Connectopia: A Modular Board Game Simulating Digital Interfaces to Assist Refugee and Asylum Seeker Integration

Abstract

Interactive technologies play an increasingly vital role in the integration processes for refugees and asylum seekers, but a lack of familiarity makes their use challenging and stressful. We aimed to create an artefact that could help migrant centres provide better digital-skills education to refugees while using playful and social design elements. Interviews with staff members at UK migrant centres were processed in a thematic analysis, revealing a high demand for help with integration-related digital tasks among refugees. This led to our creation of Connectopia, a two-player, competitive boardgame that uses modular components, an internal microcontroller and multimodal feedback to playfully emulate interfaces such as government portals and email. We created a low-fidelity prototype, which allowed us to perform user testing and a heuristic evaluation. The final design expands on the original by including multimodal feedback (haptic, visual, and auditory) to communicate success or failure at tasks. Connectopia can be expanded to simulate a variety of interfaces and provide playful education in refugee and migrant centres, in both social and structured educational contexts.