Digital technologies play an increasingly prominent role in memorialisation, but their use at cemeteries has been criticised for lack of sensitivity. Designers of digital cemetery technologies (cemtech) face a high risk of causing offence or failing to attract users due to social norms of memorial sites. To map this area of design and its pitfalls, we first developed a typology of cemtech through a review of examples from around the world. We then evaluated social acceptance of various types of cemtech through a survey of 1,053 Australian residents. Younger people were more accepting of cemtech than older people. Acceptance was highest for cemtech with three characteristics: familiarity, intimacy of user group and peacefulness. Through a reflexive thematic analysis, we identified four attitudinal dichotomies that explain divergent reactions to cemtech: Expands/Impedes, Public/Private, Lively/Restful and Pragmatic/Affective. We conclude with a discussion of how this work can assist designers of public memorialisation technologies.

The consumption of music is increasingly reliant on the personalisation, recommendation, and automated curation features of music streaming services. Using algorithm experience (AX) as a lens, we investigated the user experience of the algorithmic recommendation and automated curation features of several popular music streaming services. We conducted interviews and participant-observation with 15 daily users of music streaming services, followed by a design workshop. We found that despite the utility of increasingly algorithmic personalisation, listeners experienced these algorithmic and recommendation features as impersonal in determining their background listening, music discovery, and playlist curation. While listener desire for more control over recommendation settings is not new, we offer a number of novel insights about music listening to nuance this understanding, particularly through the notion of vibe.

Increasingly, modern boardgames incorporate digital apps and tools to deliver content in novel ways. Despite disparate approaches to incorporating digital tools in otherwise non-digital boardgames, there has to date been no detailed classification of the different roles that these tools play in supporting gameplay. In this paper, we present a model for understanding hybrid boardgame play as performing a set of discrete functions. Through a mixed-methods approach incorporating critical play sessions, a survey of 237 boardgame players, and interviews with 18 boardgame designers and publishers, we identified the key functions performed by the digital tools in these games. Using affinity mapping, we grouped these functions into eight core categories, which were tested and refined using a survey of 44 boardgame players and designers. This model defines and classifies the diverse functions that digital tools perform in hybrid digital boardgames, demonstrating their range and potential application for researchers and game designers.

Game industry professionals are frequently implementing new methods of addressing ethical issues related to in-game toxicity and disruptive player behaviours associated with online multiplayer games. However, academic work on these behaviours tends to focus on the perspectives of players rather than the industry. To fully understand the ethics of multiplayer games and promote ethical design, we must examine the challenges facing those designing multiplayer games through an ethical lens. To this end, this paper presents a reflexive thematic analysis of 21 in-depth interviews with games industry professionals on their ethical views and experiences in game design and community management. We identify a number of tensions involved in making ethics-related design decisions for divided player communities alongside current game design practices that are concerned with functionality, revenue and entertainment. We then put forward a set of design considerations for integrating ethics into multiplayer game design.

Despite increasing interest in the use of digital tools in boardgames for both commercial and research purposes, little research has to date explored how and why these tools are used. We interviewed 18 professionals working in the boardgame industry to explore the combination of digital tools and tabletop play, which affords new experiences and opportunities for both players and designers. We generated five key themes from the interview data. Participants engaged with ontological questions about the fundamental nature of games; they showed strong opinions about the use of digital tools; they discussed the impacts of digital tools for game design as well as in their design practice; they raised concerns about the costs to develop and maintain such tools; and they considered how they affect the in-game player experience. From these themes, we generate five design principles for digital tools for boardgame play: traceability, completeness, integration, privacy, and materiality. Grounded in empirical data, these design principles guide game designers and researchers seeking to explore this novel design space. Our research focuses attention on the role of digital components in play and on the need for thoughtful implementation that considers the entire lifecycle of the game, from development through publication and, ultimately, archival access.

Voice control is an increasingly common feature of digital games, but the experience of playing with voice control is often hampered by feelings of embarrassment and dissonance. Past research has recognised these tensions, but has not offered a general model of how they arise and how players respond to them. In this study, we use Erving Goffman's frame analysis, as adapted to the study of games by Conway and Trevillian, to understand the social experience of playing games by voice. Based on 24 interviews with participants who played voice-controlled games in a social setting, we put forward a frame analytic model of gameplay as a social event, along with seven themes that describe how voice interaction enhances or disrupts the player experience. Our results demonstrate the utility of frame analysis for understanding social dissonance in voice interaction gameplay, and point to practical considerations for designers to improve engagement with voice-controlled games.

This paper examines the complex relationship between competition and cooperation in boardgame play. We understand boardgaming as distributed cognition, where people work together in a shared activity to accomplish the game. Although players typically compete against each other, this competition is only possible through ongoing cooperation to negotiate, enact and maintain the rules of play. In this paper, we report on a study of people playing modern boardgames. We analyse how knowledge of the game's state is distributed amongst the players and the game components, and examine the different forms of cooperation and collaboration that occur during play. Further, we show how players use the material elements of the game to support articulation work and to improve their awareness and understanding of the game's state. Our goal is to examine the coordinative practices that the players use during play and explicate the ways in which these enable competition.

While exertion games facilitate, and benefit from, social play, most exertion games merely support players acting independently. To help designers explore the richness of social play in exertion games, we present the design dimension “bodily interplay” that gives critical focus to how players’ bodies interact with one another. We offer two broad categories of bodily interplay— parallel and interdependent play —to explain how exertion games can facilitate independent and offensive/defensive-type experiences. These categories can be applied to both the physical and virtual space, and by looking at all permutations of these categories, we articulate four ways of coupling the spaces: comparative, actuated, derived, and projected coupling. This article illustrates the inspirational power of the dimensions by applying them to the analysis of four exertion games. Altogether, we articulate a vocabulary that can guide designers in the creation of social exertion games, helping players profit from the many benefits of exertion.

This paper presents findings from a study of boardgamers which stress the importance of the materiality of modern boardgames. It demonstrates that materiality is one of four significant factors in the player experience of tabletop gaming and describes four domains of materiality in boardgaming settings. Further, building on understanding of non-use in HCI, it presents boardgames as a unique situation of parallel use, in which users simultaneously engage with a single game in both digital and material, non-digital environments.

Communication is a critical aspect of any collaborative system. In online multiplayer games and virtual worlds it is especially complex. Users are present over long periods, require both synchronous and asynchronous communication, and may prefer to be pseudonymous or engage in identity-play while managing virtual and physical use contexts. Initially the only medium for player-to-player communication in virtual worlds was text, a medium well suited to identity-play and asynchronous communication, less so to fast-paced coordination and sociability among friends. During the past decade vendors have introduced facilities for gamers to communicate by voice. Yet little research has been conducted to help us understand the influence of voice on the experience of using virtual space: Where, when, and for whom voice is beneficial, and how it might be configured. To address this gap we examined a range of online gaming environments. We analyzed our observations in the light of theory from Human–Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and Computer-Mediated Communication. We conclude that voice radically transforms the experience of online gaming, making virtual spaces more intensely social but removing some of the opportunity for identity play, multitasking, and multigaming while introducing ambiguity over what is being transmitted to whom.

Advances in sensing technologies have led to research into exertion games that support physically effortful experiences. Despite the existence of theoretical frameworks that can be used to analyze such exertion experiences, there are few tools to support the hands-on practice of exertion game design. To address this, we present a set of design cards based on the "Exertion Framework", grounded in our experience of creating exertion games for over a decade. We present results demonstrating the value and utility of these Exertion Cards based on our studies of their use in three workshops held over seven sessions with 134 design students and experts. We also articulate lessons learned from transforming a theoretical framework into a design tool that aims to support designers in their practice.

Supporting physical exertion is a growing trend in digital technology design. However, most experiences focus on bodily actions in which participants act independently of each other. In contrast, we focus on virtual body-to-body interactions between multiple participants, inspired by combat-oriented sports such as boxing that highlight the need to act while avoiding reciprocal bodily action. Mediating such body-to-body interactions with technology is challenging, particularly when participants are not co-located. Prior systems have often involved a mixture of novel physical interfaces and interactions through virtual avatars. This paper charts a design space for virtual combat play experiences and offers a set of design dimensions and recommendations for future systems. We draw on our experiences of designing and evaluating Remote Impact - a boxing-style exertion game involving aggressive bodily interaction with a large force-sensing projection surface. By expanding our knowledge of mediated exertion with an understanding of combat interactions we extend the social experience space of exertion play.

Exercising with others, such as jogging in pairs, can be socially engaging. However, if exercise partners have different fitness levels then the activity can be too strenuous for one and not challenging enough for the other, compromising engagement and health benefits. Our system, Jogging over a Distance, uses heart rate data and spatialized sound to create an equitable, balanced experience between joggers of different fitness levels who are geographically distributed. We extend this prior work by analyzing the experience of 32 joggers to detail how specific design features facilitated, and hindered, an engaging and balanced exertion experience. With this knowledge, we derive four dimensions that describe a design space for balancing exertion experiences: Measurement, Adjustment, Presentation and Control. We also present six design tactics for creating balanced exertion experiences described by these dimensions. By aiding designers in supporting participants of different physical abilities, we hope to increase participation and engagement with physical activity and facilitate the many benefits it brings about.

The term 'metagaming' is widely used to describe a variety of conceptually difficult activities associated with game play. This wide use has lead to a conceptual overload of the term, mitigating its potential use for game studies. This paper will suggest two new terms to use, 'orthogame and 'paragame', in conjunction with a more clearly defined notion of 'metagame'. We argue that these new terms have the potential to be highly useful for defining and understanding peripheral play activities common in modern digital games. We apply this new vocabulary to a variety of play practices in EVE Online to illustrate its strength for analysing and defining play practices.

Exertion games require investing physical effort. The fact that such games can support physical health is tempered by our limited understanding of how to design for engaging exertion experiences. This paper introduces the Exertion Framework as a way to think and talk about Exertion Games, both for their formative design and summative analysis. Our Exertion Framework is based on the ways in which we can conceive of the body investing in game-directed exertion, supported by four perspectives on the body (the Responding Body, Moving Body, Sensing Body and Relating Body) and three perspectives on gaming (rules, play and context). The paper illustrates how this framework was derived from prior systems and theory, and presents a case study of how it has been used to inspire novel exertion interactions.

In this paper we explore the implications of new technologies for performances in relation to work, family time, leisure and other everyday activities. Importantly, we mobilize our analysis around temporal patterns of daily life, rather than deploying cartographic metaphors and the `boundaries' they produce. Through fieldwork informed by five families over a period of three years, we highlight the role that technology plays in constituting the rhythms of contemporary domestic life. We identify four particular rhythms and argue that digital technology is not homogenising time in the home, nor are daily activities demarked by boundaries. Rather, technologies are implicated in reordering the rhythms of domestic life. Attention to the presence of distinct temporal patterns is crucial to understanding everyday life, and to understanding the implications of digital technologies for everyday life.

Exertion activities, such as jogging, require users to invest intense physical effort and are associated with physical and social health benefits. Despite the benefits, our understanding of exertion activities is limited, especially when it comes to social experiences. In order to begin understanding how to design for technologically augmented social exertion experiences, we present "Jogging over a Distance", a system in which spatialized audio based on heart rate allowed runners as far apart as Europe and Australia to run together. Our analysis revealed how certain aspects of the design facilitated a social experience, and consequently we describe a framework for designing augmented exertion activities. We make recommendations as to how designers could use this framework to aid the development of future social systems that aim to utilize the benefits of exertion.

Exertion games are an emerging form of interactive games that require players to invest significant physical effort as part of the gameplay, rather than just pressing buttons. These exertion games have potential health benefits by promoting exercise. It is also believed that they can facilitate social play between players and that social play can improve participation in exertion games. However, there is currently a lack of understanding of how to design games to support these effects. In this paper, we present a qualitative case study that illustrates how networked environments support social play in exertion games and how this can help to gain an understanding of existing games and support the design of future games. This work offers a preliminary analytical and descriptive account of the relationship between exertion and social play in such a game and highlights the influence of design with the aim of utilizing the attributed benefits of exertion and social play.

Intimacy is a crucial element of domestic life, and many interactive technologies designed for other purposes have been appropriated for use within intimate relationships. However, there is a deficit in current understandings of how technologies are used within intimate relationships, and how to design technologies to support intimate acts. In this paper we report on work that has addressed these deficits. We used cultural probes and contextual interviews and other ethnographically informed techniques to investigate how interactive technologies are used within intimate relationships. From this empirical work we generated a thematic understanding of intimacy and the use of interactional technologies to support intimate acts. We used this understanding to inform the design of intimate technologies. A selection of our design concepts is also presented.