Amanda Oldroyd

The error of our ways: The experience of self-reported position in a location-based game

We present a study of people’s use of positional information as part of a collaborative location-based game. The game exploits self-reported positioning in which mobile players manually reveal their positions to remote players by manipulating electronic maps. Analysis of players’ movements, position reports and communications, drawing on video data, system logs and player feedback, highlights some of the ways in which humans generate, communicate and interpret position reports. It appears that remote participants are largely untroubled by the relatively high positional error associated with self reports. Our analysis suggests that this may because mobile players declare themselves to be in plausible locations such as at common landmarks, ahead of themselves on their current trajectory (stating their intent) or behind themselves (confirming previously visited locations). These observations raise new requirements for the future development of automated positioning systems and also suggest that self-reported positioning may be a useful fallback when automated systems are unavailable or too unreliable.

Ages of avatar: community building for inhabited television

In this paper we describe and analyse the community building process for Ages of Avatar, a set of on-line Collaborative Virtual Environments created in MicrosoftVirtual Worlds, which form part of an ongoing experiment in Inhabited Television, aiming to merge CVEs and broadcast media. We describe the means by which the CVEs were launched, promoted and supported alongside a television broadcast channel, and how actions of viewers acting as inhabitants in the CVE can be used to provide broadcast material. We explain how the world content and their super-structure were managed to encourage the growth of a community over a short period of time. Using logs of activities in the worlds we deduce some of the characteristics of the community which was formed.

Professor Tanda: greener gaming & pervasive play

This study examines the development of a mobile phone-based pervasive game that related its users environmental footprint. It discusses the design challenges, development and evaluation of the prototype game in order to identify the key strategies and mechanisms that relate to the production of pervasive systems for mass participation. Designing the user experience for such systems is particularly difficult, as the game had to educate and entertain without patronizing or preaching to the user. A prototype system was developed and trialed in order to identify and understand how users related to the experience and how the game may be further developed. We found that character-led tailored physical activities were generally found to be the most enjoyable, while players wanted more interaction with each other and more score-based content. Creating interdependent question sets and orchestrating the game arduous process. In the future a fully automated system will be key to its use.

Urban Computing and Mobile Devices

Learn about projects on participant-environment interaction, the leveraging of information from mobile sensors, user authentication, and urban computing navigation.

Virtual Storytelling of Cooperative Activities in a Theatre of Work

DocuDrama offers the generation of interactive narratives which are based on activities in a collaborative virtual environment. DocuDrama develops a model for the creation and enactment of narratives derived from the history of documents and interactions between people. It investigates how a narrative can be constructed from this information in a way appropriate for both the intended audience and the message to be conveyed. DocuDrama offers a choice of replay options which depend on the users situation and preferences. We apply this approach within TOWER, a Theatre of Work, which allows project members to be aware of project relevant activities as well as to establish social relationships to intensify team coherence.

DocuDrama conversations

This sketch describes DocuDrama, a tool that offers a generation of interactive narratives that are based on activities in a collaborative virtual environment. DocuDrama [Schäfer et al. 2001] is built as part of TOWER [2002], a Theatre of Work Enabling Relationships, which allows project members to be aware of project relevant activities as well as to establish and maintain the social relationships that intensify team coherence.

Symbolic Acting in a Virtual Narrative Environment

This paper presents an approach combining concepts of virtual storytelling with non-verbal communication in order to support cooperative processes. This type of system is a potential powerful tool for co-located virtual teams which, though geographically dispersed, work together by the use of modern information technology. We introduce DocuDrama Conversation, which dynamically generates stories based on past activities of team members in shared workspaces. In this paper we focus on Symbolic Acting and a communication-oriented approach on the replay of past activities.

Designing shared virtual environments

The purpose of this course is to inform the audience how to design and scope successful shared virtual environments. The emphasis will be on employing good visual design, strong realistic conceptual ideas and proven interaction styles. New application concepts have been emerging within the field of virtual environments that offer exciting application possibilities but suffer from a number of problems which, once known and understood, can be avoided. The course also includes a short workshop where the audience will participate in creating a storyboard for a virtual environment. be addressed including a discussion on user authoring and self generating content.* Ideas about how to improve navigation in virtual environments will be explored. A large part of the course will be addressing the impact af user representation or avatars in shared virtual environments, looking at avatar customization, symbolic behavior, accentuated gestures and the effects of “insignificant” expression on communication and engagement.