Guest talk by Dr. Ilaria Mariani, an expert in Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs), game design, and AI-enhanced public sector innovation.
Speaker Bio
As an Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Dr. Mariani has spent the past ten years developing and refining a pedagogical model that leverages IDNs as catalysts for social change. She will share insights from a decade of experimentation, assessment, and transdisciplinary collaboration, exploring the opportunities and challenges in designing interactive systems that engage with and reshape societal narratives.
Talk abstract
This presentation marks the tenth anniversary of a pedagogical model developed in a design course, focusing on crafting IDNs as catalysts for social change. Over the last decade, this model has been refined through continuous iterative processes within higher education settings. We discuss the specific features of this approach, which integrates transdisciplinary methods and practical tools to design IDNs as complex interactive systems that engage with and potentially alter societal narratives. The talk will highlight the evolution of our educational practices and methodologies, and present the lessons learned through ten years of application, experimentation, and continuous assessment. We will explore insight into the systematic design process that puts together theoretical underpinnings and operational strategies to support the creation of IDNs for social change, sharing key opportunities and challenges from our extensive empirical study.
Related publication: Design for Narrative Change. A Pedagogical Model for Interactive Digital Narratives – Mariani, Ciancia –2023 – International Journal of Art & Design Education