This paper delves into the underlying phases involved in designing, developing, and deploying Augmented Reality (AR) applications and game-based scenarios that will be implemented during intercultural exchanges among students in two different academic institutions in Sweden and Cyprus. Building on principles of design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004; Klopfer & Squire, 2008), the aim is to expand the learning ecology by leveraging instructional tools and developing novel scenarios to broaden the trajectories of collaboration, intercultural understanding and communication, and cultural knowledge. The AR applications and scenarios are in the process of being developed as part of the Digital Methods Platform for Arts and Humanities (DiMPAH) project, where game-based activities will foster intercultural collaboration, exploration of cultural heritage sites, intercultural understanding, knowledge, and interaction. Adopting a bottom-up approach, instructors collaborate with a software developer and an extended research team to design pedagogically and culturally potent scenarios embedded in novel technologies that bring the virtual into the physical world. [For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]