With the expanding popularity of Location-Based Games and the rise of advertising therein, there exists a need to comprehend the impact of Location-Based Game Advertising (LGA). This paper seeks to identify what makes positively affective LGA, leveraging Pokémon GO as a probe. Researchers conducted twenty-seven (n=27) semi-structured interviews with Pokémon GO players to reveal lived experiences regarding LGA. Our findings highlight the following direct implications for LGA: (1) LGA act as a digital billboard, conveying qualitative alongside locative information, and (2) well-received LGA enhances the player’s agency. We additionally identify findings that have auxiliary implications to LGA: (3) positive memorability occurs when points of interest match physical reality, and (4) ludic engagement is a mediating factor in the memorability of locations. This research demonstrates that LGA in Location-Based Games is surprisingly well-received. However, developers must provide extra consideration to the player’s agency for such techniques to be effective.

The overlaying of physical spaces with digital information produces hybrid spaces, redefining people’s experience of social interactions. Location-based games (LBGs) with social components are a good case. Yet, the impact LBGs have on sociability remains under-researched. In April 2020, the new in-person/remote raiding format in the LBG Pokémon GO provided a lens to explore people’s social interactions in hybrid spaces. We interviewed 41 Pokémon GO players to understand how players coordinate and collaborate for in-person/remote raids and other social patterns. Our findings demonstrate that new social dynamics occurred: participants’ social interactions highly rely on external social media groups bridging cyberspace and the physical world. In such external social media groups, spontaneously formed leadership roles and mentor-mentee relationships demonstrate autonomy among players in the hybrid space. However, we observed that the interoperability issue challenges people’s experience. Overall, this work sheds light on the social interactions in LBGs as hybrid spaces.

People taking photographs with their tablets is an increasingly common sight. While the design of hardware is larger and more cumbersome than the smaller and more often carried cameraphones, the underlying photographic software is essentially the same. At the same time, cameraphone hardware usually contains objectively better quality cameras with more megapixels, better lenses, and faster image processing. So why do people choose one over the other? In this paper we explore the experience of tablet photography and aim to compare it with camera phone photography. In a mixed-methods study, we use quantitative and qualitative data to explore perceptions of photo quality, factors influencing photo quality, and the affordances of tablet computers that lead users to prefer them over camera phones. Our results indicate that participants take photos with their camera phone for the convenience of the small device form factor, but prefer taking photos with their larger tablet for photos that require higher definition. We discuss the design implications of this research for the design of mobile cameras.

Online photo collections are often presented along with numeric data, such as views, likes, or comments. Treemaps are ideal for visualizing such collections, as they present numeric values using rectangular blocks, within which photos can be presented. Despite abundant research showing that photo treemaps and similar space-filling approaches are useful and appealing for users, understanding of the ideal parameters for constructing these representations remains limited. To address this, we contribute a series of experiments targeted at identifying design parameters for building photo treemaps. Our first study explores the number of photos presented at each level in the treemap, finding that using fewer photos makes visualizations more searchable and preferable to users. A second study examines the tradeoff between sizing photos according to the numeric values and presenting them in a more familiar layout with fixed aspect ratios. These results inform a third study, in which a prototype was used to probe the preferences of active Flickr users for using treemaps for navigating photo collections.