Hei-Lab Studio

Influenza: a BoardGame

The INFLUENZA boardgame was designed and produced at MovLab as a game design study on whether narrative elements — namely creating a cast of characters to ‘humanize’ a game’s depiction of a community under threat by epidemics — is relevant for board games against vaccine hesitancy. The cast of character’s reflects the local context of the target population for vaccine-education, in that they reflect the demographic makeup of the 2011 Portuguese national census. The cast of characters is highly-central to how INFLUENZA works as a game, but is also readily adaptable to other contexts without breaking the game, potentially making INFLUENZA a vaccination-education intervention that can be readily adapted to local contexts without losing effectiveness.

A first production version of the INFLUENZA game is ready, and preliminary testing has already concluded. Moving forward in research in INFLUENZA means measuring empathy and affect resulting from the design choice to add a cast of characters and its influence on the game’s ability to impart computational thinking and educate for vaccination.

Systemic Lisbon Battery

The Systemic Lisbon Battery (SLB) is a virtual reality/serious games platform that consists of a multipurpose environment for cognitive assessment and training. This environment consists of a virtual town including several buildings, a 2-room apartment, and several commercial spaces in the vicinity. The specific purpose of each session is determined by its objective as being for cognitive assessment or cognitive training. The participants are able to move freely around and to grab and interact with objects to perform specific everyday activities. The platform was developed using Unity 3D.

Windows

Browser

Carlos Relvas VR Studio

This is a virtual reality installation that allows an immersive visit to the first photographic studio of one of the Portuguese photography pioneers, Carlos Relvas (1838-1894), enabling interaction with his stereoscopic cards, a paramount example of his early photographs. Users will be able to choose and see in 3D each of the cards, to observe captions and labels in the backs, as well as to listen to a soundscape recorded exactly at the same place where the studio was once located, in Golegã, the hometown of Carlos Relvas.

Learn More

Psychology Experiential Museum

Conformism
This application aims to replicate the classic experiment in Psychology – Social Conformism (Asch, 1951) and add new experimental conditions to study the role of the threat of contagion of a disease on conformity behaviour (Murray & Schaller, 2011). This study also aims to develop and make available innovative and interactive pedagogical tools representative of this experiment. The project Hei-Lab Studio: Virtual Museum was recognized with the Fazer +
Award "Good Research Practices in Education" (https://www.ulusofona.pt/noticias/fazer-mais-lusofona-apoia-ciencia-inovacao).

Dissonance
This study aims to replicate in digital context the classic experiment of the Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957), and in parallel, to develop and make available innovative and interactive pedagogical tools representative of this experiment. The project Hei-Lab Studio: Virtual Museum was recognized with the Fazer + Award "Good Research Practices in Education" (https://www.ulusofona.pt/noticias/fazer-mais-lusofona-apoia-ciencia-inovacao).

Lady in Distress
Digital adaptation of ‘Lady in distress’ (Latané & Rodin, 1969), which is one of the most influential experiments in Psychology. This scenario offers an opportunity to examine bystander-effect in a three-dimensional, immersive, and multi-sensorial environment, where users witness a simulated emergency (an avatar falls). This app could be used to examine the user’s actions (i.e., likelihood to help the victim) while creating variations in the environment (e.g., number of passive bystanders).

Inattentional blindness
Digital adaptation of 'Inattentional blindness' study by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999).