For families, where abilities, motivations, and availability vary widely, opportunities for intergenerational play are limited. Designing games that cater to these differences remains an open challenge. In this paper, we first identify barriers related with time and expertise. Next, we propose asymmetric game design and asynchronous play to reconcile children's and adults' requirements; and interdependent gameplay mechanics to foster real-world interactions. Following this approach, we designed a testbed game and conducted a mixed-methods remote study with six pairs of adult-child family members. Our results showcase how asymmetric, asynchronous experiences can be leveraged to create novel gaming experiences that meet the requirements of family play. We discuss how interdependent progress can be designed to promote real-world interactions, creating pervasive conversational topics that permeate the family routine.

In an emergency situation, each response agent must act quickly and accurately. The support of a mobile device that can provide an appropriate insight of the surroundings and that allows users to exchange information with the other members of the emergency teams, can prevent harm and even save many lives. This paper presents a mobile application that integrates a georeferenced system with augmented reality techniques, in order to serve the needs of the operatives in emergency situations. The work intends to introduce solutions which optimize the performance with which the user takes advantage of the mobile application, such as the organization of the data flow that is displayed and the augmentation of the surrounding area. User studies were conducted with members of the National Navy. The results were positive although there are still some aspects that should be improved.

With the widespread use of social networks, sharing emotions has become easy and accessible to anyone with a smartphone or a computer. In this paper, we present a system capable of generating automatic highlight videos of sports match TV broadcasts based on the emotions shared by the spectators during the match, the audio, the analysis of the movement and manual annotations (when available). Our system also allows for the user to query the video to extract specific clips, such as dangerous attacking plays of a certain team. Our preliminary results were encouraging, showing that the creation of these summaries can be successfully done in very short time.

This paper presents a working prototype of PaintMyEmotions, an interactive self-reflection instrument that allows individuals to assess, express and monitor their affective states in a fun and engaging way. Despite the ever-increasing popularity of eHealth technologies, online interventions and research studies often present severe problems of attrition (low adherence to the program and/or high drop-out rates). To increase the chances for success of our project and subsequent research, we decided to test early and often, involving users from the beginning, in an iterative design cycle. In this article, we describe the process and the results of an early exploratory user study, where we analyzed the performance and usability of a working prototype, studied its potential, and explored aspects like engagement and joy of use.

There is a need to deliver personalized experiences in terms of synchronization between television broadcasts and second screen applications to avoid frustrating experiences. However, within a second screen gaming scenario based on TV broadcasts, if players synchronize with a delay higher than the real delay of the TV broadcast, they will have an unfair advantage over the others. To solve this issue, we introduce a software-based solution called Sync2FairPlay that can be integrated in any second screen gaming application. It provides a universal synchronization mechanism that helps users to achieve a pleasant second screen experience, while automatically dealing with cheating to provide a fair gaming experience. We also describe the user tests performed to validate our idea and the different components of Sync2FairPlay.

In this paper, we present an experimental study to evaluate the users' preferences and the potential of sharing emotions during live sports broadcasts. First, we evaluate whether participants prefer to visualise emotions and opinions on the mobile device or on the television while using a second screen application, and then we assess the potential of sharing emotions to automatically create appealing content. Results show that users do not have a clear preference for any of the two emotion visualization methods, but revealed very positive insights regarding the use of shared emotions to create video highlights.

The development of reactive, context aware mobile applications can be a complex task. EveWorks is an engine that provides event detection capabilities to other applications in mobile platforms, interfacing with them through expressions written in EveXL, its own domain-specific language. EveXL is bui

In this paper we present an interaction mechanism that allows TV viewers to synchronise their second screen applications in a simple and effortless way. This mechanism relies on the user feedback to deliver in-sync second screen events, and was designed as a universal solution that can be used on an

Adaptability is a desirable feature for context-aware applications to support the deployment of meaningful interactions on mobile devices. As such, flexible enough architectures are necessary to provide direct answers to applications requiring changes in their reactive behavior at runtime. To address this challenge, we present EveWorks, an Android application running on mobile devices, offering context-aware reactive services to other applications. Contrary to the norm found on the literature, EveWorks relies on definition of events of interest through expressions written in EveXL (EveWorks Expression Language), an original scripting language interpreted at runtime, thereby granting the desired adaptability to client context-aware applications. We evaluated the viability of EveWorks and EveXL and obtained evidence that EveXL is legible and straightforward, and is an adequate tool to express events. On the other hand, the results support EveWorks as a valid approach to facilitate development of reactive applications.

The reliable assessment of affective reactions to stimuli is paramount in a variety of scientific fields, including HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). Variation of emotional states over time, however, warrants the need for quick measurements of emotions. To address it, new tools for quick assessments of affective states have been developed. In this work, we explore the CAAT (Circumplex Affective Assessment Tool), an instrument with a unique design in the scope of affect assessment -- a graphical control element -- that makes it amenable to seamless integration in user interfaces. We briefly describe the CAAT and present a multi-dimensional evaluation that evidences the tool's viability. We have assessed its test-retest reliability, construct validity and quickness of use, by collecting data through an unsupervised, web-based user study. Results show high test-retest reliability, evidence the tool's construct validity and confirm its quickness of use, making it a good fit for longitudinal studies and systems requiring quick assessments of emotional reactions.

The exchange of opinions through chat-based services or social networks while watching TV shows has become a common practice. However, the use of these platforms requires users to shift their attention from the TV to whatever device they are accessing them with. This may be a problem in the case of live sports broadcasts, since it can cause users/viewers to miss important events. Addressing this issue, we introduce WeFeel, a system that enhances the experience of remote spectators of broadcasted sports events, by allowing them to share their opinions and emotions with friends through the TV screen using a mobile device. Results from user tests were highly positive, with participants manifesting great interest in using WeFeel.

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a new feature included on a second screen application for real-time interaction during live sports TV broadcasts. This feature allows remote users to bet if a goal is about to happen during a soccer match, increasing their interest, engagement and excitement towards the broadcasted event. To achieve these objectives, we used an eyes-free interaction method so users would not need to constantly shift their attention from the TV screen to the mobile device every time a goal might happen. We conducted an evaluation study, with the real users of the application, which is available on the market, to gather the users' feedback regarding their experience and the use of the interaction method. Results may give a considerable contribution to future researchers in this field, regarding the challenges involved when deploying real-time interactions during live broadcasted events.

When using mobile screen apps on touch-based mobile devices to interact with live sports TV broadcasts, people need to keep an eye on those devices, since they do not provide tactile feedback. If the app on the mobile screen requires user interaction when something exciting is about to happen on the TV screen, the user needs to shift attention from the TV to the mobile screen, spoiling the whole experience. This paper presents WeBet, a mobile game that prompts users to bet if a goal is about to happen during a football match, without requiring their visual attention. WeBet aims to study if this concept conveys an exciting user experience by allowing a natural interaction with the mobile screen without looking at it. Results from a preliminary user test helped to validate our approach and identified important refinements for future work.

This paper introduces IVO (Integrated Virtual Operator), a framework to build and deploy context-aware mobile applications using smartphones as the ubiquitous interaction device. The framework uses an event-driven workflow model to support the dynamic nature of context-aware applications, and is designed to enable non-programmers to create and run new mobile applications. An IVO application is described as a set of workflows triggered by events that are automatically generated in runtime by sensing the environment, either through the smartphone's own sensors, or using a sensor infrastructure external to the smartphone. This paper describes, in more detail, the Android client developed to validate the framework's usability and usefulness, and discusses the usability tests of an application developed with the framework.