Anastasiast

Interdisciplinary skills

Technology

• Unity / C#
• Python
• Javascript
• Processing
• HTML / CSS
• Arduino
• Swift
• P5.JS
• AI
• VR

Design

• Game Design
• Experience Design
• Documentation
• Facilitation
• Wireframes
• Digital Art

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Workshops & Talks

VR DSS Clubhouse Experience

Responsibilities

• Development
• Game Design
• Experience design
• Scripting
• Rapid prototyping
• Facilitation

Concept

At the Digital Society School, creative technologists are encouraged to experiment with new tools and technologies. In this spirit, a colleague and I organised Creative Tech Jam Week, a week-long initiative designed to foster rapid learning and innovation. Each participant selected a technology to explore and developed a project from scratch using that tool.For my project, I chose VR development with Unity, building on my previous training and using this opportunity to expand my skills in Unity and 3D application development.The week was structured to maximise collaboration, inspiration, and creativity. We used a Kanban board to organise tasks, held daily stand-ups to plan our work, and ended each day with demonstrations to share progress and collect feedback. Collaboration played a key role, allowing us to learn from one another and continuously improve our projects throughout the week.

The project followed two main requirements:1. Theme: Waste
2. Alignment with DSS’s missionI decided to recreate the recycling system at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, where confusion often occurred despite the bin labels. To address this, I developed a playful, interactive VR experience designed to teach users how to sort waste correctly according to that system.

The prototype replicated the Digital Society School’s clubhouse in 3D, allowing users to explore the space they are already familiar with, collect scattered waste, and sort it into the correct bins in the kitchen. Turning here the recycling activity into a hands-on experience.By the end of the week, I had developed a functional VR prototype testable on the Oculus Quest 2, which met the project goals and gave me my first opportunity to explore Unity’s potential for Extended Reality (XR) development.

Methodology

Time: We had just under four days to come up with an idea, learn the chosen technology, sketch design concepts, and prototype something ready for testing and presentation.Rapid Prototyping: The goal was to bring ideas to life quickly and effectively, even if they weren’t perfectly polished. If the core experience was captured, the goal was met.Intuitiveness: A key focus for my project was making the experience feel natural and intuitive. I wanted to explore how XR technologies can turn a simple concept, like proper recycling according to the HvA’s in-house rules, into a tangible learning experience.To avoid motion sickness, I used teleportation for movement. Players could move by holding, pointing, and releasing, though this sometimes felt disorienting for some testers. They could also walk short distances physically within the set boundaries of the space.

Impact: Success was measured by whether the experience helped someone learn something new. For example, one tester mentioned, “I thought pizza boxes belonged in paper and cardboard, but I learnt that because of the oil stains, they should go elsewhere.” That alone made the project worthwhile.Structure: We kept the process structured and motivating by holding morning stand-ups to plan our day and evening demonstrations to share progress. This provided space for feedback, reflection, and inspiration.

Technologies

I used Unity and C# for scripting, along with the XR Interaction Toolkit. I followed Unity’s official documentation and learning resources to get started with the toolkit. Thanks to my previous experience with Unity, applying these concepts came quite naturally.

Assets were sourced from the Unity Asset Store or created directly in Unity using a combination of 3D objects and prefabs. To recreate the textures and posters from the DSS clubhouse, I took high-quality photos around the office and turned them into materials applied to the 3D objects in-game.For sound design, I recorded ambient audio from the space to recreate its atmosphere within Unity.

Prototype

I began with a simple room provided in Unity’s learning pathways to test basic interactions. I then created basic assets for bins and waste items to ensure the core mechanic placing waste in the correct bin worked properly.Next, I added different categories of waste and bins to detect correct or incorrect sorting and scripted the item’s behaviour when thrown into the bin.

Finally, I recreated the look and feel of the DSS clubhouse, with a very common situation: Cleaning up the space after an Alum’Night event.

When the game shows the player

Responsibilities

• Game Design
• Experience design
• Rapid prototyping
• Academic research
• Academic writing

• Research paper link

Concept

In recent years, games have shown a potential for personality assessment, becoming a new way to develop or assess specific traits in addition to regular assessment methods, such as questionnaires and tests, for example.This research focuses on a game which is designed to investigate leadership in a group context. This paper discusses leadership in society, the potential of serious games for leadership assessment and leadership behaviours in games.

A framework of leadership traits and behaviours is defined, and through an iterative and qualitative design process inspired by design science, the game is designed, prototyped and tested with participants. In total, 6 prototypes have been run where the behaviours of each player have been observed based on the framework of traits.Additional assessment tools such as self evaluation questionnaires are also implemented in some prototypes. Observations show how the game allows an external observer to assess leadership potential for each team.Results also show that some traits, such as conflict or stress management, seem to be more complex to distinguish among the players, whereas traits such as communication seem to be the most shown traits of all. It also shows how the group dynamic and players behaviours can be impacted by the team composition rather than by the game design itself.

Finally, the limitations and the potential of games for leadership assessment are discussed, as well as directions for future research or what questions it raises when it comes to how games can be used for leadership assessment.

Narrative

Players are an emergency team part of a spy agency gathered to help agent DEXTER complete his mission of sabotaging Lexaxis Corporation in time. They are put in contact with DEXTER through the game and have access to confidential files with the mission information. However, this mission was failed in the past because of erroneous or contradictory information. The players are required to determine what is useful and what is false.

Impact: Success was measured by whether the experience helped someone learn something new. For example, one tester mentioned, “I thought pizza boxes belonged in paper and cardboard, but I learnt that because of the oil stains, they should go elsewhere.” That alone made the project worthwhile.Structure: We kept the process structured and motivating by holding morning stand-ups to plan our day and evening demonstrations to share progress. This provided space for feedback, reflection, and inspiration.

Technologies

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Ontwikkelruimte

Responsibilities

• Development
• UX Design
• Rapid prototyping
• User testing
• Concept sketches
• Client relations

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