Hei-Lab Studio

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.