Man Lizard Strike (A Twine Game)

Testing the game.

QR code for the Man Lizard Strike game.

So proud of all participants in this game jam. So dedicated, engaged, open-minded. They have demonstrated excellent teamworking skills, being creative as well as critical. Who says AI is going to replace humans one day?

#reconnecting #EYEONTAMK #EYEONTAMK23 #TAMK #TAMKinternational #GameJam #CriticalAI #MozFest

#TAMKInternational 2023 (Game Jam Day 2)

I’m facilitating a 3-day game jam at the EYE on TAMK International Week 2023 on the Mediapolis Campus.

A performative warm-up was the best way to wake people up on a snowy day. So we started with a physical warm-up – musical statue. We danced with Finland’s folk song, Finnish 2008 Eurovision entry performed by Teräsbetoni and Lordi‘s song.

We made an impossible object collaboratively – a cup-shaped cupboard box for transporting cakes and liquid (soup / coffee). We discussed if generative AI could come up with the same idea, testing the claims that text-to-image AI generators are faster in creating ideas.

We found that Crayon / DALLE2 / Stable Diffusion returned some images of cup cakes in less than 50 seconds but the results were hardly accurate, far from what we imagined. We changed our prompts to ‘cup-shaped moving boxes filled with cakes and coffee’ but again Stable Diffusion provided the images of boxes filled with cakes (even with the prompts ‘ball-shaped containers filled with cakes and coffee’). We found that human intelligence is unlimited and we can combine ideas quicker and more fluidly (perhaps I’m being biased here).

A sketch of the cup-shaped container for cakes and tea/coffee

Images generated by ‘Stable Diffusion Playground‘ with the prompt ‘ball-shaped container filled with cakes and coffee’

A list of positive and negative adjectives associated with AI

A list of positive and negative adjectives associated with AI

A list of positive and negative adjectives associated with AI

A list of positive and negative adjectives associated with AI

We turned our critical discussion into interactive games, and we did Alpha testing.

At the end of Day 2, we walked away with ideas about how to improve our games on the next day. A sense of directions.

#reconnecting #EYEONTAMK #EYEONTAMK23 #TAMK #TAMKinternational

EYE on TAMK 2023 (Game Jam Day 1)

Back to Tampere in Finland for the sixth time, for my first Erasmus staff exchange after the Covid19 pandemic. It is a lot more expensive to travel due to the increased airfares and cost of living. Strikes are happening in Finland (rail workers striking) and in the UK (security at Heathrow airport on strike. But here I am, facilitating a 3-day game jam for the TAMK International Week 2023.

Mediapolis on Tuesday 21st March 2023.

The theme of the game jam is related to my current research on the impacts of AI in creative industries (including the news sector). The purpose of the game is to engage in the debates about and raise awareness of the implementation of AI in creative industries through gamification, but ultimately it’s about teamwork and having fun.

Over three days, we have six very dedicated participants, creating a variety of different games.

On each day we kicked off with some creative warm-ups, then linked the creative outputs with discussion on challenges of AI.

Brainstorming, comparing hand-drawn self-portrait with computer-generated images.

We made Twine games that conceptualise challenges of AI in the storylines. Martin and Tibor came up with a story about Black Widow who was half-human and half-AI; Dome and Chase and Aki’s game featured Joe the carpenter who used AI to create building plans and operate 3D printing; Klaudia and Mika’s game is about Hector the skeleton and a lizard man who used AI to come back to life and regenerate endlessly (immortality).

At the end of Day 1, we walked away with ideas and ambitions about what to make on the following days.

#reconnecting #EYEONTAMK #TAMK #TAMKinternational

Making a game using plastic wastes

I have created a physical educational game using recycled materials suitable for young children (age 4+).

The game is similar to necklace or bracelet making using beads. It is a type of concentration game for improving children’s focus and attention.

Essentially, it is to use a string or a broken elastic band to piece as many Nissin’s Pot Soba Noodles cup covers together as possible, and as fast as possible. It’s also good for improving fine motor movement.

I’m so glad that I found a creative purpose for these plastic wastes. It’s fun and environmental. Now I only have to give the game a cool name for marketing. Any ideas?