Communicating spatial information is challenging using solely verbal or written language, and is often supported by non-verbal gestures and illustrative drawings. However, the growing need for communicating increasingly complex spatial information, coupled with the rise of remote collaboration, presents challenges that current screen-based solutions are ill-equipped to address. Virtual Reality (VR) offers capabilities to support both non-verbal gestures and complex visual aids, through embodied avatars and 3D virtual representation. However, the novelty of creating, referencing, and viewing 3D drawings in VR may influence the interlocutors’ actions, speech and communication performance. We conducted a mixed-methods within-subject study with dyads to investigate the effects of drawing dimension (2D or 3D drawings) on spatial dialogue behaviours in VR. We found no significant effects of drawing dimension on communication performance and workload, but found significantly different interlocutor actions and speech. We discuss relevant implications and highlight considerations unique to the different communication strategies observed during 2D and 3D drawing use for supporting spatial dialogue in VR.

The 8th International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality for Human-Robot Interaction (VAM-HRI) seeks to bring together researchers from human-robot interaction (HRI) and human-robot collaboration (HRC), robotics, and mixed reality (MR) to address the challenges related to MR interactions between humans, robots, and agents. Key topics include the development of robots capable of interacting with humans in MR, the use of virtual reality for creating interactive robots, designing augmented reality interfaces for communication and control between humans and robots, exploring MR interfaces for enhancing robot learning and collaboration, comparative analysis of the capabilities and perceptions of robots and virtual agents, and sharing best design practices. VAM-HRI-2025 will build on the success of VAM-HRI workshops held from 2018 to 2024, advancing research in this specialized community.

There is growing recognition of the role video games can play in helping people through challenging times, however many still argue that video game play can lead to adverse and problematic behaviours when relied upon to manage negative affect. This study sought to explore a number of factors that may play a role in influencing the likelihood one develops problematic habits of play, particularly in the context of difficult and stressful times. Specifically, this study utilised Self-Determination Theory and the Dualistic Model of Passion to explore the relationships between emotion regulation, psychological need satisfaction and frustration, passion for video games, and problematic video game play during times of difficulty and stress. A path analysis was conducted using data from 440 participants and found that, overall, emotion regulation may be associated with whether or not problematic play is likely to occur, particularly through its relationship with need satisfaction (and frustration) and video game passion.

Scientific sense-making in STEM fields is a complex, yet essential activity, that greatly benefits from collaborations. However, challenges associated with collaboration, such as the geographic separation of experts, access to specialised equipment, and meaningful data representation, often hinder this process. Solutions to collaborative challenges have been extensively explored in CSCW and HCI literature. Among such solutions, immersive systems offer novel data visualisations, interactions, and representations that can support collaborative sense-making in STEM fields. Recognising the increasing interest from HCI researchers on the intersection of collaboration and immersive systems, we conduct a systematic review to answer pertinent questions regarding the research landscape, the design and implementation of collaborative immersive systems for STEM sense-making. We find that current research leans towards synchronous collaborations, AR technology, and sense-making for learning in science domains. We further discuss prevalent trends and considerations observed in our findings, to inform future research directions.

Prosocial behaviour is crucial in human relationships, enhancing the well-being of both the helper and the recipient. Using rewards to encourage prosocial behaviour can be effective, but may influence reasoning and negatively affect follow-up prosocial behaviour. The salience of the reward for the initial helping behaviour could explain the mixed findings in prior literature. Using a 2 (Aesthetic Upgrade, No Aesthetic Upgrade) × 2 (Functional Upgrade, No Functional Upgrade) online experimental study design (N = 170), this research investigates the impact of reward salience within a videogame on follow-up prosocial behaviour (donation to charity). Findings indicate that although reward salience was successfully manipulated, it did not have a statistically significant relationship with reasoning or behaviour. Notably, strategic reasoning for in-game helping was negatively associated with charitable donations. These results emphasise the importance of understanding how people perceive their prosocial actions to better predict future prosocial engagement, with implications for future research and games designed for social change.

A 15-minute geology-based game (Fig. 1) was designed and developed for a 2x2 between-subjects randomised experiment examining the impact of different reward types on motivation and learning outcomes in an educational video game. Predicated on the presence or absence of certain reward types, the four conditions were: access rewards, glory rewards, both types of rewards, and no rewards (control). From 143 adult participants, it was found that those who played the game experienced broadly high learning outcomes and motivation, though these results were not significantly tied to any reward type. To provide further context for these findings, feedback from players was analysed and it was found that the presentation of information and how said information tied back into the gameplay were, in the players’ minds, the most important components for facilitating the players’ engagement and learning. The lack of impact the rewards had in contrast to the broader gameplay experience has some interesting implications for the design and development of educational games.

Videogames are used by many during difficult times to help alleviate stressors. Recent research suggests that videogames may facilitate recovery through regulating emotions and promoting positive wellbeing outcomes. However, there are still concerns that a reliance on videogames to manage difficult situations can be problematic. Through semi-structured interviews (N=28), this study aimed to explore the role of videogames in this context to better understand the motivations behind gameplay, the emotional regulatory effect it has and, in turn, how this influences wellbeing. Key patterns of engagement emerged, suggesting that, during difficult times, individuals actively use videogames to meet important needs and regulate difficult emotions through the use of escapism. Moreover, the findings suggest that, even when gaming during these times appears to be rigid, the activity may still provide players wellbeing benefits.

Prosocial behaviour in videogames can enhance well-being outcomes and increase engagement in post-game prosocial behaviours, such as donations to charity. While some studies show that rewarding in-game helping can diminish charitable donations, others find no significant effects. An enhanced moral context for helping, driven by awareness of need, offers a potential explanation for the mixed findings. This study examined how the in-game moral context, manipulated through non-player character (NPC) neediness, influences the effect of rewards on post-game charitable donations, using a 2 (High Need, Low Need) x 2 (Reward, No Reward) experimental design. Results from 170 participants show no significant effects on charitable donations, high NPC neediness evoked greater moral satisfaction for helping, and in-game rewards for helping increased strategic reasoning. A significant interaction between rewards and NPC neediness was found on reasoning, where the No Reward/Low Need condition had the highest moral reasoning for helping, but also the lowest moral satisfaction from helping. This discrepancy between moral reasoning and moral satisfaction is discussed, along with practical methods to manipulate and measure NPC neediness, and recommendations to improve the research of moral decision-making in videogames.

A key challenge in data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence concerns data quality. Process mining is not an exception. A range of data quality problems exists in process data, some of which caused by activity labels. While automated techniques can be used for remedying data quality problems, they are effective up to a point and the aid of domain experts is required (cf. the “human-in-the-loop” paradigm in artificial intelligence). They are eminently suited to fix incorrect labels, but hard to engage as the repair task can be time-consuming and tedious. Gamification may offer a promising solution to this challenge. In this paper, we examine what motivational drives can be exploited to gamify activity-label repair, specifically those with identical semantics but different syntax. We conducted two experiments. First we recruited experts from the insurance domain to repair labels using our gamified system. Results show that log quality was improved, and participants had a positive experience interacting with the system. To validate the generalisability of the approach, our second experiment involved 30 participants who repaired a real-life medical log. We found promising results on quality improvement of the log and comparison with automatic approaches. This work contributes to process mining by improving activity-label quality in event logs and by turning data cleaning from the least enjoyable task to a fun experience for users. By bringing together elements from gamification, crowdsourcing (“humans-in-the-loop”), and process mining, this study contributes to improving the reliability of data-driven decision making in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Prosocial behaviours are actions that have a positive impact on others. Those who act prosocially in videogames are more likely to be prosocial after the game. In-game rewards may impact this prosocial transfer to real life but there are mixed findings. The aim of this research was to determine the impact that in-game rewards for helping have on post-game prosocial behaviour. We partially replicated and extended a prior study that showed an impact of in-game rewards on a post-game charitable donation. While playing a videogame, players voluntarily chose to help a non-player character or not and were rewarded or not based on their experimental condition. Pre- and post-gameplay questionnaires were used to measure trait empathy, prosocial self-concept, and reasoning for in-game helping. Participants were then offered a bonus compensation and given the opportunity to donate some amount of it to charity. Moral Reasoning was positively associated with donation behaviour, successfully replicating some prior findings. However, in-game rewards did not affect reasoning or donation behaviour. The outcomes of this research help both researchers and developers better understand how rewards affect players’ reasoning and how to better utilise games as a method to increase prosocial behaviour in people.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous economic and social disruption devastating people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended people engage in enjoyable activities such as videogames, helping them relax during difficult life situations. Using Self-Determination Theory as a lens, this interview study (N = 11) examined how people’s videogame behaviours were influenced by life context, and their impact on wellbeing during COVID-19. Findings established that videogames were a compensatory response to the stressors of the pandemic. Playing videogames satisfied participants’ needs for social connection, serving as a coping mechanism to distract them for a short time; following an initial prioritisation of gaming and spike in gaming hours, many returned to their regular gaming behaviours. This study contributes to the games for health literature, identifying the effects of videogames on wellbeing, and provides much needed knowledge for health practitioners and families on how videogames are used and their impact on players’ wellbeing during the pandemic as a societal stressful life event. The findings have clinical and policy implications both to identify a positive tool, and to dispel negative stigmas surrounding videogames.

The esports market has been growing exponentially has been growing exponentially with much interest from industry and academia. Perhaps because of this growth, there is a lack of agreement on what esports actually encompasses. We conducted a systematic review of 461 peer reviewed, full papers that provide a definition of esports. Findings highlighted the growth of the esports field across different domains, and increasing global interest in esports, but a lack of consensus regarding definition of the term. Through thematic analysis we identified nine dimensions across esports definitions. We critically assess these dimensions in terms of their representativeness and utility in describing the multifaceted nature of esports. Our work may help create a shared understanding of what esports is- and is not-capturing a diversity of experiences within organized competitive gaming and supporting continued research growth in this increasingly important domain.

Wildlife calls are the best witnesses to the health of ecosystems, if only we know how to listen to them. Efforts to understand and inform restoration of healthy ecosystems with environmental audio recordings languish from insufficient tools to learn and identify sounds in recordings. To address this problem, we designed and playtested the Bristle Whistle Challenge prototype with ten players. We explored how to design delightful interactions with audio for gaining awareness of nature sounds and supporting wildlife conservation through citizen science. We found that rather than presenting audio alone, it was necessary to connect sounds to other senses and experiences in creative ways to impart meaning and enhance engagement. We offer recommendations to design creative and contextual interactions with media to build awareness of nature's wonders. We call for greater efforts in interaction design to engage people with nature, which is the key to turning around our environmental crisis.

Competitive VR gaming has emerged as a new trend in recent years, due to the availability of consumer grade VR technologies and the rise of esports as a billion dollar industry. Despite the considerable attention to competitive VR gaming, there is a lack of research on attitudes and experiences that players have with these games. In this qualitative study with a pre-post interview design, we recruited eight competitive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players from a university esports club. We aimed to understand their attitudes towards VR esports and their experiences playing a representative location based VR esports game. Findings showed that players had visceral and positive affective experiences in the game, such as how players map physical movements to the game. These findings can help design future competitive VR esports, while also further contributing to HCI as the first exploration on player experiences with VR esports, laying groundwork for future studies.

Acoustic sensing has been hailed as a game-changer for detecting furtive wildlife, but uptake has been constrained by the laborious process of reviewing resultant torrents of audio data. To inform the design of interactive interfaces for reviewing audio recordings, we explored how people interact with aural and visual media about birds. We observed how twelve participants with different levels of interest in birds engaged with vocalization recordings, visualizations of bird calls, photographs, and range maps of three species. By conducting thematic analysis, we identified a variety of Challenges of Exploration and Benefits of a Media Assortment. We contribute lessons for designing to Bridge Knowledge & Context and to Facilitate Long-term Engagement with audio in ways that are fun, accessible, and informative. We provide explicit guidance for designers to diversify how citizen scientists interact with nature through audio as they move from engagement to conservation action.

Modding, the act of custom creation in videogames, is a large enterprise comprising millions of people. Despite the large number of individuals creating mods, our understanding of who modders are and their motivation for modding is limited. This is especially true for minority groups, including women. In prior research with modding communities, women modders were consistently underrepresented. Using a mixed-method survey (N = 68) that incorporates the Serious Leisure Framework, this study begins to unravel women's participation in modding activities. We begin to identify who women modders are, examine what motivates them to mod, and investigate their modding practices. Results show that women modders value the creation of multiple mod types, including cosmetic, environmental and gameplay modification. They are primarily motivated by self-gratification and enjoyment. These findings create new insights into how women interact with gaming environments, as well as identifying those aspects of the experience that motivate women's engagement in modding.

Toxicity in online environments is a complex and a systemic issue. Collegiate esports communities seem to be particularly vulnerable to toxic behaviors. In esports games, negative behavior, such as harassment, can create barriers to players achieving high performance and can reduce enjoyment which may cause them to leave the game. The aim of this study is to investigate how players define, experience and deal with toxicity in esports games that they play. Our findings from an interview study and five monthly follow ups with 19 participants from a university esports club show that players define toxicity as behaviors disrupt their morale and team dynamics, and are inclined to normalize negative behaviors, rationalize it as part of the competitive game culture akin to traditional sports, and participate a form of gamer classism, believing that toxicity is more common in lower level play than in professional and collegiate esports. There are many coping mechanisms employed by collegiate esports players, including ignoring offenders, deescalating tense encounters, and using tools to mute offenders. Understanding the motivations behind collegiate esports players' engagement with toxicity may help the growing sport plot a positive trajectory towards healthy play.

Process mining uses computational techniques for process-oriented data analysis. The use of poor quality input data will lead to unreliable analysis outcomes (garbage in - garbage out), as it does for other types of data analysis. Among the key inputs to process mining analyses are activity labels in event logs which represent tasks that have been performed. Activity labels are not immune from data quality issues. Fixing them is an important but challenging endeavour, which may require domain knowledge and can be computationally expensive. In this paper we propose to tackle this challenge from a novel angle by using a gamified crowdsourcing approach to the detection and repair of problematic activity labels, namely those with identical semantics but different syntax. Evaluation of the prototype with users and a real-life log showed promising results in terms of quality improvements achieved.

While online multiplayer games provide an opportunity for players to both maintain and establish new connections, male and female players have been found to experience these environments differently. Interviews (n = 22) and focus groups (n = 14) were used to explore these differences as they impact on creating new social connections, as well as to provide recommendations for the development of new social tools and features that account for these differences. While all participants experienced toxicity and performance pressure as barriers to forming new connections, female players uniquely reported the impacts of misogynistic targeting and stereotype threat. In turn, female players wishing to avoid these stresses would often mask their gender. The common practice of gender misrepresentation by both male and female players impacted female players’ ability to create social connections through voice technology, as well as building their distrust of unknown others. Recommendations are made to build social connectedness between players taking into account the specific constraints faced by female players. These include establishing mentoring opportunities as well as profiling players beyond their immediate skill or rank. Additionally, the desire for control of one’s online identity presents practical challenges that may be overcome through thoughtful design.

Online Collectible Card Games (OCCGs) are enormously popular worldwide. Previous studies found that the social aspects of physical CCGs are crucial for player engagement. However, we know little about the different types of sociability that OCCGs afford. Nor to what extent they influence players' social experiences. This mixed method online survey study focuses on a representative OCCG, Hearthstone [24] to 1) identify and define social design features and examine the extent to which players' use of these features predict their sense of community; 2) investigate participants' attitudes towards and experiences with the game community. The results show that players rarely use social features, and these features contribute differently to predicting players' sense of community. We also found emergent toxic behaviors, afforded by the social features. Findings can inform the best practices and principles in the design of OCCGs, and contribute to our understanding of players' perceptions of OCCG communities.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) promise to engage a global audience and emphasize the democratic achievement of free, university-level education. While such open access enables participation, it is unclear how learners who are not fluent in English (ELLs) engage with MOOC content. After all, the language of MOOCs is English. In order to improve accessibility for ELLs in digital learning environments, we must first have a clear understanding of the educational landscape: who are the non-native English speakers enrolled in MOOCs? Where are they located geographically? What are their current online learning behaviors, motivations and outcomes? In this paper we start answering some of these questions by analyzing data from 100 HarvardX courses, using self-report and log data. Preliminary analysis show evidence that ELLs are motivated by more utilitarian goals compared to non-ELLs.