Developing ideation cards for mixed reality game design

Mixed reality games (MRGs) pose new challenges but also opportunities to designers. In order to make the design space of MRGs easily accessible and enable collaborative design in a playful manner we have developed Mixed Reality Game Cards. These ideation cards synthesize design knowledge about MRGs and are inspired by a variety of other successful ideation cards. We describe six studies, illustrate the iterative development of our cards, and reflect how the structure of our cards might influence future ideation cards

Utilizing gravity in movement-based games and play

This paper seeks to expand the understanding of gravity as a powerful but underexplored design resource for movement-based games and play. We examine how gravity has been utilized and manipulated in digital, physical, and mixed reality games and sports, considering five central and gravity-related facets of user experience: realism, affect, challenge, movement diversity, and sociality. For each facet, we suggest new directions for expanding the field of movement-based games and play, for example through novel combinations of physical and digital elements. Our primary contribution is a structured articulation of a novel point of view for designing games and interactions for the moving body. Additionally, we point out new research directions, and our conceptual framework can be used as a design tool. We demonstrate this in 1) creating and evaluating a novel gravity-based game mechanic, and 2) analyzing an existing movement-based game and suggesting future improvements

Utilizing gravity in movement-based games and play

This paper seeks to expand the understanding of gravity as a powerful but underexplored design resource for movement-based games and play. We examine how gravity has been utilized and manipulated in digital, physical, and mixed reality games and sports, considering five central and gravity-related facets of user experience: realism, affect, challenge, movement diversity, and sociality. For each facet, we suggest new directions for expanding the field of movement-based games and play, for example through novel combinations of physical and digital elements. Our primary contribution is a structured articulation of a novel point of view for designing games and interactions for the moving body. Additionally, we point out new research directions, and our conceptual framework can be used as a design tool. We demonstrate this in 1) creating and evaluating a novel gravity-based game mechanic, and 2) analyzing an existing movement-based game and suggesting future improvements

Fostering resistance: Acknowledging notions of power exertion and politics in design facilitation.

Design facilitation is among one of the most acclaimed approaches applied in contemporary collaborative projects. Intended as both the overarching process and the mediating act between a facilitator, typically a designer, and actors such as citizens, it has increasingly gained popularity due to the participatory, inclusive, co-creative, and empathic principles associated with it. The sudden recognition of the field of Participatory Design (PD) has nonetheless led to the use and (mis-)(over-)use of practice, causing an exponential loss of its political origin (Seravalli, 2014) if compared for example to the Scandinavian participatory movements in the ‘70s driven by political disputes regarding workplace democracy (Simonsen & Robertson, 2012). Design facilitation, among other areas of practice, has become a buzzword, rendering inevitable the adoption and adaptation of different definitions to it. This aspect, despite highlighting facilitation’s versatility, leaves room for deliberate and convenient interpretations of its meaning, use, and ethical limitations. The research focuses on acknowledging and rendering visible the otherwise often unaddressed political nature of design facilitation by making more explicit its underpinning structures and components. It focuses on critically contrasting contemporary views of design facilitation, which are typically apolitical, against revised notions that take into consideration its complex power dynamics and political implications. Delving into the interconnectedness between design, power, politics and participatory practices becomes an opportunity to explore contemporary mainstream notions within design that are worth being revisited and challenged from an alternative stance. The thesis is entirely theoretical and draws on principles of transdisciplinary research. Three lenses - critique, unpacking, and language use - are established and applied to an extensive analysis of literature belonging to design, philosophy, social studies, and political sciences. Combined with a systematic narrative approach and critical reviews, the lenses enable the spotting of misleading discourses and misuse of terminology. Said approach aims to foster a better understanding of the complexity behind the explored theoretical notions and to evaluate their current use. The thesis also takes into consideration a plurality of voices by reviewing three doctoral dissertations that address these interconnected spheres and analyzing their research processes and drawing insight from the way they clash and overlap. Finally, the conducted research aims to highlight the importance of unpacking concepts and areas of design to foster a more accountable practice and research, as opposed to merely moving on a superficial level. Resistance is explored and perceived as a way to react to a hegemonic, unbalanced, and often hierarchical model of facilitation which is often disguised as providing equally distributed agency and capacity to voice out concerns. Engaging in a critical, socially, and politically aware process allowed seeking and depicting alternatives to power imbalances such as designers deliberately resigning power, welcoming the ever-changing and unpredictable nature of human interrelations and adopting principles from prefigurative politics

Flow Experience as a Quality Measure in Evaluating Physically Activating Collaborative Serious Games

The measurement of the subjective playing experience is important part of the game development process. The enjoyment level that a serious game offers is a key factor in determining whether a player will be engaged in the gameplay and achieve the objectives of the game. In this paper we report the results of a game design process in which two prototypes of a collaborative exergame were studied. The main aim of the paper is to explore to what extend the measurement of flow experience can facilitate the game evaluation and design process. Alltogether 102 junior high school students participated in two user experience studies and played collaborative exergames designed to teach soft skills. Playing experience was measured with a flow questionnaire, playing behavior was observed and some of the players were interviewed. The results showed that flow experience can be used to evaluate the overall quality of the gameplay and it provides a structured approach to consider the quality of the game. However, flow does not provide detailed information about the shortages of the game and thus complementary methods is needed to identify the causes. The results also indicated that flow experience was independent of gender that supports its use in quality measurement

Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elementson Player Experience

Power-ups are a type of game reward that allow the player tocustomise their experience by altering gameplay for a shortperiod of time. Despite the wide use of power-ups in videogames, little is known about their effect on gaming experiences.To explore this, we conducted an experimental study that compares the experiences of players depending on their exposureto power-ups in a recreational video game. The results show that players who collected power-ups felt significantly more immersed in the game, experienced more autonomy, but didnot feel more competent or challenged than those who played the game without these collectables. Interestingly, a similareffect was observed for those players who picked up ‘placebo ’power-ups, despite the items having no effect on the gameplay. We provide a discussion of these results and their implications both for games user researchers and game designers

Co-located Augmented Play-spaces:Past, Present, and Perspectives

In recent years, many different studies regarding Co-located Augmented Play-spaces (CAPs) have been published in a wide variety of conferences and journals. We present an overview. The work presented in these papers includes end user's perspectives as well as researcher's perspective. We place these within four aspects in this review: 1) Argumentation, the underlying reasons or the higher end goals to investigate interactive play from a user's perspective, 2) Systems, the kind of systems that are created, this includes their intended use which fits the end user's perspective, 3) Evaluation, the way in which the researchers evaluate the system, 4) Contribution, the goal of the studies from the researcher's perspective; what does the study contribute to the research community. CAPs are often multimodal in nature; this survey pays attention to the multimodal characteristics in relation to all four aspects. This overview contributes a clearer view on the current literature, points out where new opportunities lie, and hands us the tools for what we think is important: bringing the end-user and research perspective together in intervention based evaluations. In short, this paper discusses CAPs: their past, the present, and the perspectives

Modelling Physical Activity in Virtual Reality Games

This thesis was inspired by the possibility that virtual reality (VR) games, which are designed primarily to be fun, could also provide exercise. It aimed to gain insights about this by exploring whether people can gain beneficial levels of exercise while playing VR games and how they might use VR games for exercise over several weeks. Furthermore, this work also focuses on how the level of physical activity that can be captured during gameplay and how a long-term user model can be created for individual players, as a foundation for supporting the user in gaining personal informatics insights about their exertion as well as being used for personalisation and external recommendation for VR games. The key contributions of this research are: • The first study of a diverse set of commercial VR games to gain insights about the level of actual and perceived exertion players have. • The first long-term study of VR games in a sedentary workplace to gain insights about the ways people utilise it and the levels of exertion they gain. • Based on reflections on the above studies, this thesis presents a framework and guidelines for designing physical activity VR games. • The systematic creation of a user model for representing a person’s long-term fitness and their VR gameplay, exertion and preferences. • A study of the ways that people can scrutinise their long-term personal informatics user model of exertion from VR game play and incidental walking. These contributions provide a foundation for future researchers and industry practitioners to design VR games that provide beneficial levels of exertion and allow people to gain insights into the relative contribution of the exercise from gameplay

Grand Challenges in SportsHCI

The field of Sports Human-Computer Interaction (SportsHCI) investigates interaction design to support a physically active human being. Despite growing interest and dissemination of SportsHCI literature over the past years, many publications still focus on solving specific problems in a given sport. We believe in the benefit of generating fundamental knowledge for SportsHCI more broadly to advance the field as a whole. To achieve this, we aim to identify the grand challenges in SportsHCI, which can help researchers and practitioners in developing a future research agenda. Hence, this paper presents a set of grand challenges identified in a five-day workshop with 22 experts who have previously researched, designed, and deployed SportsHCI systems. Addressing these challenges will drive transformative advancements in SportsHCI, fostering better athlete performance, athlete-coach relationships, spectator engagement, but also immersive experiences for recreational sports or exercisemotivation, and ultimately, improve human well-being