Gameful Futures Lab
Where play and games shape posthuman possibilities.
About the Research Group
The Gameful Futures Lab explores alternative futures through games and play, using design‑oriented methods that bridge theory and practice.
Our research fuses embodied technologies, posthuman interaction, artificial agencies, and multispecies relations into applied projects in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, wearables, robotics, transhumanism, and gameful environments such as forests.
Examples of Our Work
VirtuFashion: A Fashion Accessory Bridging Physical Body and the Virtual Avatars
Timeline: 01/2024-08/2026
The core objective of VirtuFashion is to design playful, fashion‑tech wearables that blend tangible materials with digital capabilities such as sensors, haptic feedback, and augmented‑reality integration. By doing so, the project aims to transform how people experience clothing, turning garments and accessories into interactive interfaces that respond to both real‑world actions and virtual contexts .
VirtuFashion is a research-to-business project led by Oguz ‘Oz’ Buruk as the Principal Investigator and Shiva Jabari as the Project Manager, with Adas Slezas as the VR and Technology Expert and Beste Demircan as the Virtual Fashion Designer. The project started in January 2024 and is scheduled for completion by the end of August 2026. Backed by a grant from Business Finland, the initiative seeks to create “hybrid fashion accessories” that act as bridges between the physical world and virtual environments, allowing users to express their identities across both realms.
UNITE: Forest-Human-Machine Interplay – Building Resilience, Redefining Value Networks and Enabling Meaningful Experience
Timeline: 2023–2028+
UNITE Flagship, backed by the Research Council of Finland, unites forest science, geospatial tech and gamification to build a climate‑smart biosociety—as “Forest‑Human‑Machine Interplay”. The flagship creates high‑resolution forest maps, decision‑support models and interactive “gameful” tools for sustainable management.
PLAY-BIO: Designing Playful More-than-Human Relations with Biomaterials
Timeline: 2024–2028
PLAY-BIO explores how to design playful experiences that can foster more-than-human relations such as care and kinship with everyday biomaterials such as bacteria, mushroom and plants. Instead of treating them as resources, the project investigates play potentials through Research-through-Design methods to position living materials as companions in daily life. Funded by the Research Council of Finland Fellowship and led by Dr. Çağlar Genç, PLAY-BIO develops playful prototypes, everyday life deployments and a design framework to inspire more joyful, caring and sustainable ways of coexisting with living materials.
Funded by the Research Council of Finland as an Academy Fellowship project.
Our People
Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk
Group Leader
Assistant Professor of Gameful Experience
Oz is an Assistant Professor of Gameful Experience at Tampere University, where he directs the Gameful Futures Lab and explores how play might shape our posthuman tomorrows, ideally in ways that do not alarm the robots. His work blends speculative design, gameful interaction, and a curiosity that runs from cyborg futures to computational fashion, with research appearing in venues like CHI and DIS. He also co‑authored the MIT Press book Playful Wearables, turning years of tinkering with body‑worn tech into something marginally more organized.
✉️ oguz.buruk@tuni.fi
🔗 TUNI ● X ● BlueSky ● Personal Website ● Google Scholar
Çağlar Genç
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Çağlar is an Academy Researcher, using speculative and research‑through‑design approaches to explore non‑human companions, biomaterial play, and wearable technologies that broaden design beyond the human.
✉️ genc.caglar@tuni.fi
🔗 Google Scholar ● LinkedIn ● Play-Bio Project Website ● Personal Website ● Instagram
Jiangnan Xu
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Jiangnan is a post‑doctoral researcher who studies immersive and intelligent technologies—specifically XR and generative AI—and how they mediate people’s perception, creation, and interaction within digital‑physical hybrid spaces.
✉️ jiangnan.xu@tuni.fi
🔗 Personal Website ● Google Scholar ● LinkedIn
Iuliia Avgustis
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Iuliia researches at the overlap of HCI, sociology, and linguistics to study technology-mediated social interaction within the UNITE flagship and a Kone Foundation‑funded project on neurodivergent smartphone use.
✉️ iuliia.avgustis@tuni.fi
🔗 Google Scholar ● LinkedIn ● ORCID ● Bluesky
Diffie Bosman
Doctoral Researcher
Diffie is a doctoral researcher and full‑time lecturer at the University of Pretoria, where he investigates novel audio‑driven embodied gameplay in virtual reality while teaching web development and VR design.
✉️ isak.bosman@tuni.fi
🔗 Google Scholar ● LinkedIn ● ORCID
Yuxi Chen
Doctoral Researcher
Yuxi, a doctoral researcher and product designer, studies how biomaterial‑driven design merges HCI, play, and interspecies interaction to inspire curiosity, reflection, and heightened ecological awareness.
✉️ yuxi.chen@tuni.fi
🔗 Google Scholar ● LinkedIn ● ORCID
Eshtiak Ahmed
Doctoral Researcher
Eshtiak is a doctoral researcher studying human‑robot companionship in outdoor settings, leveraging a background in Human‑Technology Interaction and Computer Science to explore how mobile robots like Boston Dynamics’ Spot can enrich play, connection to nature, and embodied experiences.
Beste Demircan
Doctoral Researcher
Beste is a doctoral researcher, who investigates somaesthetic cyberculture and how avatars, wearables, and shared rituals shape embodied social connection and identity in immersive digital environments.
✉️ beste.demircan@tuni.fi
🔗 Google Scholar ● LinkedIn ● ResearchGate
Linas Gabrielaitis
Doctoral Researcher
Linas is a doctoral researcher at the intersection of Design, HCI, geology, literary and game studies. He thinks rivers are a piece of text; he thinks games are like tall trees. He is currently investigating the glaciers of Tampere by staring at a pile of gravel wishing it was one big rock.
Laura D. Cosio
Doctoral Researcher
Laura is a Doctoral Researcher exploring how Virtual Reality and interactive media can support human–nature connection through perspective-taking, creative engagement, and environmental representation. Her work examines how embodied non-human experiences shape environmental values and participants’ sense of connection with nature.
Shiva Jabari
Doctoral Researcher
Shiva is a Doctoral Researcher, where she explores the intersection of fashion and technology. With experience in Milan’s fashion industry and research published in leading journals such as IJHCI and IJHCS, she combines design innovation with academic inquiry.
✉️ shiva.jabari@tuni.fi
🔗 Google Scholar ● LinkedIn
Priyanka Rathi
Doctoral Researcher
Priyanka is a Doctoral Researcher, who investigates public attitudes toward AI‑generated media—examining trust, ethics, and cross‑cultural perception through mixed‑methods studies of AI‑created art, music, text, and interactive narratives.
Amir Pakpour
Doctoral Researcher
Amir is a Doctoral Researcher that draws from English literature, linguistics, and Human‑Computer Interaction. He uses design theory to enhance migrants’ access to public services through the Trust‑M project—a joint initiative of Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, Tampere University, and the City of Espoo.
Bakhtawar Khan
Doctoral Researcher
Bakhtawar is a Doctoral Researcher, who explores how immersive technologies mediate human‑nature relationships and promote wellbeing. She researches in the overlap of virtual nature, slow reflective engagement, and ecological curiosity. She has also investigated technostress in the work-related use of social VR.
Adas Slezas
Doctoral Researcher
Adas is a Doctoral Researcher whose work explores how immersive digital environments shape personal identity, aspirations, and self‑change practices. Adas employs interpretative phenomenology, autoethnography, and speculative design to map the lived experiences and future possibilities of becoming in virtual worlds.
Saurav Sarkar
Research Assistant
Saurav creates immersive Virtual Reality experiences that blend technology, art, psychology, and storytelling to explore how visual style shapes emotional connections to nature and inspires real‑world environmental stewardship.
Visiting, Remote Researchers and Alumnis
Velvet Spors
Remote Researcher / Post-Doctoral Alum
Velvet is a lecturer of interaction design at University of Tartu, Estonia, and a remote member of GFL. Velvet researches how technology can be designed and used in caring, sustainable ways to ensure the survival of all.
Shan Luo
Visiting Researcher
Shan, a Hangzhou‑based researcher, explores “more‑than‑human” design by using game‑based play and intelligent interaction technologies to forge deeper connections between people, water, forests, and the natural world—redefining human‑nature relationships for a post‑human future.