Creating 3D assets is essential for game development. Modeling requires time and technical skills, and fast prototyping is challenging, especially for novice designers. To make complex 3D modeling more accessible while strengthening creativity, we present CreatureCreator, a tool that enables users to generate 3D models from an image of a created artifact. We investigated two input modalities: drawing with pen and paper and sculpting with clay. Adding an analog input modality to the generation process could lower the entry barrier for diverse user groups, enabling intuitive and creative modeling. In a within-subject study with game design-experienced participants (n=20), both modalities scored highly for user experience, engagement, and creativity support, with the clay input especially valued for its generated models and enhanced sense of control. The interaction workflow supports playful exploration by allowing users to experiment with parameters and using AI as a production and/or ideation partner.

Advances in natural language processing and understanding have led to a rapid growth in the popularity of conversational user interfaces (CUIs). While CUIs introduce novel benefits, they also yield risks that may exploit people’s trust. Although research looking at unethical design deployed through graphical user interfaces (GUIs) established a thorough understanding of so-called dark patterns, there is a need to continue this discourse within the CUI community to understand potentially problematic interactions. Addressing this gap, we interviewed 27 participants from three cohorts: researchers, practitioners, and frequent users of CUIs. Applying thematic analysis, we construct five themes reflecting each cohort’s insights about ethical design challenges and introduce the CUI Expectation Cycle, bridging system capabilities and user expectations while considering each theme’s ethical caveats. This research aims to inform future development of CUIs to consider ethical constraints while adopting a human-centred approach.

Digital companions and conversational agents are becoming increasingly popular in our everyday lives. Natural language interfaces play an important role in ubiquitous computing: voice assistants are used to control smart home devices and smartphone applications; chatbots serve as an interface to solve tasks and acquire information easily. However, misunderstandings due to non-standard language, expressions that serve social functions without conveying information, or a lack of situational awareness still pose problems for these interfaces. Humans are able to prevent or repair communication failures by imitating their conversation partner’s lexical choices, sentence structures, and overall language style; a mechanism known as Linguistic Alignment. In this paper we present different strategies to easily integrate an alignment effect in natural language interfaces. We implemented a chatbot that imitates alignment and tested it in an online user study with 75 participants. Our results show that alignment helps to decrease user frustration and perceived task workload.

The widespread popularity of Pokémon GO presents the first opportunity to observe the geographic effects of location-based gaming at scale. This paper reports the results of a mixed methods study of the geography of Pokémon GO that includes a five-country field survey of 375 Pokémon GO players and a large scale geostatistical analysis of game elements. Focusing on the key geographic themes of places and movement, we find that the design of Pokémon GO reinforces existing geographically-linked biases (e.g. the game advantages urban areas and neighborhoods with smaller minority populations), that Pokémon GO may have instigated a relatively rare large-scale shift in global human mobility patterns, and that Pokémon GO has geographically-linked safety risks, but not those typically emphasized by the media. Our results point to geographic design implications for future systems in this space such as a means through which the geographic biases present in Pokémon GO may be counteracted.

Landmark-based navigation systems have proven benefits relative to traditional turn-by-turn systems that use street names and distances. However, one obstacle to the implementation of landmark-based navigation systems is the complex challenge of selecting salient local landmarks at each decision point for each user. In this paper, we present Pharos, a novel system that extends turn-by-turn navigation instructions using a single global landmark (e.g. the Eiffel Tower, the Burj Khalifa, municipal TV towers) rather than multiple, hard-to-select local landmarks. We first show that our approach is feasible in a large number of cities around the world through the use of computer vision to select global landmarks. We then present the results of a study demonstrating that by including global landmarks in navigation instructions, users navigate more confidently and build a more accurate mental map of the navigated area than using turn-by-turn instructions.