Background: Innovative technologies such as game consoles and smart toys used with games or playful approaches have proven to be successful and attractive in providing effective and motivating hand therapy for children with cerebral palsy (CP). Thus, there is an increased interest in designing and implementing interventions that can improve the well-being of these children. However, to understand how and why these interventions are motivating children, we need a better understanding of the playful elements of technology-supported hand therapy.Objective: This scoping review aims to identify the playful elements and the innovative technologies currently used in hand therapy for children with CP.Methods: We included studies that design or evaluate interventions for children with CP that use innovative technologies with game or play strategies. Data were extracted and analyzed based on the type of technology, description of the system, and playful elements according to the Lenses of Play, a play design toolkit. A total of 31 studies were included in the analysis.Results: Overall, 54 papers were included in the analysis. The results showed high use of consumer technologies in hand therapy for children with CP. Although several studies have used a combination of consumer technologies with therapeutic-specific technologies, only a few studies focused on the exclusive use of therapeutic-specific technologies. To analyze the playfulness of these interventions that make use of innovative technologies, we focused our review on 3 lenses of play: Open-ended Play, where it was found that the characteristics of ludus, such as a structured form of play and defined goals and rules, were the most common, whereas strategies that relate to paidia were less common. The most commonly used Forms of Play were physical or active form and games with rules. Finally, the most popular Playful experiences were control, challenge, and competition.Conclusions: The inventory and analysis of innovative technology and playful elements provided in this study can be a starting point for new developments of fun and engaging tools to assist hand therapy for children with CP.
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The implementation of games in architecture and urban planning has a long history since the 1960s and is still a preferential tool to foster public participation and address contemporary spatial-and social-conflicts within the urban fabric. Moreover, in the last decade, we have seen the rise of urban play as a tool for community building, and city-making and Western society is actively focusing on play/playfulness-together with ludic dynamics and mechanics-as an applied methodology to deal with complex challenges, and deeper comprehend emergent situations. In this paper, we aim to initiate a dialogue between game scholars and architects through the use of the PLEX/CIVIC framework. Like many creative professions, we believe that architectural practice may benefit significantly from having more design methodologies at hand, thus improving lateral thinking. We aim at providing new conceptual and operative tools to discuss and reflect on how games facilitate long-Term planning processes and help to solve migration issues, allowing citizens themselves to take their responsibility and contribute to durable solutions.
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