The theory of affordances

We present a study of a mobile mixed reality game called Can You See Me Now? in which online players are chased through a virtual model of a city by ‘runners’ (professional performers equipped with GPS and WiFi technologies) who have to run through the actual city streets in order to catch the players. We present an ethnographic study of the game as it toured through two different cities and draws upon video recordings of online players, runners, technical support crew, and also on system logs of text communication. Our study reveals the diverse ways in which online players experienced the uncertainties inherent in GPS and WiFi, including being mostly unaware of them, but sometimes seeing them as problems, or treating the as a designed feature of the game, and even occasionally exploiting them within gameplay. In contrast, the runners and technical crew were fully aware of these uncertainties and continually battled against them through an ongoing and distributed process of orchestration. As a result, we encourage designers to deal with such uncertainties as a fundamental characteristic of location-based experiences rather than treating them as exceptions or bugs that might be ironed out in the future. We argue that designers should explicitly consider four potential states of being of a mobile participant: connected and tracked, connected but not tracked, tracked but not connected, and neither connected nor tracked. We then introduce five strategies that might be used to deal with uncertainty in these different states for different kinds of participant: remove it, hide it, manage it, reveal it, and exploit it. Finally, we present proposals for new orchestration interfaces that reveal the ‘seams’ in the underlying technical infrastructure by visualizing the recent performance of GPS and WiFi and predicting the likely future performance of GPS.

Can you see me now

This paper explores current applications for handheld devices and questions which of these make full use of the unique attributes of handheld devices in order to facilitate learning in a pedagogically sensible manner. In order to do so, the paper presents a functional framework which analyses handheld application in relation to their use as well as the pedagogical underpinning, if any, that informs their development. Our framework currently consists of seven distinct categories of application, which we term: administrative, referential, interactive, microworld, data collection, location aware and collaborative. We argue that three categories, namely data collection, location aware and collaborative, are particularly suited to learning with handheld devices when they are informed by collaborative, contextual and constructionist learning theories. Furthermore, we contend that applications of the type just outlined deserve further research since they are not attempting to replicate, or even augment, existing learning scenarios but rather they try to create new learning opportunities which would not be possible without (mobile) technology. Finally, the authors introduce a number of applications and learning scenarios that they have developed for handheld devices and explain their position within the framework.

Designing collaborative, constructionist and contextual applications for handheld devices

Augmented reality (AR) technology is mature for creating learning experiences for K-12 (pre-school, grade school, and high school) educational settings. We reviewed the applications intended to complement traditional curriculum materials for K-12. We found 87 research articles on augmented reality learning experiences (ARLEs) in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library and other learning technology publications. Forty-three of these articles conducted user studies, and seven allowed the computation of an effect size to the performance of students in a test. In our meta-analysis, research show that ARLEs achieved a widely variable effect on student performance from a small negative effect to a large effect, with a mean effect size of 0.56 or moderate effect. To complement this finding, we performed a qualitative analysis on the design aspects for ARLEs: display hardware, software libraries, content authoring solutions, and evaluation techniques. We explain that AR incur three inherent advantages: real world annotation, contextual visualization, and vision-haptic visualization. We illustrate these advantages through the exemplifying prototypes, and ground these advantages to multimedia learning theory, experiential learning theory, and animate vision theory. Insights from this review are aimed to inform the design of future ARLEs.

Augmented Reality Learning Experiences: Survey of Prototype Design and Evaluation

Nowadays, native mobile applications (mobile apps) are targeted at specific mobile platforms. This phenomenon imposes severe constraints, such as the use of different development environments, technologies, and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for each mobile platform, leading inevitably to a waste of development time and effort, and an increased maintenance cost.The paper focuses on the current trends in developing cross-platform mobile apps. Our analysis focuses primarily on three areas. In the first place, we clarify the cross-platform development landscape by exploring the most important cross-platform app types, which are web, hybrid, interpreted and generated apps. Secondly, key issues for each app type are presented and a comparative analysis is performed to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each type. Thirdly, taking into account the current status in cross-platform mobile app development we identify a promising cross-platform app type and we investigate its effectiveness in practice. Finally, we draw some conclusions regarding cross-platform mobile app development approaches and make proposals for further research on the field.

A comparative analysis of cross-platform development approaches for mobile applications

Here we describe research addressing the next generation of mobility technology, which will deliver "the right experience in the right moment." The maturing field of pervasive computing yields the technology and the challenges described here. We focus on rich interactive mobile experiences triggered by context information available from the users, their environment, and a wealth of context-enabled content. We call such applications mediascapes.

Mediascapes: Context-Aware Multimedia Experiences

We describe the design of an experimental location-based
pervasive game entitled “Savannah”. Players use GPStracked
handheld computers to experience a virtual
savannah that appears to be overlaid on a football pitch
sized grassy field. Players act collaboratively to carry out
a series of lion missions (such as marking their territory,
hiding their cubs and hunting). A stated aim of the game is
to encourage players to understand the behaviour of lions
though personal experience. This directs them to learn
about the resources that lions require, and to understand
the daily key decisions that lions have to make in order to
survive in the wild. As a piece of entertainment, it offers a
unique opportunity to role play a fascinating animal in a
novel and engaging way.

"Savannah”: designing a location-based game simulating lion behaviour

This paper introduces the field of pervasive media, the use of pervasive computing to deliver applications and services into peoples’ lives, and the problems of creating and distributing pervasive media applications to mobile phones. It determines the requirements of a development platform for pervasive media applications through analysis of a range of pervasive media applications, including games and tourism based applications. It then evaluates a number of platforms against those requirements, including J2ME and native Smartphone development. The paper then introduces HTML5 and through a description of its features evaluates it against the requirements. Finally it concludes that HTML5 is a good solution to the problems of creating and distributing most pervasive media applications and describes its advantages and disadvantages compared to existing solutions.

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A Comparative Evaluation of HTML5 as a Pervasive Media Platform

Research field trials of fully functional prototypes of location-based games are an effective way to test game designs and develop an understanding of what makes games compelling. They may also expose emergent behaviors or facets of the game which were not predicted in the design. Experiments are a good way to explore these emergent behaviors in a rigorous way. We describe an emergence-driven research methodology that formalizes this process of using emergent phenomena from research field trials to drive experiments. We also describe a range of techniques that can be used to evaluate location aware experiences.

Ben Clayton

Papers

Mediascapes: Context-Aware Multimedia Experiences

"Savannah”: designing a location-based game simulating lion behaviour

A Comparative Evaluation of HTML5 as a Pervasive Media Platform

A research methodology for evaluating location aware experiences

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2-7 April