Bridging Climbing and Interactive Smart Spaces for Children

Interactive Smart Spaces (ISSs)-digitally enhanced physical environments that respond to users' movements and gestures with multisensory stimuli-have been proposed as promising platforms to enhance children's social and cognitive skills. However, most existing approaches have focused on low-intensity physical activities. Evidence from exergame research and studies in medicine, psychology, neuroscience, and sports sciences suggests that incorporating medium-to-high physical activity can further improve cognitive and social outcomes.; AB@This paper investigates how such physical intensity can be integrated into ISSs to potentially enhance user engagement, social interaction, and inclusion. We introduce a novel approach that extends traditional ISS interactions with Augmented Climbing, where a climbing wall serves as a large interactive surface, with sensorized handholds and footholds acting as interaction affordances. Climbing was chosen for its established physical, cognitive, and social benefits. We present the enabling technologies, describe an interactive game experience designed for primary school children (both typically developing and atypically developing), and discuss the co-design process and strategies to support accessibility and inclusion. Finally, we report on two empirical studies (N= 12 and N = 113), whose findings indicate that integrating Augmented Climbing increases perceived task difficulty but also enhances verbal communication between players-an indicator of deeper social engagement.; AB@The physical and technological infrastructure of ISSs, when integrated with Augmented Climbing, serves as a flexible research tool for exploring a wide range of child-experience research topics and for advancing our understanding of how interactive experiences that combine multisensory stimuli and interactions with varying levels of physical intensity can support cognitive development, social interaction, and inclusion.