Researchers led by Northeastern faculty members Casper Harteveld and Giovanni Troiano are working to understand and speculate around the future of society after (or with) COVID-19 in collaboration with Matthew Wood from the University of the West of England. They are currently conducting a gamified story completion method study that challenges participants to imagine what the world will look like post-COVID. It will examine impressions and understandings around how society will be affected and impacted by this pandemic in the future – including the availability of resources, human-to-human relationship, and technological progress.

The story completion game is about the life of an individual who lives in a post-COVID world. Throughout the game, participants will be asked to write stories that speculate about what this individual does, sees, and feels in this post-COVID environment. To participate in the study, click here.

The researchers, graduates from CAMD’s Master of Science (MS) in Game Science and Design program, are Mustafa Feyyaz Sonbudak and Riddhi Padte. They are focused on applying speculative design to the scientific understanding of social phenomena. This particular study is part of their larger StudyCrafter COVID-19 Community Effort, which aims to educate the public about COVID-19 and gain a better understanding of how the public views the outbreak.

StudyCrafter is a free and playful platform where users can create, play, and share research projects to advance our understanding of human behavior together. The platform is developed and maintained by the Northeastern Game Studio at Northeastern University, and has received financial support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. See the credits for more information about the team behind StudyCrafter.