Surfing, like many water sports, offers a unique opportunity to experience natural environments, yet the design of interactive technologies for water activities– “WaterHCI” – so far prioritised athletic performance over experience. To explore this opportunity, we designed SurfSync, a novel wearable system in the form of an actuating vest and a hat that provides oceanic information through sound, vibration, and heat actuation, aimed at enriching the surfing experience as a playful encounter with the ocean. We studied SurfSync in an ocean-based field study with eight surfers. Through thematic analysis of interviews, we articulated the surfers’ experiences, indicating how they made sense of playful cues while in the ocean. By reflecting on our soma design process and the surfers’ experiences, we provide six design strategies to enrich the surfing experience. Our work contributes to the emerging field of WaterHCI by providing insights into how wearables can enrich human-water experiences outdoors.

Advances in emerging technologies, such as on-body mechanical actuators and electrical muscle stimulation, have allowed computers to take control over our bodies. This presents opportunities as well as challenges, raising fundamental questions about agency and the role of our bodies when interacting with technology. To advance this research field as a whole, we brought together expert perspectives in a week-long seminar to articulate the grand challenges that should be tackled when it comes to the design of computers’ control over our bodies. These grand challenges span technical, design, user, and ethical aspects. By articulating these grand challenges, we aim to begin initiating a research agenda that positions bodily control not only as a technical feature but as a central, experiential, and ethical concern for future human–computer interaction endeavors.

Agender euphoria is a new term representing the powerful feelings of happiness, joy, and contentment derived from experiences in gender-free embodiments, spaces, and activities. People with and without agender and adjacent identities (e.g., genderless, gender-free, non-binary, gender-apathetic) may have such experiences under the right circumstances. Video games can offer gender minorities a safe haven for gender euphoric experiences. However, the possibility of agender euphoric experiences was unexplored. We considered this overlooked frame of self-actualization with 142 people who identified as having or desiring agender euphoric experiences. Using the critical incident technique (CIT), we uncovered how games and play experiences create (and inhibit) agender euphoria. We surface this experiential phenomenon and provide empirically-grounded criteria for the design of games to elicit agender euphoric experiences for everyone, but especially agender and agender adjacent players. This work adds to the growing critical literatures on marginalized experiences in games research and human-computer interaction.

Search and rescue (SAR) is a complex teamwork environment that requires efficient spatial communication between commanders and field teams with heterogeneous perspectives and asymmetric information. Maps are central artifacts in SAR, yet they are also a space of technological tension due to constantly changing situation at disaster sites. Sketch mapping is an effective method of externalizing and communicating spatial understanding, increasing situation awareness in spatial decision-making tasks including SAR. Current paper-based sketch mapping in SAR struggles to handle the three-dimensional nature of physical space and remote collaboration. We propose CoMap, a collaborative 3D sketch mapping system validated in a virtual reality fire-rescue game. In a within-subject study with 13 commander–field team pairs, CoMap enabled more accurate and efficient spatial communication than conventional 2D sketch mapping. Communication analysis further showed that CoMap fostered proactive descriptions. We distill three design implications for next-generation mapping tools to advance SAR training and real-world operations.

While normative - "good"- game design and user experiences have been established, we look to games that challenge those notions. Intentional frustration and failure can be worthwhile. Through a reflexive thematic analysis of 31 games we identify how intentionally non-normative design choices lead to meaningful experiences. Working within the established Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics (MDA) Game Design Framework, we lay out themes to design Shitty User Experiences (SUX). We contribute SUX MDA themes for designers and researchers to counter the status quo and identify new forms of play and interaction.

Many transgender (and cisgender) people experience gender euphoria - satisfaction and relief caused by self-actualization and gender congruence - a term that has been overlooked by the design community. Video games create intense experiences involving identities, bodies, and social interaction, providing opportunities to empower people through gender euphoria. We develop themes for creating and supporting gender euphoria in games within the Design, Dynamics, Experience Game Design Framework from a reflexive thematic analysis of 25 games, with an in-depth analysis of four of them. The analysis combines the authors' positionalities as trans gamers with close reading and content analysis of the games, employing perspectives from critical discourse analysis. We contribute an operational understanding of gender euphoria to support design, in-depth case studies of particularly euphoric game experiences, and identify themes that designers and researchers can use to develop new games and analyze existing ones.

Abstract In this paper, we revisit the issues surrounding the lack of gender diversity in computing and build a theory on the roles and effects of genders in computing. Our intention is to transform human experiences with computing technologies to more equitably reflect and represent diversity. To support gender diversity in design, we work to create an integrated trans-feminist theory. In doing so we draw from diverse fields, including English, psychology, philosophy, cultural theory, law, medicine, and feminist, queer, disability, indigenous, post-colonial, Black, and Chicana studies. We show how and why marginalized people need to develop our own languages and voices as a step in empowering our identities. We assemble quantitative data showing the paucity of people with historically marginalized genders in computer science education and in our best papers. We use the participation gap in computing, combined with the mental health impact, to argue that computing, as a field, needs to critically examine our cis/heteronormative tendencies, which perpetuate a vicious cycle of erasure, and instead frame scholarship in terms of gender identities and presentations.

Many trans people experience marginalization and violence in cyberspace. This violence is characterized by intricate dynamics surrounding voice, identities, bodies, and social interactions. To comprehend and provide a theoretical framework for this enduring phenomenon of digital violence, the present research introduces the concept of Trans Cyber-Necropolitics (TCN). TCN is a necropolitical system that explains how digital media enforce the disposability of trans people in cyberspace. We decompose this digital death into three steps: sensing , targeting , and invisible killing . Combining with the authors’ positionality as transgender gamers, we provide a critical analysis of how each step operates, conducted via a meticulous examination of games, as well as an exploration of the discourse from game design and community-side comments through the lens of critical discourse analysis. Building on this analysis, we ideate how each step could be disrupted with resistance strategies and technological measures.

At times, the interfaces of videogames -- gameworlds -- contain tiny details that go unnoticed. One such detail is how designers employ ! and ? to communicate to players. These punctuation marks have existed in videogames since their creation, yet remain undiscussed by designers. They are used as ways to promote curiosity, as objects, as ways to symbolize excitement, and as a prompt to react. Their varied history is deserving of attention, so we present a chronicle of two pieces of gameworld punctuation: ! and ?. We discuss current and past uses and identify more ways that these could be used in the future. These symbols may present a useful space of inquiry not only for games and games research, but more generally, in terms of the rapid communication of complex information.

Many trans people experience gender dysphoria -- distress caused by mismatches in internal and external experiences of gender. Video games engage intimately with the self, creating intense experiences involving identities, bodies, and social interaction. This combination of factors renders trans players vulnerable to gender dysphoria triggers: failures of interaction design that result in gender dysphoria. The present research undertakes a thematic analysis of four popular games, drawn from an initial corpus of 31. It contributes a definition of gender dysphoria triggers, case studies of triggering games, an initial gender dysphoria categorization to provide a useful design language, and examples of alternative designs for extant triggers. The analysis combines the authors' positionality as trans gamers; critical cultural studies methodologies, including textual analysis; a critical discourse analysis of production-side statements and interviews and player-side comments about diversity in those games; and close readings of the games themselves. The paper concludes with a call for trans inclusivity in game design, which we structure around the necropolitical concept of the relation of care.

As artificial agents proliferate, there will be more and more situations in which they must communicate their capabilities to humans, including what they can “see.” Artificial agents have existed for decades in the form of computer-controlled agents in videogames. We analyze videogames in order to not only inspire the design of better agents, but to stop agent designers from replicating research that has already been theorized, designed, and tested in-depth. We present a qualitative thematic analysis of sight cues in videogames and develop a framework to support human-agent interaction design. The framework identifies the different locations and stimulus types – both visualizations and sonifications – available to designers and the types of information they can convey as sight cues. Insights from several other cue properties are also presented. We close with suggestions for implementing such cues with existing technologies to improve the safety, privacy, and efficiency of human-agent interactions.

Search and rescue (SAR), a disaster response activity performed to locate and save victims, primarily involves collective sensemaking and planning. SAR responders learn to search and navigate the environment, process information about buildings, and collaboratively plan with maps. We synthesize data from five sources, including field observations and interviews, to understand the informational components of SAR and how information is recorded and communicated. We apply activity theory, uncovering unforeseen factors that are relevant to the design of collaboration systems and training solutions. Through our analysis, we derive design implications to support collaborative information technology and training systems: mixing physical and digital mapping; mixing individual and collective mapping; building for different levels and sources of information; and building for different rules, roles, and activities.

As artificial agents proliferate into society, there will be more and more situations in which they need to communicate their capabilities to humans, including what they can “see.” Humans do this with each other by using mental models of human capabilities coupled with social cues that enable situation awareness. In order to design better agents, we analyze video games, which have been communicating to humans about agent visual perception for decades. We present preliminary findings from a qualitative thematic analysis of sight cues in video games. We focus on three cue properties that warrant further study: whether the cue specifies the perceiver, whether the stimulus’ primary purpose is to be a sight cue, and the communication of non-binary sighting information. We close with an additional call for future work: on the effects of using multiple sight cues in combination.

In multiplayer collaborative games, players need to coordinate their actions and synchronize their efforts effectively to succeed as a team; thus, individual differences can impact teamwork and gameplay. This article investigates the effects of cognitive styles on teams engaged in collaborative gaming activities. Fifty-four individuals took part in a mixed-methods user study; they were classified as field-dependent (FD) or independent (FI) based on a field-dependent–independent (FD-I) cognitive-style-elicitation instrument. Three groups of teams were formed, based on the cognitive style of each team member: FD-FD, FD-FI, and FI-FI. We examined collaborative gameplay in terms of team performance, cognitive load, communication, and player experience. The analysis revealed that FD-I cognitive style affected the performance and mental load of teams. We expect the findings to provide useful insights on understanding how cognitive styles influence collaborative gameplay.

Game map interfaces provide an alternative perspective on the worlds players inhabit.compared to navigation applications popular in day-to-day life, game maps have different affordances to match players' situated goals. To contextualize and understand these differences and how they developed, we present a historical chronicle of game map interfaces. Starting from how games came to involve maps, we trace how maps are first separate from the game, becoming more and more integrated into play until converging in smartphone-style interfaces. We synthesize several game history texts with critical engagement with 123 key games to develop this map-focused chronicle, from which we highlight trends and opportunities for future map designs. Our work contributes a record of trends in game map interfaces that can serve as a source of reference and inspiration to game designers, digital physical-world map designers, and game scholars.

Our objective is to explore distributed forms of creativity that arise in play to help guide and foster supportive research, game design, and technology. This workshop seeks to bring together researchers, game designers, and others to examine theories of creativity and play, game design practices, methods for studying creativity in play, and creative play experiences. Participants will present work, video prototype, discuss topics, and contribute to outcomes.

Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problems are traditionally solved in a centralized manner. There are works focusing on completeness, optimality, performance, or a tradeoff between them. However, there are only a few works based on spatial distribution. In this paper, we introduce ros-dmapf, a distributed MAPF solver. It consists of multiple MAPF sub-solvers, which---besides solving their assigned sub-problems---interact with each other to solve a given MAPF problem. In the current implementation, the sub-solvers are answer set planning systems for multiple agents, and are created based on spatial distribution of the problem. Interactions between components of ros-dmapf are facilitated by the Robot Operating System (ROS). The highlights of ros-dmapf are its scalability and a high degree of parallelism. We empirically evaluate ros-dmapf using the move-only domain of the asprilo system and results suggest that ros-dmapf scales up well. For instance, ros-dmapf gives a solution of length around 600 for a MAPF problem with 2000 robots in randomly generated 100×100 obstacle-free maps---a problem beyond the capability of a single sub-solver---within 7 minutes on a consumer laptop. We also evaluate ros-dmapf against some other MAPF solvers and results show that the system performs well. We also discuss possible improvements for future work.

Gesture recognition devices provide a new means for natural human-computer interaction. However, when selecting these devices for games, designers might find it challenging to decide which gesture recognition device will work best. In the present research, we compare three vision-based, hand gesture devices: Leap Motion, Microsoft's Kinect, and Intel's RealSense. We developed a simple hand-gesture based game to evaluate performance, cognitive demand, comfort, and player experience of using these gesture devices. We found that participants' preferred and performed much better using Leap Motion and Kinect compared to using RealSense. Leap Motion also outperformed or was equivalent to Kinect. These findings suggest that not all gesture recognition devices can be suitable for games and that designers need to make better decisions when selecting gesture recognition devices and designing gesture based games to insure the usability, accuracy, and comfort of such games.

Composite wearable computers consist of multiple wearable devices connected together and working as a cohesive whole. These composite wearable computers are promising for augmenting our interaction with the physical, virtual, and mixed play spaces (e.g., mixed reality games). Yet little research has directly addressed how mixed reality system designers can select wearable input devices and how these devices can be assembled together to form a cohesive wearable computer. We present an initial taxonomy of wearable input devices to aid designers in deciding which devices to select and assemble together to support different mixed reality systems. We undertook a grounded theory analysis of 84 different wearable input devices resulting in a design taxonomy for composite wearable computers. The taxonomy consists of two axes: TYPE OF INTERACTIVITY and BODY LOCATION. These axes enable designers to identify which devices fill particular needs in the system development process and how these devices can be assembled together to form a cohesive wearable computer.

Maps in video games have grown into complex interactive systems alongside video games themselves. What map systems have done and currently do have not been cataloged or evaluated. We trace the history of game map interfaces from their paper-based inspiration to their current smart phone-like appearance. Read-only map interfaces enable players to consume maps, which is sufficient for wayfinding. Game cartography interfaces enable players to persistently modify maps, expanding the range of activity to support planning and coordination. We employ thematic analysis on game cartography interfaces, contributing a near-exhaustive catalog of games featuring such interfaces, a set of properties to describe and design such interfaces, a collection of play activities that relate to cartography, and a framework to identify what properties promote the activities. We expect that designers will find the contributions enable them to promote desired play experiences through game map interface design.

Idle games are a recent minimalist gaming phenomenon in which the game is left running with little player interaction. We deepen understanding of idle games and their characteristics by developing a taxonomy and identifying game features. This paper examines 66 idle games using a grounded theory approach to analyze play, game mechanics, rewards, interactivity, progress rate, and user interface. To establish a clearly bounded definition of idle games, we analyzed 10 non-idle games with the same approach. We discuss how idle games move players from playing to planning, how they question dominant assumptions about gameplay, and their unusual use of resources such as player attention and computer cycles. Our work illuminates opportunities for the design of idle games, suggests design implications, and provides a framework for researchers to clearly articulate questions about this genre.

In distributed multiplayer games, it can be difficult to communicate strategic information for planning game moves and player interactions. Often, players spend extra time communicating, reducing their engagement in the game. Visual annotations in game maps and in the gameworld can address this problem and result in more efficient player communication. We studied the impact of real-time feedback on planning annotations, specifically two different annotation types, in a custom-built, third-person, multiplayer game and analyzed their effects on player performance, experience, workload, and annotation use. We found that annotations helped engage players in collaborative planning, which reduced frustration, and shortened goal completion times. Based on these findings, we discuss how annotating in virtual game spaces enables collaborative planning and improves team performance.

In the physical world, teammates develop situation awareness about each other's location, status, and actions through cues such as gaze direction and ambient noise. To support situation awareness, distributed multiplayer games provide awareness cues - information that games automatically make available to players to support cooperative gameplay. The design of awareness cues can be extremely complex, impacting how players experience games and work with teammates. Despite the importance of awareness cues, designers have little beyond experiential knowledge to guide their design. In this work, we describe a design framework for awareness cues, providing insight into what information they provide, how they communicate this information, and how design choices can impact play experience. Our research, based on a grounded theory analysis of current games, is the first to provide a characterization of awareness cues, providing a palette for game designers to improve design practice and a starting point for deeper research into collaborative play.

We present culturally based design (CBD), a new paradigm for designing embodied natural user interaction (NUI) with digital information by drawing on customary ways that people use physical objects. CBD coalesces experiences, practices, and embodied mental models of pre-digital activities as a basis for the design of interactive systems. We apply CBD to address trans-surface interaction, the manipulation of information artifacts from one device to another. We develop Trans-Surface Rummy, because the game involves highly dynamic combinations of turn taking and non-linear out of turn play, while transferring information artifacts to and from private and social surfaces. Through the CBD process, we create the trans-surface wormhole, an embodied interface technique. We investigate the trans-surface wormhole's efficacy and other aspects of culturally based design with young students, and with elderly members of our local bridge club. We derive implications for the design of trans-surface interaction, and more broadly, from the process of CBD. We initiate a research agenda for trans-surface interaction.

Fire emergency responders rely on team coordination to survive and succeed in high-stress environments, but traditional education does not directly teach these essential skills. Prior simulations seek the highest possible fidelity, employing resources to capture concrete characteristics of operating environments. We take a different tack, hypothesizing that a zero-fidelity approach, focusing on human-centered aspects of work practice, will improve team coordination learning. Such an approach promotes simulation focus by developing an alternative environment that stimulates participants to engage in distributed cognition. The costs of simulation development are reduced.

Crisis response engenders a high-stress environment in which teams gather, transform, and mutually share information. Prior educational approaches have not successfully addressed these critical skills. The assumption has been that the highest fidelity simulations result in the best learning. Deploying high-fidelity simulations is expensive and dangerous; they do not address team coordination. Low-fidelity approaches are ineffective because they are not stressful. Zero-fidelity simulation develops and invokes the principle of abstraction, focusing on human-information and human-human transfers of meaning, to derive design from work practice. Our principal hypothesis is that crisis responders will experience zero-fidelity simulation as effective simulation of team coordination. We synthesize the sustained iterative design and evaluation of the Team Coordination Game. We develop and apply new experimental methods to show that participants learn to cooperate and communicate, applying what they learn in practice. Design implications address how to employ the abstraction principle to develop zero-fidelity simulations.

We take the work practices of fire emergency responders as the basis for developing simulations to teach team coordination. We introduce non-mimetic simulation: economic operational environments that represent human-centered components of practice, such as team structures and information flows, without mimicking concrete aspects of an environment. Emergent team coordination phenomena validate the non-mimetic simulation of fire emergency response.

Semantic web researchers tend to assume that XML Schema and OWL-S are the correct means for representing the types, structure, and semantics of XML data used for documents and interchange between programs and services. These technologies separate information representation from implementation. The separation may seem like a benefit, because it is platform-agnostic. The problem is that the separation interferes with writing correct programs for practical document engineering, because it violates a primary principle of object-oriented programming: integration of data structures and algorithms. We develop an XML binding framework that connects Java object declarations with serialized XML representation. A basis of the framework is a metalanguage, embedded in Java object and field declarations, designed to be particularly concise, to facilitate the authoring and maintenance of programs that generate and manipulate XML documents. The framework serves as the foundation for a layered software architecture that includes meta-metadata descriptions for multimedia information extraction, modeling, and visualization; Lightweight Semantic Distributed Computing Services; interaction logging services; and a user studies framework.

Fire emergency response requires rapidly processing and communicating information to coordinate teams that protect lives and property. Students studying to become fire emergency responders must learn to communicate, process, and integrate information during dangerous, stressful, and time-sensitive work. We are performing an ethnographic investigation that includes interviews with experienced fire emergency responders and observations of team burn training exercises with students. We distill salient components of firefighting practice, which are relevant to the design of fire emergency response education systems. We derive design implications for systems that teach fire emergency responders to deal with issues surrounding the communication and integration of fireground information: the mixing of communication modalities, the distribution of information acquisition sources to create information differential and uncertainty, and audible clues.

In this paper, we describe Censor Chair, an art installation that creates a shared experience addressing forms of censorship including self-censorship, censorship of a group upon an individual, visual and auditory censorship in digital media, and censorship in society. We are taking a playful position in considering relationships between censorship and sensors that monitor physiology. Censor Chair makes use of a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor, live video feeds, and a barcode reader to drive the presentation of a digital media library.