Interweaving mobile games with everyday life

Abstract

We introduce a location-based game called Feeding Yoshi that provides an example of seamful design, in which key characteristics of its underlying technologies-the coverage and security characteristics of WiFi-are exposed as a core element of gameplay. Feeding Yoshi is also a long-term, wide-area game, being played over a week between three different cities during an initial user study. The study, drawing on participant diaries and interviews, supported by observation and analysis of system logs, reveals players' reactions to the game. We see the different ways in which they embedded play into the patterns of their daily lives, augmenting existing practices and creating new ones, and observe the impact of varying location on both the ease and feel of play. We identify potential design extensions to Feeding Yoshi and conclude that seamful design provides a route to creating engaging experiences that are well adapted to their underlying technologies.

Moving on from Weiser’s Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences

“…Examples of projects that have pioneered the design of novel physical-digital spaces to facilitate creativity and reflection include the Hunting of the Snark [32], Ambient Wood [36], RoomQuake [33] Savannah [17], Environmental Detectives [27], Drift Table [19] and Feeding Yoshi [7]. Each of these have experimented with the use of mobile, sensor and fixed technologies in combination with wireless infrastructures to encourage exploration, invention, and out of the box thinking.…”

Cultural Mobilities: Diversity and Agency in Urban Computing

“…Can You See Me Now [8], a game played on the streets of Sheffield, created a novel hybrid space in which participants "virtually" present would interact with those physically in the urban space; Treasure [3] encourages players to explore the "seams" in digital infrastructures as they are mapped into physical spaces (e.g. wireless network coverage) and to incorporate them into game play, while Yoshi [7] exploits similar mappings between physical and virtual, but on an urban scale. Reminiscent of studies of the urban soundscape [20], projects such as Sonic City [21] or tuna [5] explore the ways in which movement through space can create personal or collective audio experiences, giving a new (aural) form to movement.…”

Understanding Mobile Notification Management in Collocated Groups

“…Moreover, technology support of leisure activities are relevant, such as cultural visiting (Brown et al, 2005;Bellotti et al, 2008), spectating at outdoor sports events (Jacucci et al, 2007;Salovaara et al, 2006), location-based games (Bell et al, 2006), and learning (Benford et al, 2005).…”