Privacy in Gaming

Video game platforms and business models are increasingly built on collection, use, and sharing of personal information for purposes of both functionality and revenue. This paper examines privacy issues and explores data practices, technical specifications, and policy statements of the most popular games and gaming platforms to provide an overview of the current privacy legal landscape for mobile gaming, console gaming, and virtual reality devices. The research observes how modern gaming aligns with information privacy notions and norms and how data practices and technologies specific to gaming may affect users and, in particular, child gamers. After objectively selecting and analyzing major players in gaming, the research notes the many different ways that game companies collect data from users, including through cameras, sensors, microphones, and other hardware, through platform features for social interaction and user-generated content, and by means of tracking technologies like cookies and beacons. The paper also notes how location and biometric data are collected routinely through game platforms and explores issues specific to mobile gaming and pairing with smartphones and other external hardware devices. The paper concludes that transparency as to gaming companies’ data practices could be much improved, especially regarding sharing with third party affiliates. In addition, the research considers how children’s privacy may be particularly affected while gaming, determining that special attention should be paid to user control mechanisms and privacy settings within games and platforms, that social media and other interactive features create unique privacy and safety concerns for children which require gamer and parent education, and that privacy policy language is often incongruent with age ratings advertised to children and parents. To contribute additional research value and resources, the paper attaches a comprehensive set of appendices, on which the research conclusions are in part based, detailing the technical specifications and privacy policy statements of popular games and gaming platforms for mobile gaming, console gaming, and virtual reality devices

Mobile Users and Service Experience Developers

Customer Experiences have become increasingly important as well as challenging to differentiate and add value to products and services. Experiences play a particularly important role in the emerging field of service development and design, as value is cocreated by customers through their interactions with service providers resulting in a unique contextual outcome (Stuart and Tax 2004; Mager 2009). Services are relational and require shared knowledge and background between a company and its costumers (Verhoef, Lemon et al. 2009). Therefore it is considered more difficult to create valuable service experiences when the company is not present (Sandstrom, Magnusson et al. 2009; Verhoef, Lemon et al. 2009), and some authors advocate further research to create memorable service experiences through the design of new interactive applications, its interfaces and its specific mobility (R.S. Subramanya 2007). This research contributes to a better understanding of user’ experience requirements in mobile services and to improve its incorporation into New Service Development. This article reports the results of two qualitative studies that explored experiential factors in mobile services covering regular users of mobile services and designers/developers’perspectives. The first study involved in-depth interviews and focus groups with 25 users of mobile phone services, focusing on the experiential factors of a mobile loyalty service and analyzing existing services. The second study involved a sample of 82 individuals (mainly designers - 52, 6%), during a creative training course on innovation. Mental modelling supported the design of an imaginary mobile service interface through a codiscovery method. Following qualitative methods (Charmaz 2006), both studies were transcribed and analyzed to identify categories of service experience requirements. The analysis accomplishes a comparative assessment of the experiential factors identified by regular users as well as endorsed the identification of requirements influencing mobile service experiences from the designers’ perspective describing it with their own language code. The results of the study with mobile service users allowed for an in-depth understanding of the user experience, which are not strictly related to the design of the interaction device. According to study results, one of the most important factors influencing the mobile service experience is the interaction with service merchants, and the service environment in which the mobile service is used. This subject is relevant when people prefer some mobile systems due to factors such as emotional experiences that might play an important role in addition to functional aspects(Thüring 2007). Other factors such as ease use and its trade-off relationship with privacy, ease of learning, data usage, visualization, were also deemed important. The designers’ group also pointed out some of the experience factors already identified by users, such as ease of use and efficiency, but they paid much more attention to the functional and technological aspects surrounding mobile phones in comparison to the service characteristics. This fact may be a result of their professional backgrounds. This two-way analysis places two unlike approaches and as a result similarities and differences can be identified on how the service processes, and the way interface is used. Although the usability and performance factors are mentioned by both groups, designers do not address the contextual elements that have a strong influence in the overall customer experience, such as the service environment, the service process. This perspective has eased the understanding of the differences and priorities of experience in a mobile loyalty service according to developers and regular user’s perception. Furthermore it has helped to identify the service design elements that affect users and developers’ experiences, such as the interface and the service context of use, and to find their specific responsiveness to the interaction process. This points out to the need of a more collaborative approach from both stances. We believe that this work can contribute to increase this collaboration and therefore add value to service innovation. The New Service Development demands a good understanding of the user’s service experiences, as well as developers that must be aware of this complete service scope

Researching mobile learning: January to September 2008 (final report)

This report brought together the findings from the third phase of a two-year development and research project that focused on the impact of one-to-one personal ownership of mobile devices. Two areas emerged from the analysis as important in relation to impact, namely students' use of and attitudes to their mobile devices and the professional development of teachers

Mobile Usability in Educational Contexts: What have we learnt?

The successful development of mobile learning is dependent on human factors in the use of new mobile and wireless technologies. The majority of mobile learning activity continues to take place on devices that were not designed with educational applications in mind, and usability issues are often reported. The paper reflects on progress in approaches to usability and on recent developments, with particular reference to usability findings reported in studies of mobile learning. The requirements of education are considered as well as the needs of students participating in distance education; discipline-specific perspectives and accessibility issues are also addressed. Usability findings from empirical studies of mobile learning published in the literature are drawn together in the paper, along with an account of issues that emerged in two mobile learning projects based at The Open University, UK, in 2001 and 2005. The main conclusions are: that usability issues are often reported in cases where PDAs have been used; that the future is in scenario-based design which should also take into account the evolution of uses over time and the unpredictability of how devices might be used; and that usability issues should be tracked over a longer period, from initial use through to a state of relative experience with the technology

USEM: A ubiquitous smart energy management system for residential homes

With the ever-increasing worldwide demand for energy, and the limited available energy resources, there is a growing need to reduce our energy consumption whenever possible. Therefore, over the past few decades a range of technologies have been proposed to assist consumers with reducing their energy use. Most of these have focused on decreasing energy consumption in the industry, transport, and services sectors. In more recent years, however, growing attention has been given to energy use in the residential sector, which accounts for nearly 30% of total energy consumption in the developed countries. Here we present one such system, which aims to assist residential users with monitoring their energy usage and provides mechanisms for setting up and controlling their home appliances to conserve energy. We also describe a user study we have conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this system in supporting its users with a range of tools and visualizations developed for ubiquitous devices such as mobile phones and tablets. The findings of this study have shown the potential benefits of our system, and have identified areas of improvement that need to be addressed in the future

Why Do People Adopt, or Reject, Smartphone Password Managers?

People use weak passwords for a variety of reasons, the most prescient of these being memory load and inconvenience. The motivation to choose weak passwords is even more compelling on Smartphones because entering complex passwords is particularly time consuming and arduous on small devices. Many of the memory- and inconvenience-related issues can be ameliorated by using a password manager app. Such an app can generate, remember and automatically supply passwords to websites and other apps on the phone. Given this potential, it is unfortunate that these applications have not enjoyed widespread adoption. We carried out a study to find out why this was so, to investigate factors that impeded or encouraged password manager adoption. We found that a number of factors mediated during all three phases of adoption: searching, deciding and trialling. The study’s findings will help us to market these tools more effectively in order to encourage future adoption of password managers

Researching mobile learning: overview, September 2006 to September 2008

This is the summary of the report, which brought together the findings from the third phase of a two-year development and research project that focused on the impact of one-to-one personal ownership of mobile devices. Two areas emerged from the analysis as important in relation to impact, namely students' use of and attitudes to their mobile devices and the professional development of teachers

Mobile Device Use Among Rural, Low-Income Families and the Feasibility of an App to Encourage Preschoolers' Physical Activity: Qualitative Study.

BackgroundAs mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous, technology-based interventions provide a promising strategy to positively influence health behaviors of families with young children. However, questions remain about the feasibility and acceptability of intervention delivery via mobile apps in low-income, rural settings and among families with preschoolers.ObjectiveThe aims of this study were to understand the content and context of mobile device use for preschoolers; explore parent beliefs on this topic, including the acceptability of intervention delivery via mobile devices; and test a prototype of an app to encourage preschoolers' physical activity with both parents and children.MethodsParents (n=29) were recruited from 5 preschool centers in eastern, rural Colorado to complete a semistructured telephone interview regarding preschoolers' mobile device use. A second sample of parents (n=31) was recruited from the same preschool centers to view the app prototype independently and provide feedback. A third sample of preschool children (n=24) was videotaped using the app in small groups to measure engagement and record their responses to the app.ResultsFive key content areas emerged from the telephone interviews: (1) mobile devices are an important part of families' everyday routines, and parents have parameters governing their use; (2) parents often use mobile devices as a tool for behavior management; (3) parents clearly distinguish between mobile device use for learning versus entertainment; (4) parents have an overarching desire for balance in regard to their child's mobile device use; and (5) parents were generally supportive of the idea of using mobile apps for intervention delivery. From the app prototype testing with parents, participants reacted positively to the app and felt that it would be useful in a variety of situations. Testing with preschoolers showed the children were highly engaged with the app and a majority remained standing and/or actively moving through the entire length of the app.ConclusionsMobile devices are already integrated into most families' daily routines and appear to be an acceptable method of intervention delivery in low-income families in rural Colorado. The physical activity app represents an innovative way to reach these families and, with further improvements based on participant feedback, will provide children with a unique opportunity to practice key movement skills