Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) offer potential for more inclusive and immersive exercising and exergaming experiences at home. Previous work found that augmenting home objects can create more engaging exercise experiences and identified various home objects that can be augmented to facilitate different exercises. However, it is unclear how these objects can be augmented to enhance exercising and tailored based on the exercise. We conducted a multi-part study involving a design activity using Snapchat and focus group discussion with 28 participants. We present five themes relating to participants' preferences for the augmentation of home objects for exercising, and identify and discuss key guidelines that designers and researchers should consider when augmenting home objects. Our results provide designers with guidelines and ideas for the augmentation of four different exercises, and advance the foundation for future work developing home-based exergaming through AR HMDs to increase people's physical activity levels.

Fighting games can have barriers to entry as a result of the competency and skill needed to understand the mechanics and objectives of play. One of the key challenges in fighting game design is to teach players how to attain competency. The most common teaching strategy employed in many fighting games is to include a tutorial level. However, there is a lack of research on how fighting game tutorial levels should be designed to support learning for new players. In this paper, we propose design guidelines for video game tutorials, based on the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and video game design theory. We developed a fighting game tutorial, based on our design guidelines. We evaluated our design against a popular, recent fighting game, Guilty Gear Strive, in a user study with 10 players new to the genre. Our evaluation showed that our design improved on the in-game tutorial, in terms of supporting player learning. We also demonstrated that our design guidelines can provide useful insights into how to provide learning support in fighting game tutorials.

Heuristics present a cheap and effective way of evaluating usability. However, in video games, evaluating unique player experiences that are dependent on individual preferences and abilities presents a challenge that goes beyond usability. Video games are more than just functional software, so games heuristics have been adapted to help examine functionality and experience. This paper reports on how papers published in the ACM Digital Library between 2012 and 2022 develop and apply heuristics in video games research. We found that heuristics are often used outside their intended purpose of being used in an expert evaluation. Instead, they are used as survey instruments, interview guides, codes for thematic analysis, and as design guidelines. This research contributes to HCI and video games research by distinguishing the terms design guidelines and design principles from heuristics. We make recommendations for researchers around developing heuristics and conducting video game heuristic evaluations. We propose a method for operationalising heuristics and make recommendations for the implementation of heuristics to improve the quality of video game heuristic reviews.