Combining useful and pleasure: who says it is not possible?

At the beginning of this year (2011) I have been privileged by participating in an exchange program with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). In the context of this exchange program I have spent a semester in the freezing-cold Pittsburgh. Initially, my participation in this program had a very practical objective: sitting in some lectures of a unique Master program existing at CMU to reproduce it later in Madeira. This meant that I had to spend a substantial amount of time at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). This is a very unique environment which hosts a 2 year professional program on entertainment technologies, understanding here entertainment in the broader possible sense (film making, games, exhibits, amusent parks, and a long long ETC). The uniqueness of the ETC approach is that it proposes a professional master program with only few core courses and many hands-on projects that are realized in close collaboration with the entertainment industry, including enterprises such as Disney, Google, Microsoft, non-profit organizations, a number of museums, etc. The applied approach of the ETC program brings together - many times for their first time - students from arts, computer science, design among other and teaches them basically how to speak a common language and make of any team more than the sum of its parts. I have witnessed how this approach has been able to take way more from each of "my" students than what they (and I!) thought they could. This approach is also present among the excellent faculty members they have, that  despited having over 25 years of experience in the game industry are still able to make of you a relevant part of their machinery. Thus, I participated in the courses building virtual worlds (the famous BVW) and game design, thought by Chris Klug and Ralph Vituccio, and Jesse Schell respectively. This was definitely the fun part of my stay despite the many nights I stood up until 5 in the morning catching up with homework.

On the other hand, I also spent quite some time at the Quality of Life Technologies (QoLT) Center of CMU, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. This center is a multidisciplinary environment that brings together health and technology expertise from CMU and the University of Pittsburgh, and whose mission is "to transform lives in a large and growing segment of the population – people with reduced functional capabilities due to aging or disability". Hosted by Dan Siewiorek, I tremendously benefited from their close contact with the health industry in order to collaborate with a rehabilitation robotics company that develops devices for stroke survivors. With them I have integrated gaming technologies (given experience I already had and the one I gained at ETC), robotics and therapeutic training for stroke patients that need rehabilitation of their upper limbs. This is definitely a great example of bringing together pleasure (ETC) and useful (QoLT). The best thing is that now that I'm back in Portugal and I can further pursue this great collaboration, I will also be able to combine pleasure (games) and useful (motor rehabilitation) for many patients in here. Stay tuned, more information on this will come soon!