Deceptive design practices have been identified and studied in games but, to date, there have been no substantial explorations of deceptive design practices within 3D environments typically found in PC games. These offer a new set of affordances for interacting with the player, and game developers may be able to utilize these in order to shape gameplay experiences. The goal of this work was to explore users’ perceptions of deceptive design present in a popular free-to-play 3D game. A survey was carried out with 259 adult respondents identifying and explaining instances of deceptive design within video clips of gameplay from a popular Roblox game. Thematic analysis of the responses revealed six new categories of deceptive design pattern within a 3D gameplay context: Predatory Monetization , Default to Purchase , UI Misdirection , Emotional Interpersonal Persuasion , Physical Placement , and Narrative Obligation . Through our work we hope to highlight the use of deceptive design both within current 3D games and future 3D gaming environments. This work is particularly important as 3D and VR gaming grow in popularity alongside game publishers increasingly moving towards “freemium” monetization models for income.

We compared four audio-based radar metaphors for providing directional stimuli to users of AR headsets. The metaphors are clock face, compass, white noise, and scale. Each metaphor, or method, signals the movement of a virtual arm in a radar sweep. In a user study, statistically significant differences were observed for accuracy and response time. Beat-based methods (clock face, compass) elicited responses biased to the left of the stimulus location, and non-beat-based methods (white noise, scale) produced responses biased to the right of the stimulus location. The beat methods were more accurate than the non-beat methods. However, the non-beat methods elicited quicker responses. We also discuss how response accuracy varies along the radar sweep between methods. These observations contribute design insights for non-verbal, non-visual directional prompting.

Abstract This paper describes a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype developed to help archaeologists and other stakeholders explore and analyse archaeological data in a more immersive context. We describe a VR reconstruction of Pleito Cave, a fragile world class rock-art site with accessibility limitation. Key stakeholders are identified and a prototype is described that provides a VR platform for visualizing and interacting with complex archaeological data (gathered from techniques such as decorrelation stretch and X-ray fluorescence) virtually ‘in situ’, in a way that would not be possible at the real site. The prototype allows multiple remote users to interact with the cave together remotely providing opportunities for collaborative interpretation and analysis of archaeological data. We also present a survey-based evaluation in which both archaeologists and Native American stakeholders indicate positive responses for measures of both engagement and value. Research Highlights An interactive, multi-user, immersive archaeological data visualization tool is described. Survey evaluation elicits insights into where the system provides value and engagement for key stakeholders. Thematic Analysis provides further design insights for future development of immersive archaeological data visualization tools.

This paper explores the design of voice user interfaces for smart homes with teenagers. The work was motivated by two research questions: How can we co-design voice interfaces with teenagers? and What ideas and expectations do teenagers have in relation to voice interfaces in a smart home? A design process was used which involved the participants initially scripting exchanges with a smart home on paper then prototyping at a higher level of fidelity using a tablet app with speech output. The study was carried out in a high school in the UK with 55 pupils in Year 10 (14--15 years old). This work is the first of its kind to explore the co-design of VUIs with teenagers. The key contribution of this paper is the design method that was used which proved successful and gave insights into the use of dual prototyping fidelities and the impact of scaffolding on the designs produced. Other contributions include the themes which emerged from the designs and a set of four themes related to teenagers' expectation of smart homes. The wide range of findings reported in the paper also bring insights that are valuable to those wishing to design and develop VUIs with and for younger users.

There have been a number of studies that have compared evaluation results from prototypes of different fidelities but very few of these are with children. This paper reports a comparative study of three prototypes ranging from low fidelity to high fidelity within the context of mobile games, using a between subject design with 37 participants aged 7 to 9. The children played a matching game on either an iPad, a paper prototype using screen shots of the actual game or a sketched version. Observational data was captured to establish the usability problems, and two tools from the Fun Toolkit were used to measure user experience. The results showed that there was little difference for user experience between the three prototypes and very few usability problems were unique to a specific prototype. The contribution of this paper is that children using low-fidelity prototypes can effectively evaluate games of this genre and style.

This paper outlines the design and evaluation of a haptic interface intended to convey non audio-visual directions to an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) user. The haptic user interface is incorporated into an ATM test apparatus on the keypad. The system adopts a well known 'clock face' metaphor and is designed to provide haptic prompts to the user in the form of directions to the current active device, e.g. card reader or cash dispenser. Results of an evaluation of the device are reported that indicate that users with varying levels of visual impairment are able to appropriately detect, distinguish and act on the prompts given to them by the haptic keypad. As well as reporting on how participants performed in the evaluation we also report the results of a semi structured interview designed to find out how acceptable participants found the technology for use on a cash machine. As a further contribution the paper also presents observations on how participants place their hands on the haptic device and compare this with their performance.

This paper presents a study aimed at better understanding how children categorize different games. The paper reports the results of an open card sort where participants were asked to categorize games from the Google Play Store (formerly the 'Android Marketplace'). The key contribution of the paper is that when compared with existing categories in the Google Play Store, children used categorization criteria much more aligned to the goals of the game rather than more abstract categories currently found in mobile phone application stores. The paper provides examples of existing categories that are not generally used by children and provides new examples of categorization criteria that are used by children to categorize existing games.

This paper describes two studies that looked at passwords for children. The first examined what children knew about the creation of textual passwords and then a second, follow on study, investigated the passwords that children chose to use. The two studies show that children have some understanding of how to make a good textual password but that the passwords they use are often in contradiction to their own knowledge of best practice. Based on the findings from these two studies, the authors propose three key design principles for systems that require textual passwords for children and where no alternative is available.