Pass the Ball: Enforced Turn-Taking in Activity Tracking

We have developed a mobile application called Pass The Ball that enables users to track, reflect on, and discuss physical activity with others. We followed an iterative design process, trialling a first version of the app with 20 people and a second version with 31. The trials were conducted in the wild, on users' own devices. The second version of the app enforced a turn-taking system that meant only one member of a group of users could track their activity at any one time. This constrained tracking at the individual level, but more successfully led users to communicate and interact with each other. We discuss the second trial with reference to two concepts: social-relatedness and individual-competence. We discuss six key lessons from the trial, and identify two high-level design implications: attend to "practices" of tracking; and look within and beyond "collaboration" and "competition" in the design of activity trackers

Social gaming: A systematic review

Digital games often constitute a shared activity where people can spend time together, communicate and socialize. Several commercial titles place social interaction at the center of their design. Prior works have investigated the social outcomes of gaming, and factors that impact the experience. Yet, we lack a comprehensive understanding of how social gaming has been approached and explored before. In this work, we present a systematic review covering 263 publications, gathered in February 2021, that study gaming experiences involving more than one person, with a focus on the social element that emerges among partakers (players and/or spectators). We contribute with a systematized understanding of (1) how the topic is being defined and approached, (2) what facets (mainly in terms of outcomes and determinants of the experience) are being acknowledged and (3) the methodologies leveraged to examine these. Our analysis, based on mixed deductive and inductive coding, reveals relevant gaps and tendencies, including (1) the emphasis in novel technologies and unconventional games, (2) the apparent negligence of player diversity, and (3) lower ecological validity associated with totally mediated evaluations and a lack of established constructs to assess social outcomes

Understanding a socially awkward digital play journey

Socially awkward experiences are often considered as something to be avoided. Interestingly, examples from the traditional games domain suggest that social awkwardness can enable novel and engaging play experiences. We note that there has been little research into exploring social awkwardness when it comes to digital games. In response we present our experiences with Musical Embrace, a digital game that requires close physical proximity and whole body interactions to explore socially awkward play between players. Our observations from users experiencing Musical Embrace at a number of events suggest that social awkwardness experienced by participants often rises and falls as part of the digital play journey. As such, we draw upon the classic five-act performance structure (consisting of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement) to examine the experiences of players and understand the way in which social awkwardness engages players as the game progresses. With our work we hope to inspire game designers to consider the potential of social awkwardness in digital games