Enhance User Engagement using Gamified Ineternet of Things

Gamification is considered as a promising approach to enhance people’s engagement in many social or technical systems, thus is supposed to play an important role in future Internet of Everything (IoE). Although gamification elements have already been reported in various IoT research, there still lacks answers about how gamification may affect user engagement in IoT systems and through what paths. In present work, we are synthesizing and analyzing existing research efforts in these emerging fields to provide implications for future IoE development. The results are categorized into three dimensions by considering cognitive-behavioral outcome, procedural stage and population scale

Exploring the Player Experiences of Wearable Gaming Interfaces : A User Elicitation Study

The design and development of playful wearable devices is a challenging and complicated problem. It entails not only multidisciplinary expertise but also a comprehensive understanding of player experience. There is a scarcity of evidence-based studies in current state-of-art literature that investigate general design practices and provide pragmatic design implications and suggestions based on solid user-centered research. To bridge the gap, we developed five experience prototypes based on the speculative design concepts from previous studies, and a Wizard of Oz experiment was conducted to elicit end users' feedback regarding general gaming experience as well as specific design themes in different gaming scenarios. The user experiment results were analyzed qualitatively following a rigorous thematic analysis, generating five major design implications as output. We believe this study will offer forward-looking insights to designers, developers and the research community, facilitating future work in this field.Peer reviewe

Exploring the Application of RFID for Designing Augmented Virtual Reality Experience

Recent technical advancement has driven the boundary between the physical reality and digital virtuality to diminish significantly. As part of the emerging trend, existing research leverages a synergized use of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) and virtual reality (VR) to create compelling hybrid user experience. However, current state-of-the-art literature indicates a lack of coherent architecture for seamlessly integrating these two siloed technology stacks, thus hindering full-fledged mixed and extended reality applications. In this article, we first conducted a comprehensive literature review and identified key design themes and different technical affordances of RFID within VR context; in reflection of our findings, we hence proposed an overarching architecture to facilitate swift and flexible composition of RFID and VR; Three use cases were further established using the proposed architecture to both demonstrate its technical feasibility and qualitatively assess RFID's augmentation over conventional VR applications. This exploratory research intends to offer some preliminary design knowledge and insights for designing and developing RFID-augmented VR applications, open up opportunities for further discussion and research interest in this area, thus ultimately contributing to more immersive, interactive and informative user experience.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Passive RFID-Based Phone Call System Integrated into Clothing and Furniture

This paper presents design, development, and an early prototype system of a passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology-based phone call system. These tags are used as clothing- and furniture-integrated phone call triggers by utilizing two gestures; tap and double tap. Both gestures work on the principle that a specific tag is made non-detectable for the RFID reader. In preliminary testing, the prototype system was tested in an office environment in two different test setups: one with an RFID tag attached to a table and the other with an RFID tag attached to a shirtsleeve. One user successfully made a phone call 5 times in both test setups by using tap and double tap gestures. The advantage of the prototype system is that it can be integrated into clothing or furniture to make a quick call without a mobile phone. As the used technology is cost-effective and maintenance-free, there can be several RFID tags in the surroundings and in different clothes.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Nature-inspired Electro-textile Antennas for Passive UHF RFID

Antennas are usually hidden from sight. However, it is possible to design antennas that look visually appealing and socially accepted, while also have the same wireless performance as traditional antenna designs. Literature shows versatile nature-inspired antennas that have leaves and plants as design models. Most of such antennas are used in wideband, broadband, ultra-wideband, wireless local area networks, as well as 4G and 5G networks. The existing implementations do not employ ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID), which, however, is a versatile technology that has taken a growing role for example in the areas of the Internet of Things, wearables, and e-health. Passive UHF RFID-based communication is challenging due to noisy and unstable signals, which sets high requirements on antenna designs. This paper aims to design and fabricate (from electro-textiles) nature-inspired passive UHF RFID tag antennas and evaluate their wireless performance. Each antenna is made in two sizes, a small and a big version. In wireless evaluation, all the nature-inspired antennas show read ranges and radiation patterns suitable for practical use, while the bigger size antennas perform better than the smaller counterparts in terms of read range. In addition to their traditional wireless functionality, these antennas can also have an ornamental function in clothing and can be designed in such a way that enhances the aesthetics and fashionability of wearables or smart clothing.acceptedVersionNon peer reviewe

Design and Evaluation of Passive RFID-based Music Player Textile Prototypes

Music has always been an important way of expressing ourselves. Creating music from bodily interaction has gained much attention: Various gestures, touches, hand and foot movements are used to make music. The traditional identification and sensing technology-passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) technology-can be turned into a battery-free music player for creating music with a simple touch or gesture. Firstly, the technical feasibility of the created RFID system was evaluated by a simple on/off test. Next, this paper introduces two music player textile prototypes: The Touch Prototype can be activated by touching, while the Block Prototype can be activated by blocking, unblocking, or hovering over a specific spot on the created music player textile. Finally, the study gears towards the evaluation of the system in-use. Both developed prototypes showed a high input detection rate (95–100%) based on preliminary testing. The Block Prototype was found to be more flexible for the user, as the user does not need to be as precise in the movement as in the Touch Prototype. However, as the Touch Prototype allows separating the RFID IC and the antenna, it provides flexibility for the placement of the music player textile, for example when used as part of clothing.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Passive RFID-based Music Player Textile

Music has always been an important way of expressing ourselves. Creating music from bodily interaction has gained lots of attention: Various gestures, body touch, movements of hand and foot are used as inputs for creating music. The traditional identification and sensing technology, passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, can also be turned into a music player textile for creating music with simple touch or gesture on clothing. When the player touches a specific integrated circuit (IC) copper pad with finger, the unique ID is read by the reader and translated to music via our music software. With this preliminary version of the music player textile, it is possible to play drum and piano. In the future, the technology can be applied to daily clothing for educational musical purposes such as teaching music to kids, as well as professional musical purposes such as performers (showmen and hosts) and lecturers to have playful performances.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Internet-of-Gamification : A Review of Literature on IoT-enabled Gamification for User Engagement

Engagement is a common goal pursued by most social and technical systems, because of its widely acknowledged effects on enhancing user acceptance and performance. Previous research has shown that a system’s ability to engage users involves two known aspects: the technology foundation that determines the interactive paths for engaging users and the design methodology that determines the atop user experience to be conveyed through those paths. In recent years, an emerging and promising engagement approach that integrates both an advanced technology stack and novel design methodology, i.e. IoT-enabled Gamification (IeG), has attracted wide interest from both public and private sectors. This article aims to conduct a systematic review to answer some fundamental questions. 75 papers were reviewed under a 3-axis analysis framework of user engagement, the majority of which indicated that IeG is linked to increased engagement in a variety of application domains, stages, and population scales.publishedVersionPeer reviewe