Games empowering active engagement in real-world climate adaptation measures are underexplored. Yet, bottom-up engagement is crucial for addressing natural hazard impacts at the community and individual levels. Our work employed an iterative research for and through co-design approach to develop a locally adapted tabletop game for a community-led educational Center. We tested the game onsite (n = 254), followed by two surveys, one immediately after playing (n = 57) and one conducted two weeks later (n = 11), assessing players’ awareness, and sense of empowerment and agency. Results show an increase in participants’ awareness of local countermeasures, a sense of agency, and their participatory efficacy in contributing to their own, their family’s, and their community’s climate resilience. Our work contributes a transferable game concept that reflects complex real-world interdependencies, empowering a sense of agency through practice-based game mechanics.

Wildfire preparedness is a deeply social challenge that depends on shared understanding, coordinated action, and community-level decision-making. Serious games have emerged as promising tools for supporting preparedness learning, yet their evaluation often relies on individual outcomes or surveys, leaving interactional learning processes underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing how players from wildfire-affected communities collaboratively constructed preparedness knowledge while playing Firesafe Friends, a two-player serious game. Using a Discourse Acts approach, we analyzed dialogue from onsite and remote sessions (n = 20) and triangulated the findings with pre/post surveys and observational notes. Our analysis reveals distinct phases of collaborative learning – orientation, strategy formation, collaboration, and reflection – marked by shifts in cognitive, social, and integrated discourse acts. Budget constraints prompted negotiation, contested upgrades supported collective reasoning, and reflective dialogue helped players connect in-game decisions to real-world preparedness. We contribute (1) an empirical analysis of discourse as a mechanism for resilience learning, (2) a discourse-centered triangulated evaluation method, and (3) design implications for resilience games that scaffold negotiation and reflection to strengthen community preparedness.

Emotion regulation skills are crucial for wellbeing, yet mastering them is not trivial. Because of wearability, private passthrough display, and ability to keep users connected to their surroundings, Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have potential for supporting on-the-spot emotion regulation. We designed TouchEmotion, an AR design exemplar consisting of three prototypes aimed to support metaphorical emotional trajectories for regulating anxiety, anger, and boredom. We employed Snap Spectacles to design interactive animations and touchpad interactions, which we examined through an exploratory study with 18 participants. Findings indicate potential of AR technologies and in particular of metaphorical emotional trajectories coupled with touch-based interactions for on-the-spot regulation of three discrete negative emotions. We advanced a design space for on-the-spot emotion regulation technologies, and proposed five design implications: nature-inspired slow transitions, frictions to support frustration tolerance, layered randomness to support surprise, and finger-worn devices integrated with AR technologies for increased acceptance in public contexts.

lives severely, requiring everyone living in risk areas to become

Most videoconferencing technologies presently struggle to keep people engaged during team meetings. Recent research points to the potential of social virtual and extended reality (VR/XR) technologies to transform remote meetings, offering innovative approaches through the design of novel meeting tools. This pictorial presents the design of five such prototypes of VR meeting support tools: conversation visualization, embodied affinity signaling, tools for avatar and space modulation, and time management. Deployed in a custom-built Mozilla Hubs environment, this toolkit was tested with five expert user teams in a two-fold study: researcher-moderated VR workshops (N=28) and unmoderated VR meetings (N=40). In this pictorial, the focus is on the design of the prototypes, with highlights of select results from participants’ feedback and discussion of the perceived merit of the prototypes’ design in supporting meeting interactions.

Figure 1: Example of the VR game with the time remaining to evacuate.

As wildfires increasingly threaten communities worldwide, those at risk can benefit from community-centric approaches to designing interventions. A multi-layered approach can make members of the community powerful co-designers by incorporating their ideas alongside insights from experts and designers to successfully create and deploy an intervention. We took a community-centered Research through Design approach to develop a Serious Game to promote wildfire preparedness in two communities. Participatory Design workshops, interviews, and targeted user studies allowed us to leverage local knowledge of residents and expertise of stakeholders at distinct stages where their insight could be best utilized. Based on this work, we propose a process for designing Serious Games as interventions for complex societal challenges by utilizing community and expert involvement throughout iteration. Our findings suggest that the games we designed following this process lead to concrete learning and opportunities for discussion, and offer flexibility for integration with other community initiatives.

STEM education is an important component of broadening participation in computational fields, and robotics-inspired kits are a common avenue for teaching youth computational concepts. In this pictorial, we contrast widely used kits (i.e., Lego Mindstorms, Sphero, and DASH) with a kit we created in the form of a module embedded in a summer camp, that takes an alternative approach. Most existing kits are designed with clear-cut, narrowly defined end goals for learners to accomplish. The lessons typically do not include teaching design concepts, and do not offer opportunities for crafting, personalization, and storytelling. We offer a more flexible and creative kit design; integrating concepts such as design thinking, iterative design, and collaboration. We illustrate our design process used to craft the kit/module, along with artifacts collected from its use, and discuss how this approach might help support a broader range of groups—particularly those that are underrepresented in STEM.

Live action roleplay (larp) has a wide range of applications and can be relevant in relation to HCI. While there has been research about larp in relation to topics such as embodied interaction, playfulness, and futuring published in HCI venues since the early 2000s, there is not yet a compilation of this knowledge. In this article, we synthesize knowledge about larp and larp-adjacent work within the domain of HCI. We present a practitioner overview from an expert group of larp researchers, the results of a literature review, and highlight particular larp research exemplars which all work together to showcase the diverse set of ways that larp can be utilized in relation to HCI topics and research. This article identifies the need for further discussions toward establishing best practices for utilizing larp in relation to HCI research, as well as advocating for increased engagement with larps outside academia.

Cuteness in design can brighten our daily lives by bringing feelings of joy, comfort, and healing to our experiences. Previous HCI works have explored how cuteness can be leveraged to create more joyful user experiences across a variety of technologies, for example, in the design of cute interfaces for AI agents and the cute physical and behavioral aspects of robots. These works rely on the “Baby Schema” identified by ethologist Konrad Lorenz to apply cuteness as a decoration. This pictorial explores ways that artists and designers can contribute their cultural and aesthetic understandings of cuteness to create richer interactive experiences. Our interpretive framework serves as a provocation for discussing the value of style in the design of interactive systems, and provides guidance for defining cuteness building blocks to support interdisciplinary teams of artists, designers and engineers in the creation of cute user experiences.

In the 21st century workplace (especially in COVID times), much human social interaction occurs during virtual meetings. Unlike traditional screen-based remote meetings, VR meetings promise a more richly embodied form of communication. This paper maps the experiential terrain of seven commercial VR meeting applications, with a particular focus on the range of shared social experiences and collaborative abilities these applications may enable or constrain. We examine a range of applications including Spatial, Glue VR, MeetinVR, Mozilla Hubs, VRChat, AltspaceVR, and Rec Room. We analyze and map avatar system strategies, meeting environments and in-world cues, meeting invitation model, and different models of participation. In addition, we argue that commercial applications for meeting in VR that cater to workplace contexts might benefit from borrowing some of the strategies used in more leisure-focused environments for supporting social interaction.

There is a growing interest in human-computer interaction (HCI) to envision, design, and evaluate technology-enabled interventions that support users’ emotion regulation. This interest stems in part from increased recognition that the ability to regulate emotions is critical to mental health, and that a lack of effective emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic factor for mental illness. However, the potential to combine innovative HCI designs with the theoretical grounding and state-of-the-art interventions from psychology has yet to be fully realised. In this article, we synthesise HCI work on emotion regulation interventions and propose a three-part framework to guide technology designers in making: (i) theory-informed decisions about intervention targets; (ii) strategic decisions regarding the technology-enabled intervention mechanisms to be included in the system; and (iii) practical decisions around previous implementations of the selected intervention components. We show how this framework can both systematise HCI work to date and suggest a research agenda for future work.

This paper presents a case study of designing and running a Larp (live action role play)-based summer camp in which middle school-age girls create social wearables, toward building computational and design skills, interest, and self-efficacy. Our design draws upon prior evidence that edu-larps can address the identity gap for underrepresented groups in STEM. The focus on creation of social wearables built using E-textiles builds on existing larp practices that use costuming as a method for establishing identity as well as for providing a platform campers can use to enhance their dramatic spectacles. Our findings will be of interest to those working in the areas of informal learning of computation through Arduino and another small device programming, as well as those interested in the intersection of larp and technology design practices, and edu-larp.

Here we present a co-design exploration into the potential of technology to playfully re-signify urban spaces. We created a speculative catalog of urban tech and used it to facilitate multi-stakeholder discussions about the playful potential of smart cities. The learnings from our co-design engagements embody different people's ideas of how tech might and might not support rich forms of urban play, and contribute to ongoing efforts at exploring how to playfully reconfigure our cities. We present: (1) a list of inspirational play potentials of urban spaces—i.e. playful things already people do, and enjoy, in the public space; (2) a portfolio of speculative ideas that show how tech might help to realize that potential; and (3) a discussion of stakeholders’ responses to these ideas. Our work can provide designers with inspiration and actionable advice for cultivating forms of urban play that cater to people's socio-emotional needs.

In the 21st century workplace, a great deal of social interaction occurs in meetings. However, research on meetings – and in particular workplace meetings – has long demonstrated the challenges inv...

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted processes interaction designers took for granted, challenging some of our most commonplace design practices. Participatory and situated approaches have been impacted the most: where we engaged stakeholders in-person and in-context, during this time we must co-design remotely and in virtual environments. Such a dramatic change calls for new co-design methods. In this article, we present a novel remote strategy for involving stakeholders to co-design interactive technology: Designerly Tele-Experiences (DTE). Our methodological proposal enables participants to experience early design concepts in-the-wild as a provocation to contribute new ideas that resonate with their experiential preferences. Here we describe the rationale for DTE, unpack how it builds on and extends existing methods, and provide actionable guidelines from our experience of using it in our work. Our contribution will empower interaction designers to embrace participatory and situated approaches even when engaging stakeholders in person is not possible or desirable.

We present a Research-through-Design case study of the design and development of an intimate-space tangible device perhaps best understood as a socially assistive robot, aimed at scaffolding children’s efforts at emotional regulation. This case study covers the initial research device development, as well as knowledge transfer to a product development company toward translating the research into a workable commercial product that could also serve as a robust “research product” for field trials. Key contributions to the literature include: (1) sharing of lessons learned from the knowledge transfer process that can be useful to others interested in developing robust products (whether commercial or research) that preserve design values, while allowing for large scale deployment and research; (2) articulation of a design space in HCI/HRI (Human Robot Interaction) of intimate space socially assistive robots , with the current artifact as a central exemplar, contextualized alongside other related HRI artifacts.

In this paper, we propose a strong concept for interaction design: Synergistic Social Technology (SST). This concept describes systems in which technology is designed with its own ‘need’ for interaction. As a result of responding to these needs, people who use the system may benefit from social interaction with others who use the system. This concept arose through the design, prototyping, and study of a social wearable design that we called Robo-Shoe-Flies. We articulate the core principles of the SST concept. We also describe the Research-through-Design process that inspired its development and associated design-focused observations. This work may inspire those in the IxD or HCI communities focused on the design and development of technology intended to support social interaction, particularly in the sense of encouraging collective, mutually-beneficial action.

In this pictorial, we explore the potential of social media to help inspire ideas for future drone design applications that support playful and social experiences. Drawing from a Situated Play Design approach [3], we turn to social media posts to identify recurring playful and social instances of drone use in social settings. We present the results of collecting 143 posts found on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, from which we identified a non-exhaustive.list.of.drone-based.play.potentials, i.e. existing ways in which people already appropriate drones to playfully augment social situations. We present these play potentials as potentially.valuable and inherently situated intermediate-level knowledge with generative power. We argue they might inspire the design of future.drone.technologies.and.experiences in Human-Drone Interaction (HDI), in directions that increasingly respond to people's desires for play and social connection.

There is an open call for technology to be more playful [5, 79] and for tech design to be more inclusive of people with disabilities [80]. In the era of COVID19, it is often unsafe for the public in general and people with disabilities, in particular, to engage in in-person design exercises using traditional methods. This presents a missed opportunity as these populations are already sharing playful content rich with tacit design knowledge that can be used to inspire the design of playful everyday technology. We present our process of scraping play potentials [4] from TikTok from content creators with disabilities to generate design concepts that may inspire future technology design. We share 7 emerging themes from the scraped content, a catalog of design concepts that may inspire designers, and discuss the relevance of the emerging themes and possible implications for the design concepts.

In this paper, we present an annotated portfolio of speculative ideas that emerged from a co-design process where we investigated the playful potential of day-to-day mealtime. Our portfolio illustrates the learnings from our participatory engagements: it embodies ours and our participants' ideas of how technology might support increasingly playful and socio-emotionally rich experiences around food. We contribute: (1) a list of play potentials of mealtime-i.e. people's existing playful practices with food-that will point designers towards socio-emotionally desirable play-food experiences; (2) a portfolio of speculative design ideas that illustrate how mealtime technology could help to realize that playful potential; and (3) a discussion of our participants' experiences with and responses to lo-fi prototypes of our ideas. Our work will provoke designers to carefully consider the impact of food-tech innovation on the quality of people's social eating experiences and inspire them to cultivate forms of food-play that are socio-emotionally rich.?

In this pictorial, we turn to culture and traditions to present an annotated portfolio of play-food potentials, i.e. interesting design qualities and/or interaction mechanisms that could help promote playful and social engagement in food practices. Our portfolio emerged from a one-day workshop where we played with and analyzed a collection of 27 food traditions from diverse cultural backgrounds and historical periods. We highlight play forms and experiential textures that are underexplored in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research. Our contribution is intended to inspire designers to broaden the palette of play experiences and emotions embraced in HFI.

Despite the capacity of play to spontaneously emerge in our daily life, the scope of application of play design in HCI is generally narrower, specifically targeting areas of pure leisure, or wholly utilitarian and productive play. Here we focus on the value of play design to respond to and support our natural gravitation towards emergent play that helps to meet our social and emotional needs. We present a bridging concept: Technology for Situated and Emergent Play, i.e. technology design that supports playful engagement that emerges interwoven with our everyday activities outside leisure, and that enriches these activities with socio-emotional value. Our intermediate-level contribution has value as a synthesis piece: it weaves together theories of play and play design and bridges them with concrete design examples. As a bridging concept, it contributes: i) theoretical grounding; ii) inspiring design exemplars that illustrate the theory and foreground its value; and iii) design articulations in the form of valuable experiential qualities and design features. Our work can help to focus design agendas for playful technology and inspire future designs in this space.

Given the prevalence and adverse impact of anxiety, there is considerable interest in using technology to regulate anxiety. Evaluating the efficacy of such technology in terms of both the average effect (the intervention efficacy) and the heterogeneous effect (for whom and in what context the intervention was effective) is of paramount importance. In this paper, we demonstrate the efficacy of PIV, a personalized breathing pacer, in reducing anxiety in the presence of a cognitive stressor. We also quantify the relation between our specific stressor and PIV-user engagement. To our knowledge, this is the first mixed-design study of a vibrotactile affect regulation technology which accounts for a specific stressor and for individual differences in relation to the technology's efficacy. Guidelines in this paper can be applied for designing and evaluating other affect regulation technologies.

Social closeness is important for health and well-being, but is difficult to maintain over a distance. Games can help connect people by strengthening existing relationships or creating new ones through shared playful experiences. We present the design and evaluation of 'In the Same Boat' (ITSB), a two-player infinite runner designed to foster social closeness in distributed dyads. ITSB leverages the synchronization of both players' input to steer a canoe down a river and avoid obstacles. We created two versions: embodied controls, which use players' physiological signals (breath rate, facial expressions), and standard keyboard controls. Results from a study with 35 dyads indicate that ITSB fostered affiliation, and while embodied controls were less intuitive, people enjoyed them more. Further, photos of the dyads were rated as happier and closer in the embodied condition, indicating the potential of embodied controls to foster social closeness in synchronized play over a distance.

We describe the design and evaluation of PIV, a personalizable and inconspicuous vibrotactile breathing pacer. Given the prevalence and adverse impact of anxiety and anxiety disorders, our goal is to develop a technology that helps people regulate their anxiety through paced breathing. We examined two previously unstudied questions: What is an effective vibrotactile pattern for paced breathing, and where should the tactors be placed on the body to make the pacer most effective? We designed a series of personalized vibrotactile pacing patterns, and evaluated them on three body sites, in terms of self-reported and psychophysiological measures including skin conductance and breath wave parameters. The results show that personalization plays an important role in PIV’s pattern and placement design choices. We concluded that the choice of frequency based, strong-exhale-phased patterns and abdomen placement are appropriate for future studies.

User involvement is well established in game and play design. But in a time when play design is becoming relevant in domains beyond pure entertainment, and play blends into everyday activity in diverse ways, we need to revisit old, and develop new, user involvement methods. Using a situated perspective and Research through Design, we present Situated Play Design (SPD), a novel approach for the design of playful interventions aimed at open-ended, everyday activities that are non-entertainment based. Like user-centered game and play design methods, our contribution leverages user engagement; like Participatory Design methods, our method acknowledges the co-creating role of end users. SPD extends those approaches by focusing on uncovering existing manifestations of contextual playful engagement and using them as design material. Through two case studies, we illustrate our approach and the design value of using existing and emergent playful interactions of users in context as inspirations for future designs. This allows us to provide actionable strategies to design for in-context playful engagement.

Wearables are integrated into many aspects of our lives, yet, we still need further guidance to develop devices that truly enhance in-person interactions, rather than detract from them by taking people's attention away from the moment and one another. The value of this paper is twofold: first, we present an annotated portfolio of 'social wearables', namely technology designs worn on the body that augment co-located interaction. The design work described can serve as inspiration for others. Then we propose a design framework for social wearables grounded in prior work, as well as our own design research, that can help designers to ideate by raising valuable questions to begin their inquiry with and use to evaluate their designs. We illustrate the evaluative value of this framework through two social wearable designs, each tested in the appropriate social setting.

In the emerging ecology of commercial social VR, avatars that serve to represent individuals within these multi-user virtual worlds are at the heart of the embodied social experience. Current industry approaches to avatars in social VR applications vary widely, and the (sometimes tacit) design knowledge acquired by those who created these platforms has much to offer research in HCI. In this paper, we describe current design practices, and reflect on the design approaches that characterize avatars and avatar systems in this emerging commercial sector. To investigate design approaches to avatar systems and their impact on communication and interaction with people within this medium, we interviewed industry experts associated with a range of platforms including Rec Room, AltspaceVR, High Fidelity, VRChat, Anyland, and Mozilla Hubs. In analyzing the ways that design choices shape embodied experience, we map design approaches to avatar systems in this evolving landscape and make preliminary claims about the impact of these varying design approaches.

Activity in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research is skyrocketing across a broad range of disciplinary interests and concerns. The dynamic and heterogeneous nature of this emerging field presents a challenge to scholars wishing to critically engage with prior work, identify gaps and ensure impact. It also challenges the formation of community. We present a Systematic Mapping Study of HFI research and an online data visualisation tool developed to respond to these issues. The tool allows researchers to engage in new ways with the HFI literature, propose modifications and additions to the review, and thereby actively engage in community-making. Our contribution is threefold: (1) we characterize the state of HFI, reporting trends, challenges and opportunities; (2) we provide a taxonomy and tool for diffractive reading of the literature; and (3) we offer our approach for adaptation by research fields facing similar challenges, positing value of the tool and approach beyond HFI.

Vulnerability is a common experience in everyday life and is frequently perceived as a flaw to be excised in technology design. Yet, research indicates it is an essential aspect of wholehearted living among others. In this paper, we present the design and deployment of 'True Colors', a novel wearable device intended to support social interaction in a live action roleplay game (LARP) setting. We describe the Research-through-Design process that helped us to discover and articulate the possibility space of vulnerability in the design of social wearables, as support for producing a sense of social empowerment and connection among wearers within the LARP. We draw conclusions that may be of value to others designing wearables and related technologies aimed at supporting co-located social interaction in games/play.

Commercial social VR applications represent a diverse and evolving ecology with competing models of what it means to be social in VR. Drawing from expert interviews, this paper examines how the creators of different social VR applications think about how their platforms frame, support, shape, or constrain social interaction. The study covers a range of applications including: Rec Room, High Fidelity, VRChat, Mozilla Hubs, Altspace VR, AnyLand, and Facebook Spaces. We contextualize design choices underlying these applications, with particular attention paid to the ways that industry experts perceive, and seek to shape, the relationship between user experiences and design choices. We underscore considerations related to: (1) aesthetics of place (2) embodied affordances, (3) social mechanics, (4) and tactics for shaping social norms and mitigating harassment. Drawing on this analysis, we discuss the stakes of these choices, suggest future research directions, and propose an emerging design framework for shaping pro-social behavior in VR.

Deployment of wearables for games has attracted the interest of designers and researchers both in academia and industry. However, few of these projects treat wearables as an integral part of the gameplay, often considering them as an extension of the central on-screen experience. While preliminary forays into wearable play show promise, we see a need for a rigorous design framework to illuminate the possibilities for the future of wearables for playful interaction design. In this paper we propose a Design Framework for Playful Wearables stemming from our extensive research and hands-on experience in leading four long-term game research projects incorporating wearables. We divide our framework into three high-level categories: the performative, the social and the interactive. We contend that this design space can be both a design tool for creators of wearable playful activities, as well as an analytical lens for evaluating existing wearable systems.

Fidgeting involves interacting with objects using repetitive hand movements. Before you can study its effects, you must first study the objects with which people choose to fidget. We present the findings of our five-phase three-month study with 28 children, 24 parents, and 2 teachers examining fidget material qualities and inherent interactions children gravitate towards when fidgeting and what, if any, connections can be made between their emotional state or activity when fidgeting and their fidget interactions/materials preferences. Our study included structured interviews, observations during usage, and design workshops. We present novel insights concerning fidget object preferences, across factors including materials, interactions, stealth, durability and sound, which together can act as guidelines in the development of educational, experimental and utility tangibles for children. For example, children tend to prefer a fidget item with inherent squeezing interactions when they are angry and clicking/pressing/tapping interactions when they are bored.

In this paper we propose that game design strategies and theories can be useful tools for supporting the design of innovative socio-technical systems aimed at supporting social co-presence. We support this proposal with an annotated portfolio of a series of research prototype games that investigate sensor affordances and configurations to sustain and enhance social co-presence. We introduce relevant theory from game studies (the magic circle; the MDA (mechanics/dynamics/aesthetics framework)) to help ground and guide the use of game design in HCI practice. We conclude with recommendations for adopting game design as a supplementary research technique, with caveats about the limits of the approach.

While recent work has begun to evaluate the efficacy of educational programming games, many common design decisions in these games (e.g., single player gameplay using touchpad or mouse) have not been explored for learning outcomes. For instance, alternative design approaches such as collaborative play and embodied interaction with tangibles may also provide important benefits to learners. To better understand how these design decisions impact learning and related factors, we created an educational programming game that allows for systematically varying input method and mode of play. In this paper, we describe design rationale for mouse and tangible versions of our game, and report a 2x2 factorial experiment comparing efficacy of mouse and tangible input methods with individual and collaborative modes of play. Results indicate tangibles have a greater positive impact on learning, situational interest, enjoyment, and programming self-beliefs. We also found collaborative play helps further reduce programming anxiety over individual play.

Designing wearable technology that supports physical and social engagement in a collocated setting is challenging. In this research, we reached out to an expert community of crafters of social experiences: larpers (live action role players). Larpers and larp designers have a longstanding tradition of designing and making use of a variety of elements, such as costumes, physical objects, environments, and recently also digital artifacts. These are crafted in support of co-experience values that we argue can inform the design of social wearables. We engaged in a co-design process with a game designer and co-founder of a larp production company, and embedded the resulting social wearables in a larp. Here, we present the results of this design and implementation process, and articulate design affordances that resonate with our larp designer' values. This work may inspire and inform researchers and designers creating wearable technology that is aimed at supporting collocated engagement.

We present an exploration of e-textile/soft materials that can be used to capture fidget traces, while providing the touch sensations that fidgeters report seeking out in everyday fidget objects [3,4,5]. We created two soft-bodied "sampler" objects with a range of smart fidgeting affordances, which we describe in this paper, along with a general outline of the range of properties explored. This work extends exploration of a novel design space introduced in [4], toward the end goal of creating smart fidget objects that aid self-regulation. We include an overview of our design process, present some preliminary insights about materials that support this design space, and conclude with current and future directions for the work.

Interventions that help children develop protective factors against mental health disorders are an inherently social endeavour, relying on a number of actors from within the family as well as the school context. Little work thus far in CSCW and HCI has examined the potential of technology to support or enhance such interventions. This paper provides the first steps to unpacking this socio-technical design space, focusing on emotional regulation (ER) as a specific instance of a protective factor. We combine a user-centred approach to understanding lived experiences of families (interviews, design workshops) with an expert-led understanding of what makes interventions psychologically effective. Our findings suggest the potential of technology to enable a shift in how prevention interventions are designed and delivered: empowering children and parents through a new model of 'child-led, situated interventions', where participants learn through actionable support directly within family life, as opposed to didactic in-person workshops and a subsequent 'skills application'. This conceptual model was then instantiated in a technology probe, which was deployed with 14 families. The promising field study findings provide an initial proof-of-concept validation of the proposed approach.

Typically wearable devices are conceived of and constructed as stand-alone, individually based technologies. However, in practice wearables become part of the social context and ecology of overall device use. We present a strong concept for design: Interdependent Wearables (for play): wearables designed to require shared attention and mutual awareness, with interdependent functionality that encourages and rewards collocated interaction. The concept arose through design, development, and public exhibition of Hotaru, a collocated social game that uses wearables as game controllers. Hotaru has been shown in festivals and also formally playtested with 62 individuals. To more fully articulate the Interdependent Wearables strong concept, we compared this system's design with wearable and embodied systems for play and other purposes, and drew upon relevant HCI theory. The work is of benefit to those in the HCI/UX community focused on the design and development of social wearable technologies, especially those interested in supporting collocated interaction.

Recent work has highlighted a notable divide in communication and collaboration between technical and social science/humanities disciplines within games research. In order to provide deeper insight around this apparent separation and underlying difference in epistemic cultures, we interviewed experts from various communities within games research. Our findings highlight some fundamental differences in research methodologies, publication practices, and epistemic cultures that need consideration in the larger discussion around future directions of games research. We in turn utilize these differing viewpoints to consider an assortment of approaches that could potentially better address the needs of technical, social science, and humanities sub-communities within games research.

While there are common design decisions in existing games for teaching Computer Science (single player puzzle based games for the touchpad/keyboard and mouse), recent work has suggested that alternative approaches such as collaborative play and physically embodied designs may also provide important benefits to learners. In order to explore how making interactions with an educational programming game more physically embodied could impact collaborative play, we created an educational programming game called Bots & (Main)Frames. We then conducted a preliminary study to examine if the level designs achieved desired challenge and explore how two versions of the game with different forms of physical embodiment/input (e.g., mouse vs. tangible programming blocks) impacted player interactions underlying collaboration. We found that game levels seem to provide desired increasing challenge, and that players often used the mouse and tangible programming blocks to aid communication/collaboration in distinctly different ways.

In this paper, we present All the Feels, a tool that provides an overlay of biometric and webcam-derived data onto the interface of the popular video game streaming service, Twitch. This overlay provides visualization of heart rate, skin conductance, and facial emotion recognition. It is intended to enhance the spectator experience and improve streamer-spectator connection. We present results of a preliminary study investigating spectator reactions to the introduction of this tool, via a live test with a streamer. Analysis of the stream combined with survey responses from 17 spectators indicates enhanced enjoyment of the stream, and suggests that spectators may feel more connected to the streamer. This work opens up opportunities to improve stream quality and spectator engagement through the introduction of an interface that includes biometric signals.

During the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in supporting social play through the design of collocated digital games, alongside efforts to better understand social-physical modes of play. In this paper, we present relevant insights from a well-established gaming community, the larp (Live Action Role Play) community. This community has a longstanding tradition of making use of costumes, physical environments, and objects to shape player experience. We conducted a survey completed by 39 larpers concerning how they use digital technology in larp, and the way technology is designed and appropriated to augment the larp experience. Here, we present early results in the form of a preliminary taxonomy of technologies in larps, as well as key trends for design, use, and appropriation of technology to impact in-game social and emotional experience.

We present an ongoing project exploring the use of costumes as game controllers. This collaboration between an artist and a researcher involves creating and evaluating a game for two players that uses costumes to drive core mechanics and interactions. We aim to give players a sense of transformation and connection, and to create an engaging spectacle for others. We discuss the design of the game, iterations in its form, and our plans for conducting user research with the finished game.

There has been a significant increase in commercial interest in wearable technologies, spearheaded by Google's Glass project, and also by the success of a new generation of fitness oriented biosensors such as the Fitbit, the Bodymedia Fit, and the Misfit Shine. Concurrently, there has been a proliferation of embodied interfaces for digital games such as Nintendo's Wii, Sony's Move controller, and Microsoft's Kinect. These technologies often only scratch the surface of the design possibility space, overlooking nuances of social and emotional experience for wearers/players that are important in other areas of design, such as theatrical costuming and fashion. We propose a studio that offers participants the chance to create wearable game controllers that afford a playful exploration of this design terrain, encouraging transformation, collaboration, and enjoyment of rich spectacle.

Games have been part of human–computer interaction (HCI) research since the first CHI conference in 1982. At that gathering, Tom Malone, then at Xerox PARC, presented insights from the study of com...

Movement-based digital games are becoming increasingly popular, yet there is limited comprehensive guidance on how to design these games. In this article we discuss a set of guidelines for movement-based game design that were initially presented at CHI 2014 (Mueller & Isbister, 2014). These guidelines were developed through reflection upon our research-based game development practice and then validated and refined through interviews with 14 movement-based game design experts with experience in the academic, independent, and commercial game development domains. In this article, we provide an in-depth contextualization and explanation of the research process that led to the creation of the final guidelines and discuss what human–computer interaction researchers and designers might learn from the guidelines beyond entertainment contexts. The primary contribution of this research is a body of generative intermediate-level knowledge (Höök & Löwgren, 2012) in the design research tradition that is readily accessible and actionable for the design of future movement-based games and other movement-based interfaces.

Movement-based digital games are becoming increasingly popular, yet there is limited comprehensive guidance on how to design these games. We present a set of guidelines for movement-based game design that has emerged from our research-based game development practice. These guidelines have been examined and refined by 14 movement-based game design experts with experience in the academic, independent and commercial game development domains. We contextualize the guidelines using current findings about movement-based game and interaction design, taken from both published research papers and game design venues. Our primary contribution is a body of generative intermediate-level knowledge in the design research tradition that is readily accessible and actionable for the design of future movement-based games.

We present our ongoing work to develop the concept of physical "margin" spaces around software and a new type of human computer interaction. Our novel "Fidget Widgets" seek to engage users' interrelated bodily motions, affective states, and cognitive functions to selectively enhance creativity, focus, calm, etc. Building playful interactions embodying "mindless" activities like doodling, fidgeting, and fiddling, we are working to demonstrate the value of incidental tangible interactions in the physical spaces surrounding digital workspaces. We intend these secondary interactions to have no intrinsic goals; rather these interactions extrinsically enhance a user's state toward the completion of their primary tasks.

We present our ongoing work to develop the concept of physical "margin" spaces around software and a new type of human computer interaction. Our novel "Fidget Widgets" seek to engage users' interrelated bodily motions, affective states, and cognitive functions to selectively enhance creativity, focus, calm, etc. Building playful interactions embodying "mindless" activities like doodling, fidgeting, and fiddling, we are working to demonstrate the value of incidental tangible interactions in the physical spaces surrounding digital workspaces. We intend these secondary interactions to have no intrinsic goals; rather these interactions extrinsically enhance a user's state toward the completion of their primary tasks.

The articles in this special section focus on the use of emotion technology and applications in computer games.

This paper investigates multitouch gestures for user authentication on touch sensitive devices. A canonical set of 22 multitouch gestures was defined using characteristics of hand and finger movement. Then, a multitouch gesture matching algorithm robust to orientation and translation was developed. Two different studies were performed to evaluate the concept. First, a single session experiment was performed in order to explore feasibility of multitouch gestures for user authentication. Testing on the canonical set showed that the system could achieve good performance in terms of distinguishing between gestures performed by different users. In addition, the tests demonstrated a desirable alignment of usability and security as gestures that were more secure from a biometric point of view were rated as more desirable in terms of ease, pleasure, and excitement. Second, a study involving a three-session experiment was performed. Results indicate that biometric information gleaned from a short user-device interaction remains consistent across gaps of several days, though there is noticeable degradation of performance when the authentication is performed over multiple sessions. In addition, the study showed that user-defined gestures yield the highest recognition rate among all other gestures, whereas the use of multiple gestures in a sequence aids in boosting verification accuracy. In terms of memorability, the study showed that it is feasible for a user to recall user-defined gestural passwords and it is observed that the recall rate increases over time. It is also noticed that performing a user-defined gesture over a customized background image does result in higher verification performance. In terms of usability, the study shows that users did not have difficulty in performing multitouch gestures as they all rated each gesture as easy to perform.

In this paper, we present a novel multi-touch gesture-based authentication technique. We take advantage of the multi-touch surface to combine biometric techniques with gestural input. We defined a comprehensive set of five-finger touch gestures, based upon classifying movement characteristics of the center of the palm and fingertips, and tested them in a user study combining biometric data collection with usability questions. Using pattern recognition techniques, we built a classifier to recognize unique biometric gesture characteristics of an individual. We achieved a 90% accuracy rate with single gestures, and saw significant improvement when multiple gestures were performed in sequence. We found user ratings of a gestures desirable characteristics (ease, pleasure, excitement) correlated with a gestures actual biometric recognition rate - that is to say, user ratings aligned well with gestural security, in contrast to typical text-based passwords. Based on these results, we conclude that multi-touch gestures show great promise as an authentication mechanism.

In this paper, we describe Scoop!, a movement-based game for children designed to reduce anxiety in math learning. The game incorporates existing research on the effects of 'power poses' related to feelings of confidence towards exploring two questions: whether movement mechanics can shift feelings about math for players/learners and how movement should inform the game experience design process beyond the simple inclusion of gestural input.

Using procedural animation systems introduces different work practices and represents adoption costs for game and simulation developers, so it is helpful to uncover whether and how it adds to the end user experience. The benefit of procedural content has been assumed, but given the challenge and risks inherent with implementation, we decided to conduct a study to find out whether this assumption was merited in player response. Players rated reactive systems highly and continued to play longer with reactive systems, but gave inconclusive responses to survey items aimed at uncovering what about reactive animation improved the experience. In this paper we present results and implications for use of procedural animation.

In this paper, we describe research comparing Nintendo Wii games with game play that elicits low, medium, and high amounts of player motion. We asked players to rate fun, happiness, frustration, and energy level after each round of play, and analyzed the results of these self-reports. We found a statistically significant relationship between amount of movement and self-rating of energy level. We discuss our general approach to developing an empirically-grounded set of design practices and guidelines for movement-based game development.

With the rapid evolution of mobile devices, smart-phones in particular, comes the ability to create new experiences that enhance the way we see, interact, and express ourselves, within the world that surrounds us. We can blend data from our senses and our devices in myriad ways that simply weren't possible before. This workshop explores the current and future state of Mobile Augmented Reality. We will promote discussion about issues and opportunities in the space. We will explore potential for innovation and opportunities for collaboration between researchers working on augmented reality. We envision a lively discussion on the different approaches, challenges and benefits that may arise from the use of mobile Augmented Reality in the near future from an HCI perspective. We also aim at fostering new collaborations and establishing a research agenda within the field of mobile augmented reality.

This paper presents insights about design practices that can lead to effective and fun games for learning, gleaned from interviews with experienced game developers. We based our approach on Schon's notion of practitioners evolving shared 'appreciation systems' for discussing and critiquing work, and aimed to gather and share some of game designers' 'appreciation system' for games and learning. The resulting insights provide valuable pointers to other designers in the CHI community crafting game-like experiences.

In this paper, we argue that HCI practitioners are facing new challenges in design and evaluation that can benefit from the establishment of commonly valued use qualities, with associated strategies for producing and rigorously evaluating work. We present a particular use quality 'suppleness' as an example. We describe ways that use qualities can help shape design and evaluation process, and propose tactics for the CHI community to use to encourage the evolution of bodies of knowledge around use qualities.

In this paper we describe the development and initial testing of a tool for self-assessment of affect while interacting with computer systems: the Sensual Evaluation Instrument. We discuss our research approach within the context of existing affective and HCI theory, and describe stages of evolution of the tool, and initial testing of its effectiveness.

This paper introduces a new application area for agents in the computer interface: the support of human-human interaction. We discuss an interface agent prototype that is designed to support human-human communication in virtual environments. The prototype interacts with users strategically during conversation, spending most of its time listening. The prototype mimics a party host, trying to find a safe common topic for guests whose conversation has lagged. We performed an experimental evaluation of the prototype's ability to assist in cross-cultural conversations. We designed the prototype to introduce safe or unsafe topics to conversation pairs, through a series of questions and suggestions. The agent made positive contributions to participants' experience of the conversation, influenced their perception of each other and of each others' national group, and even seemed to effect their style of behavior. We discuss the implications of our research for the design of social agents to support human-human interaction.