Ben Schouten and his work focus on play and design for social innovations, citizen empowerment and culture. He has worked as a Full Professor of Playful Interactions in Smart Environments at Eindhoven University of Technology and as Lector of Play & Civic Media Research at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences as well as a lecturer at the Utrecht School of Art and Technology (HKU) in Interaction Design and Gaming.
After graduating from the Rietveld Art Academy in 1983 he proceeded and received a Master’s degree in mathematics, specialising in chaos theory. In 2001 his PhD thesis was acknowledged with a Bronze World Medal for Design in the New Media category, sub-category Information and Education, in New York, USA.
Project
Boek presentatie, 18 January, 20.00. Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam: The Civic Empowerment Toolbox, Action design for Urban Futures.
Publication
The Civic Empowerment Toolbox is out !
Project
– The Role of Play in Participatory Society -Symposium December 2th 2022
Project
Smart Technologies Empowered Citizens (STEC)
STEC focuses on how to use design to empower citizens so that they are able to act and choose for themselves in a series of different domains. By doing so, STEC adds to the growing body of research and examples of citizens shaping their own lives, using what might be called civic media.
Artwork
Artwork
This art installation presents the results of a fictional search request on a dating site. The results are presented in a series of real-time auto-generated portraits consisting of multiple faces, presenting a fractal image.
Project
Smart Playsets
That games can motivate players is well known, but that in fact, serious games can motivate children to therapy adherence is not that familiar. In this design project we offered storylines and interaction so attractive that children often forgot that they are in fact doing exercises.