Location-based games (LBGs) are becoming increasingly more popular, especially those that focus on social interaction in public space. They have been successful to various extents at bringing players together to interact in public space; yet there is lack of knowledge and consensus on how to design these games from a technical perspective. This paper proposes a software architecture that stems from a cross-game analysis of representative games of this genre, in which 6 core architectural components are identified: Augmentation, Navigation, Interaction, State Progression, Participation, and Administration. These components support the game experience of players by enabling orientation and navigation of the players’ own physical environment, their interaction with the game and other people, the traditional game-like experience, management of the entire game ecosystem, and the ability to allow players to fuel game play. An LBG prototype, Secrets of the South, is presented as proof of concept for this software architecture and its key components. This prototype shows that the identified components are pivotal to the gameplay of LBGs for natural interactions in public space and shows how practitioners can be guided in their preparation whilst maintaining their freedom to technically implement this architecture according to the given structure.

Social interaction is part of the fabric of society and is essential to challenge many types of social barriers. Location-based games (LBGs) provide a means to foster such interaction in local communities. The design of such games is currently based primarily on designer experience and on the literature on game design in general, and not on an understanding of user requirements. This article explores the preferences and desires of adolescents in neighborhoods of Rotterdam South to socially interact with others and engage with their own neighborhood via LBGs. Adolescents are informants in the exploration of gaming activities for social interaction, which, when subjected to expert review with the mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics framework, produce gameplay requirements for the desired purpose: social interaction in public space. Such requirements provide researchers and game designers insights on the game dynamics best suited to foster location-based social interaction.

Digital serious games have shown to be effective in promoting citizen engagement and social interaction. The reasons for their success are, however, unknown. This paper proposes design recommendations to support designers of serious games for meaningful social interaction, based on player preferences, needs and desires, based on literature study and a case study for which a location-based game framework was designed, developed and evaluated. The case study with and for children/teenagers in Rotterdam focussed on the design of challenges by the children/teenagers for meaningful interaction with their environment, and the strengthening of their engagement with their own neighbourhood. The paper focuses specifically on: 1) if and when meaningful social interaction occurred during game play, how it occurred, and with which impact, and 2) the design choices/features that contributed to (the experience of) meaningful social interaction. On the basis of these results and the literature this paper proposes design recommendations to support designers of serious games for meaningful social interaction, taking not only the current players’ needs and desires into account but also those of future players.

Making it work together can be challenging when various stakeholders are involved. Given the context of neighborhoods and cities specifically, stakeholders values and interests are not always aligned. In these settings, to construct long-term and sustaining participatory city-making projects, to make it work together, is demanding. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a design framework for inclusive and participatory city-making. This framework is inspired by the playable city perspective in that it endorses an open, exploratory, and interactive mindset of city actors. An extensive literature review on approaches taken for playful and participatory interventions in local communities provides the foundations for the framework. The review brings forward four pillars on which the framework is grounded and four activities for exploration of the design space for participatory city-making. A case study from The Hague (NL) is used to demonstrate how the framework can be applied to design and analyze processes in which city stakeholders together make it work. The case study analysis complements the framework with various research methods to support researchers, urban planners, and designers to engage with all city stakeholders to create playful and participatory interventions, which are inclusive and meaningful for the local community. The research contributions of this paper are the proposed framework and informed suggestions on how this framework in practice assists city stakeholders to together make it work.

Location-based activities can challenge citizens to explore their neighbourhood in new playful ways. This paper presents a classification of such playful activities based on the literature and experience gained (1) in co-creation sessions and (2) gameplay for neighbourhood exploration with citizens in the Hague. The location-based game designed for this purpose encouraged neighbourhood exploration and social interaction that went beyond the everyday normal. Results showed that citizens are specifically interested in activities that allow them to discover new information about, and places in, their neighbourhood when these are related to their own life. The results of this paper provide new knowledge on game design to inform designers on which type of interactions and activities foster neighbourhood exploration and social interaction.

Citizens’ engagement in their neighbourhood community is pivotal for cities to effectively deal with future transitions. Knowing what is going on and having access to the neighbourhood network are important conditions for this. Although prior research has studied ways to foster information sharing between citizens, the underlying assumptions and design choices are often not made explicit. This research identifies design guidelines for playgrounds: physical and virtual spaces where citizens can exchange information about their neighbourhood. A focus group, a workshop and a case study of an existing playground design were performed in The Hague, NL, the context of this research. A set of eight guidelines was identified, covering how to select playground locations, which information to include, and how to design the interaction between citizens. These guidelines inform designers how to create urban playgrounds for citizens to meet, interact, and collaborate to create engaged communities.

Location-based games (LBGs) successfully promote playful experiences engaging millions of players throughout the world. The potential of embedding such location-based experiences in educational practice has been recognised but not yet fully embraced. LBGs and educational location-based applications have been used to enhance critical thinking, but not for the acquisition and development of 21^st century skills: key competences required to understand, live and thrive in the local communities of today. This paper introduces the LBG 'Secrets of the South', designed to orchestrate social interaction in public space, and foster communication, collaboration, IT literacy, and social/cultural skills through 1) interaction-based social encounters with both friends and unknown members of the community, and 2) in-situ learning about the history and social context of the neighbourhood. A 4-step general procedure is proposed for the creation of LBGs designed to foster 21^st century skills.

In recent years, many promising developments have taken place around augmented, virtual and mixed-reality technology. One could wonder whether these technologies can be combined to yield a mix of video games and sports, involving physical activities previously deemed impossible: creating a superhuman sport. This work investigates how mixed-reality can be used to create a fun, intuitive and engaging superhuman sport. To this end, the game League of Lasers was developed, in which two teams compete in a mix between football and Pong, using the physical movement of the players as main means to interact within mixed-reality. An evaluation of League of Lasers with a user study with 32 participants showed that League of Lasers is perceived as a fun and immersive skill-based game.

This paper describes different types of activities/challenges designed for social interaction, while discussing the performance of such challenges using the mobile digital game “Secrets of the South” (http://secretsofthesouth.tbm.tudelft.nl/, Secrets of the South). The game was played as part of a scientific meeting, with participants from 25 to 62 years of age and a varying degree of cultural differences. The presentation and discussion of the results of the gameplay provide insights on the appropriateness of the different challenges for social interaction in a playful city. Directions for future work for such challenge designs are presented.

In order to support the decision-making process of industry on how to implement Augmented Reality (AR) in production, this article wants to provide guidance through a set of comparative user studies. The results are obtained from the feedback of 160 participants who performed the same repair task on a switch cabinet of an industrial robot. The studies compare several AR instruction applications on different display devices (head-mounted display, handheld tablet PC and projection-based spatial AR) with baseline conditions (paper instructions and phone support), both in a single-user and a collaborative setting. Next to insights on the performance of the individual device types for the single mode operation, the study is able to show significant indications on AR techniques are being especially helpful in a collaborative setting.

Policy makers, designers, and researchers are currently investigating different types of citizen initiatives to support information sharing. Contemporary information sharing initiatives are often not sustained because they are not open for all citizens to participate and do not provide relevant information. This paper explores how citizens can share information about their own neighbourhoods that is relevant for them and easy to access. Four participatory design workshops were organised to explore tacit knowledge and latent needs of citizens in a specific neighbourhood in The Hague. Results show that location-based information sharing support citizens to explore new things about the neighbourhood. Future research will focus on how this can be sustained over a longer period of time.

Superhuman sports (SHS) is a field where technological augmentations of human abilities and environment are combined to play a new and exciting sport. SHS make use of artificial senses or virtual reality to create a new experience that involves physical fitness and skills. Star Tag aims to combine these aspects with an engaging audience experience. This augmented reality game uses the Microsoft HoloLens, making it possible to move through a mixed reality space effectively. Star Tag is a competitive multiplayer game where players need to conquer all planets from their opponent to win the game. Players need to move around in a physical space from virtual planet to virtual planet in order to navigate the game-space and reach the planets. The audience is involved with the game via their phones, through which they can support the players. Through playtesting and conducting a survey, the results show that Star Tag is a superhuman sport that motivates people to be physically active.

Resilient communities are an important prerequisite to reach urban resilience. In such communities, citizens need to be able to participate for improving liveability and safety of their environment. The playable city, where participation is key, provides the environment for this process to unfold. This paper researches requirements for the design of playgrounds: environments for open interaction and collaboration, as part of the playable city. Two workshops were organised in two neighbourhoods in The Hague to explore specific citizen preferences for playground design. Neighbourhood locations and the type of information citizens would like to discover, share, and create are identified, in particular with respect to healthcare, safety and social engagement. The implications of these requirements are presented and discussed with design options which exemplify how playgrounds in the city enable joined information sharing, creation, interaction, and collaboration.

In clinical practice, objective and quantitative assessment of motor dysfunction is required for monitoring disease progression over time and evaluating response to therapeutic interventions. Thereby, clinicians typically want their patients to make movements to their full physical potential. Augmented reality (AR) games using 3D hand and body tracking that engage patients, could motivate them to perform repetitive tasks to the limit of their physical capabilities in a safe environment. This paper reports on different AR games developed for objective upper extremity motor dysfunction assessment of Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients and stroke patients. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations of various user studies involving 23 PD patients, 22 stroke patients and 39 healthy persons are discussed to make design recommendations for designing engaging AR games for objective assessment of upper extremity motor dysfunction.

Everyday field work of a police officer requires the perception, filtering and understanding of large amounts of information in highly dynamic situations. This presents opportunities for ICT to alleviate strain on officers by providing adequate information provisioning. We evaluate the usage of a mobile location-based hotspot policing system, comprised of a smartphone, smartwatch and a web-application, during real field work with officers in high and low hotspot density locations. We use a repeated measures design to compare possible effects with our baseline measure, i.e. field work without using the system. Usability, task-load and situational awareness (SA), as well as possible mediators, are evaluated to gain insight into the differences between modes of transportation and the overall viability of the system itself. No significant difference was found between the two locations. Officers using the system scored high on usability measures and interview feedback was largely positive. Measures on SA remained stable throughout baseline and experimental shifts. Task-load was significantly higher with the use of the system. The contradiction in these findings can be explained by showing the differences in the nature of field work with and without the system.

Fidelity of games as a concept describes the level of representation of, or accordance with reality. The level of fidelity has influence on the interaction between player and game. Our study discusses the outcomes of a literature study and three cases with the goal to propose a comprehensive framework of game fidelity. This framework could help game designers and researchers to adopt the ‘right’ or sufficient level of fidelity to achieve the intended objectives related to applied games. Our results show that functional and psychological fidelity have a higher impact on the experience and effects of applied games than their physical fidelity. Social and ethical fidelity are proposed as new dimensions of game fidelity that still have to be explored. In literature, both low and high levels of fidelity are described as effective in applied games, while a medium level seems not to be beneficial for the player.

Recently, several AR systems have been developed and used in various fields. However, in most AR systems, there are some restrictions caused by the usage of AR marker or location information. In this research, in order to solve these problems, AR information system that can recognize object itself based on deep learning was developed. In particular, this system was constructed using client-server model so that the machine learning can be updated while operating the system. In addition, the method of gamification was introduced to gather the learning data automatically from the users when they use the system. The prototype was applied to the AR zoo information system and the effectiveness of the proposed system was validated in the evaluation experiment.

Digitization and the growing capabilities of data networks enable companies to perform tasks via remote support, which previously required service personnel to travel. But which mixed reality method leads to better results regarding human factors, grounding and performance criteria? This paper reports on a collaborative user study, in which a local worker is guided by a remote expert with the help of different augmented reality methods. The performed task is an controller exchange in a switch cabinet of an industrial robot, a task rather typical for failure detection within the field. Our study was conducted in collaboration with a technician school of which 50 technician apprentices participated in our study. Our results show clear advantages of using augmented reality (AR) to enable remote support. It further gives significant indications for using a projection based AR method.

The goals of Superhuman Sports games include to involve physical activity and enhance the skills and abilities of a human through technology. They are played for fun, competition or to improve the players’ health condition. To meet these goals, we designed and developed STAR: Superhuman Training in Augmented Reality, an augmented reality adventure shooter, and implemented it on the Microsoft Hololens. Our game promotes physical activity by making you avoid dangerous enemies and gather energy to deal with this threat while navigating a narrow path above lava. Social interaction is stimulated by its multiplayer mode, in which players have to work together to destroy an energy core. Player testing showed that we achieve our goal of physical exercise by making the player move at a pace slightly less than brisk walking and that the game is fun and immersive. These results show that STAR is a promising step in the right direction for the development of superhuman sports using augmented reality.