This course will explore the interplay between perceptual psychology and the design of interactive systems and games. Students from psychology and design will learn a variety of useful concepts from perception research and interactive design, including how to make interactive digital games and experiences. Together, we will explore questions such as: how do humans perceive the world? How do our interactions in games reveal underlying systems? How is “intelligence” perceived in artificial agents? And how do we understand each other through perceptual cues? We’ll develop experiments using simple programming environments and tools (Javascript/Python and Unity) to study how people interact with, perceive and understand artificial worlds. While some experience in these tools and programming languages will be helpful for this course, it is not necessary, as long as there is a willingness to learn the basics. This course is open to Psychology MA students and Parsons Design & Technology MFA students. Other students with relevant background experience may enroll in the course with permission from the instructors