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About me

Hey, I'm Oz. I am an Assistant Professor of Gameful Experience and completed my PhD at Koç University - Arçelik Research Center for Creative Industries (KUAR) in Design, Technology and Society Program, Interaction Design Track. I currently work at Tampere University an affiliated with Gamification Group of Juho Hamari .

My current main research interest is designing games & play for a posthuman era. Both transhuman/cyborg experiences (convergence of humans and machines) and more-than-human perspectives (sharing the center stage with other beings) are in my scope and I aim to understand how game will be shaped by posthuman technologies such as brain-machine interfaces, robotic companions, bodily implant or space habitation technologies. I also look ito how designing the games of future can inform us about future societies and societal structures.   

Another pillar of my work is the prioritization of gameful experience. Before anything else, games should be fun and entertaining. This is why I focus on new player experiences that can bring novel approaches to different game genres. Games can target other benefits only after they do their own job which is making people spend pleasurable time "willingly."

Other than games & play for posthumans, my research interests vary from wearables for gaming, computational fashion, human-nature-machine interaction or extended reality. I also mainly conduct research through design projects, with a heavy focus on speculative and critical design, and design fiction.  

Fields of expertise

- Research through Design

- Interactive Prototyping

- Design Fiction

- Speculative and Critical Design

- Design Research 

Research unit

Gamification Group

Selected publications

10. Oğuz ‘Oz’. Buruk, Ella Dagan, Katherine Isbister, Elena Márquez Segura, and Theresa Jean Tanenbaum. 2022. Playful Wearables. 

MIT Press. (Forthcoming)

9. Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Mikko Salminen, Nannan Xi, Timo Nummenmaa, and Juho Hamari. 2021. Towards the Next Generation of Gaming Wearables. Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ‘21.

8. Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Çağlar Genç, Ozan Yıldırım, Mehmet Cengiz Onbaşlı, and Oğuzhan Özcan. 2021. Snowflakes: A Prototyping Tool for Computational Jewellery. In Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ‘21.

7. Mattia Thibault, Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Lobna Hassan, and Juho Hamari. 2021. Anagenesis: A framework for a gameful, playful and democratic future smart cities. In Organizational Gamification. Routledge.

6. Mattia Thibault, Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Seda Suman Buruk, and Juho Hamari. 2020. Transurbanism: Smart Cities for Transhumans. In 

Proceedings of the 2020 ACM on Designing Interactive Systems Conference - DIS ‘20, 1915–1928.

5. Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Katherine Isbister, and Theresa Jean Tanenbaum. 2019. A Design Framework for Playful Wearables. In 

International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games - FDG ’19.

4. Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk and Oğuzhan Özcan. 2018. Extracting Design Guidelines for Wearables and Movement in Tabletop Role-Playing Games via a Research Through Design Process. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 

- CHI ‘18.

3. Çağlar Genç, Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Sejda İnal Yılmaz, Kemal Can, and Oğuzhan Özcan. 2018. Exploring Computational Materials as 

Fashion Materials: Recommendations for Designing Fashionable Wearables. International Journal of Design 12, 3: 1–19.

2. Ruowei Xiao, Sangwon Jung, Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, and Juho Hamari. 2022. Exploring the Player Experiences of Wearable Gaming Interfaces: A Qualitative Analysis. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY 2022).

1. Mert Canat, Mustafa Ozan Tezcan, Celalettin Yurdakul, Eran Tiza, Buğra Can Sefercik, İdil Bostan, Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Tilbe Göksun, and 

Oğuzhan Özcan. 2016. Sensation: Measuring the Effects of a Human-to-Human Social Touch Based Controller on the Player Experience. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ‘16, 3944–3955.