Augmented Social Play is a new kind of experience for young people, supporting their social wellbeing and sense of belonging. Our smartphone-facilitated, face-to-face collaborative experiences combine immersive storytelling, contemporary technology and evidence-based psychology. We are developing this pioneering new format for use in schools and other settings to boost young people’s mental health by fostering a greater sense of belonging and connectedness.
We established the feasibility of Augmented Social Play through our award-winning prototype LINA (2022). Now, in a Horizon Europe-funded work programme (2023-2027) we are developing unalone (working title), our first full Augmented Social Play experience for early adolescents, for widescale adoption in schools around the world. The work involves 11 partner organisations across 6 countries ranging from universities to tech to arts organisations. Meanwhile we are exploring further uses of Augmented Social Play, and advocating for the importance of social wellbeing and sense of belonging in schools.
LINA won Best New Game In Development at the International Educational Games Competition 2022.
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Our proof-of-concept for Augmented Social Play, LINA, is an augmented reality smartphone experience played by an entire class (aged 10-13) with their teacher. It was developed as part of D.O.T., a four-year international, interdisciplinary project that investigated how arts-informed digital interventions might strengthen adolescents’ social connections.
In LINA, players are members of a fictional class, from which Lina has suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Gameplay involves solving the mystery of where Lina has gone, and why. Players use augmented reality to explore their classroom, discovering clues to the mystery in the form of artefacts left behind by Lina. Players are steered together by the game for in-person collaboration, information exchange and puzzle-solving, as they unlock the story of a classmate, affected by mental ill-health, that no-one truly saw.
LINA was developed through interdisciplinary collaboration involving a playwright, software developers, psychologists and artists, via consultation with both adolescent and adult experts. Proof-of-concept testing with 10-13 year olds demonstrated high acceptability and feasibility, and positive effect on class climate.
Originally a single-session prototype, LINA is now evolving into a fully developed, multi-session experience with expanded psychotherapeutic components, seamless technical flow, and deeper engagement. This next-level version of LINA will immerse classes in sustained, compelling activities that enhance belonging and boost mental health – all without external facilitation.
Our four-year, Horizon Europe-funded project (2023-2027) will develop unalone (working title), the first full-scale Augmented Social Play intervention, to the point of readiness for widescale deployment in schools globally. It will be implemented on the basis of a six-nation policy review and stakeholder consultation, and rigorously evaluated across the 2025-2026 school year in Czechia, Portugal and the UK to provide the evidence policy makers and practitioners need for wide-scale adoption.
Meanwhile, we will further evolve the technology through extended collaboration with adolescents facing diverse challenges to ensure Augmented Social Play can meet the widest spectrum of needs and threats to mental health and sense of belonging. Our long-term goal is the wide-scale adoption of ASP, making multiple smartphone-delivered group interventions accessible in a diverse range of populations and setting.
Our project spans multiple academic disciplines and both technology and creative industries, with an emphatically stakeholder-collaborative approach.
newsletter
What are the ethical challenges in developing digital mental health games for young people? Our new review explores how researchers have addressed or not addressed ethical issues in existing gamified interventions.
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newsletter
In our project, we regularly consult young people to understand their opinions, interests, and preferences. We asked our colleagues from the Unicorn Theatre to share their thoughts on working with 10 amazing young people who have provided invaluable input to our work over the past year.
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newsletter
What stands for ‘ASP’ and why do we care so much about belonging? Adam Barnard, our creative lead, explains a concept of Augmented Social Play (ASP) and shows an example of our first ASP called ‘Lina’ that engages a whole class in a mystery solving game.
Read moreOur team comprises 11 partner organisations across 6 countries, including universities and both technology and creative industries.
Based in the School of Psychology, Kate Woodcock leads the team here, which includes Tamanna Malhotra, Nyareso Mokaya, and Valeria Motta. The team is responsible for the scientific coordination of the ASP-belong project; work with psychologists to support the therapeutic capacity of unalone; the aspects of the unalone evaluation that will allow us to produce toolkits for implementing unalone in schools across Europe, and advance our theoretical model of ASP-mediated change; and work with adolescents to create new development routes for ASP that support marginalised adolescents. Kate is also working with Claudia Schwarz at Karl Landsteiner University to lead the 6-nation policy review and stakeholder consultation.
Masaryk University acts as an administrative coordinator of the whole consortium and focuses on co-development around UX. It enriches the project with the expertise of teams led by Simone Kriglstein, specializing in interface and interaction design, and Alžběta Šašinková, an educational designer focusing on immersive technology and research psychology practice.
Prof Victoria Bird is director of the Unit for Social & Community at QMUL and is the lead member for Work Package 3. Together with senior statistician Prof Beth Stuart and Health Economist Dr Yan Feng, they combine their expertise in cluster randomised controlled trials to contribute to the development and delivery of the ASP#1 trial, to test the effectiveness of the intervention in school settings across the UK, Portugal and Czechia. Their work is supported by the trial manager, Dr Philip McNamee.
Led by Prof. Giovanni Rubeis, the Division Biomedical and Public Health Ethics, Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, Krems, Austria, researches ethical issues linked to the digital transformation of the healthcare sector. For Augmented Social Play, Wanda Spahl creates an ethical framework for developing and implementing gamified digital mental health interventions. She is a social scientist working on digitalisation, health and migration, with expertise in qualitative methods, ethics and artistic research. Moreover, Dr. Claudia Schwarz works to build a knowledge base around mental health priorities for adolescents and intervention policy and practice in six countries. Claudia is a sociologist of science and technology by training, with additional expertise in ethics, psychotherapy, and activism. Her research currently mainly revolves around the ethics and politics of mental health innovations and scientific fields.
Associate Professor Laura K. Taylor (Helping Kids! Lab, University College DublinSchool of Psychology) is team lead for Work Package 5, which focuses on the dissemination of ASPbelong to relevant stakeholder groups across the United Kingdom, Portugal, Czechia, Ireland, Austria and Norway. Together with team member Méabh Finnegan, s responsible for mapping key stakeholders relevant to the project, empirically testing the most effective messages to combat perceived barriers to the implementation of ASP-belong, and assessing and measuring the effects of various dissemination efforts. The UCD team have expertise in social, developmental, health and cultural psychology.
ATV is a non-profit public utility association, founded in 1995, in Portugal (Torres Vedras). It currently has around 400 members and it is considered a reference in strengthening participatory citizenship. The main motto of ATV is to contribute, together with the whole community, to the preservation of the interest for social, cultural, sports, scientific, environmental, leisure and youth activities. ATV has produced extensive research in the field of educational psychology since 2011, through the Positive Attitude team. Vítor Alexandre Coelho leads the team here, which includes Marta Marchante, Patrícia Brás and Patrícia Ribeiro Silva.
Scientific Coordinator – Dr Kate Woodcock, University of Birmingham
Non-Academic Lead – Adam Barnard
Horizon Administrative Coordinator – Dr Alžběta Šašinková, Masaryk University
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This work is co-funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant numbers 10076369, 10077956, 10079657, 10083622, tbc].
This work is co-funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee. Grant numbers: 10077933 (University of Birmingham), 10076369 (Make Real), 10077956 (The Unicorn Theater), 10079657 (Queen Mary University of London), 10083622 (Adam Barnard).