Two Playful Living Lab projects take part in Barcelona Design Week
From 23 to 25 October, two projects linked to the [Playful Living Lab] at L’Escola Universitària ERAM were part of Underground BDW, a collective exhibition held as part of Barcelona Design Week, bringing together experimental proposals around art, design, technology and sustainability.
The exhibition, held at Parking Gallery by LCI Barcelona, brought together projects from creative studios, universities, art and design schools, and companies in a space dedicated to exploring new ways of understanding the relationship between technology, people and their environment.
- Seand: a new way of connecting with the sea
One of the projects presented was an evolution of the Final Degree Project (TFG) by Abril Alum, a student of the Bachelor’s Degree in Audiovisual and Multimedia Communication, which explores how technology can help create emotional connections between people and the oceans.
The proposal takes the form of an interactive installation that allows users to “talk to the sea”: writing messages in the sand and receiving symbolic responses from the ocean. The project builds on research into how interaction design can foster a more emotional and meaningful relationship with marine ecosystems.
This research was also presented as a scientific poster at the ACM CHI 2026 conference, one of the leading international conferences on human-computer interaction research. Taking part in Barcelona Design Week has allowed the research to be further developed into an interactive experience open to the public.
- Exploring research into technology and nature
The second project presented was an installation developed by the Playful Living Lab as part of the research conducted by Ferran Altarriba into interactive technologies for forests.
The project involved students Maria Llop, during her internship, and Núria Jordán, as part of the Multimedia Technologies II and Complementary Seminars courses, as well as other students from the Bachelor’s Degree.
The installation offers an interactive and immersive way of exploring the documentation generated during a research study by the lab into the design of technologies that can encourage more playful and respectful interactions between people and nature.
The research was developed during a month-long backpacking experience in which the researcher interacted with more than 200 hikers from over 35 nationalities, documenting these experiences through drawings, texts, photographs, videos, reflective notes and Instagram content.
The project had previously been presented at the ACM DIS scientific conference in the United States in 2023, and at the [International Student Film Festival Sehsüchte] in Germany in 2026. Its participation in Underground BDW has brought the research into a new exhibition context and helped make it accessible to a wider audience.
The participation of both projects in Barcelona Design Week highlights the research carried out by the Playful Living Lab and ERAM students’ involvement in projects that bring together design, technology, research and sustainability. Both installations attracted considerable interest from visitors and sparked conversations that contribute to advancing research into the design of playful technologies for natural environments.
These experiences also strengthen ERAM’s position as an international reference centre in this field and reinforce its commitment to research and innovation, which will continue with the launch of a new master in interaction design next academic year.
