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Highlights • BWDAT is a reliable tool that facilitates the study of viewing experience on VOD platforms. • Collects users’ physiological data and users’ interactions with Netflix interface. • Non-intrusive and easy to use, successfully used in long-term projects with more than 200 users. • Includes a graphical display of the viewing sessions to help researchers visualize the data. • Includes an automatic report generator and data exporter for multiple platforms., Introduction New approaches to the study of the binge-watching phenomenon require new technology, leading to the development of a non-intrusive and low-cost analytical research software that facilitates a holistic understanding of binge-watching in an uncontrolled environment remotely (e.g., the home). BWDAT was developed to allow the collection of three types of data: users’ physiological data gathered from a smartwatch, users’ interactions from video-on-demand interfaces, and self-reported data. This tool offers the possibility to generate automatic data analysis reports, facilitating researchers’ data analysis tasks. Methods Two trial studies and a long-term study were used to evaluate the design and the technical implementation of the BWDAT tool. The metrics used were the BWDAT smartwatch’s App data coverage of the viewing sessions, and the data’s reliability of the viewer’s interactions with the Netflix interface, collected by the BWDAT Chrome Extension. Results High percentages of data coverage and content coverage were verified in the sessions collecting the smartwatch’s data. The reporting system developed proved to be useful in the collection and synchronization of physiological and users’ interaction data with Netflix interface, both generated in uncontrolled environments. Furthermore, the BWDAT tool facilitated the analysis of a large amount of nuanced data. Conclusion The results obtained confirm the reliability, accuracy, and usability of BWDAT. This tool has the potential to help researchers shed new light on the field of media and audience studies, and in particular on binge-watching.

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, digital technologies impact the way humans experience places and spaces in (smart) cities. To some extent, these smart technologies are intertwined with the urban living enabling the augmentation of the city’s space and creating new opportunities for playful urban engagement. Moreover, touristic cities are becoming the arena of novel hospitality services, emerging from the widespread use of digital technologies and internet-based platforms. At the same time, visitors look for increasingly “authentic” travel experiences that provide meaningful interactions with locals. New business models, such as those emerging from the sharing economy, flourished in response to these fresh needs and opportunities. However, establishing points of dialogue that bring benefits to both residents and tourists is a complex task that still needs inquiry. Here we extend on previous efforts by proposing a playful immersive experience that focuses on creating an esthetically engaging environment for direct information exchange between locals and visitors. We investigate how technology can mediate and augment such information sharing, engaging tourists in a playful and immersive experience. Results of an experiment with 15 users are analyzed and presented to provide new insights to the HCI community.

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries fundamentally arising from mobility as a form of capital. In destination islands that have a delicate ecosystem to maintain, this source of income can become problematic in terms of sustainability. A difficulty in making people aware of this issue is also represented by the fact that such sustainability-related issues (and their causes) are often not “visible” to citizens. To foster awareness about the relationship between sustainability and tourism in well-known destinations, we design a platform that engages users at two levels of participation: i. at the IoT and sensors level, in order to let them becoming providers of big data, deploying and enlarging the pervasive infrastructure; ii. at the (big) data visualization level, with the aim of engaging them in making sense of large volumes of data related to sustainability. This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-world experience where a low-cost collaborative platform made it possible to sense and visualize tourist flows and urban data into a rich interactive map-based visualization, open to the local communities. We deployed our case study in the Madeira archipelago, engaging locals and visitors of the island in two exploratory studies focused on measuring the impact of providing users with meaningful representations of tourism flows and related unperceivable aspects that affect the environmental sustainability. Analysing the findings of the two studies, we discuss the potentiality of using such a system to make sense of big data, fostering awareness about sustainability issues, and we point to future open challenges about citizens’ participation in sensing and making sense of big data.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action addressed not only to governments but also to businesses and civil society. In this scenario, Universities play a key role in achieving the SDGs and, also, in creating awareness about these global issues. As an example, the University of Bologna is carrying out several initiatives related to sustainability matters. Considering, in particular, the environmental dimension, the University undertook different strategies to reduce the waste of paper, embracing the dematerialization and paperless movements. To make these initiatives visible to the University community and to increase awareness about these issues, we designed a system that intends to provide data related to the implications of such initiatives in terms of paper waste avoided and benefits for the environment, to be exploited using different devices. In particular, this study focuses on the design and the evaluation of two infographics, conceived by two different groups of experts and researchers: one “animated” and one “aesthetic”. The evaluation intends to present the differences in terms of perceived design and informative dimensions, with the final aim to present insights on the design of infographics able to foster awareness, targeting specific communities.

The twin crises of nature and climate is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence and increasing public concern about long-term and potentially irreversible consequences of the Anthropocene. People and wildlife living today, as well as future generations, are at risk unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of plants, insects and other creatures on which we depend for food, clean water, and a stable climate. As urban dwellings become the main concentration of citizens, we thought of addressing these issues through a series of urban interventions aiming at educating and enhancing the user’s biodiversity and sustainability awareness through play and reflection. We provide a list of preliminary insights, discussed, and shared trying to frame how these new interventions can contribute to a panorama where playful interactions in smart cities can inspire sustainable and respectful attitudes towards nature. We conclude with a constructive conversation about playful urban approaches aimed at understanding how the interaction process could be re-centered to promote environmental protection and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users. Our case studies strive to reconcile concepts and theories, about ecological computing, more than human design, biodiversity actions and nature awareness and conservation in urban settings, for the design of urban playful and enjoyable systems that promote environmental protection and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users.

The paper presents a participatory platform designed and implemented with the aim of fostering dialogue between locals and tourists. The platform exploits the crowd-sourcing paradigm to collect the voice of the locals in order to provide tourists with authentic experiences. The system was designed as an immersive visual storytelling experience, to let the user discover the locals' story in an interactive rich environment. The insights that emerged during a preliminary evaluation with users point out that the system is able to deepen the relationship between locals and tourists while interacting with the platform.

The growth of Internet-distributed TV services has transformed video consumption, enhancing the level of control that viewers have over what they watch. Along with the release of entire seasons of programming at once, this has led to the phenomenon of ‘binge-watching’, in which several episodes of a program are viewed in one sitting. This article presents the results of a novel exploratory study focused on 40 Netflix viewing sessions from 11 millennials in their homes. Methodologically, we employed a novel mixed-methods approach that combines objective data (collected through a browser extension) and subjective data (collected via questionnaires completed before and after viewing). This novel approach allowed us to describe the binge-watcher’s experience in a holistic fashion. Results suggest that binge-watching is an individual activity mainly performed at the end of the day to relax, for boredom relief purposes, or for escapism. Furthermore, a binge-watching session lasts for an average of 2 h and 10 min, and variations on binge-watchers’ affective states were identified after Netflix exposure. Participants’ levels of valence (unhappy–happy) significantly decreased after binge-watching; their positive affect values increased primarily after watching sci-fi, while their negative affect values decreased after watching comedy and slightly increased after watching drama. However, the levels of arousal (relaxed–stimulated) remained the same. This study extends our current understanding of binge-watching in terms of viewer motivations, how it affects their viewing experiences, and participants’ subjective affective states. The investigation contributes, thus, to a relatively new domain of research concerned with the understanding of binge-watching behavior of serialized TV fiction.

Part 9: Interaction Design for Culture and Development I; International audience; More people are traveling than ever before. This intense and disproportionate growth in tourism may, however, generate negative environmental and social effects, especially on islands. In order to address this issue, this article presents the design and evaluation of Há-Vita, an interactive web platform, whose goal is to foster awareness of local nature and folk knowledge and create connections between locals and visitors. We explored these design goals through different research methods, such as user studies with tourists in hotel lobbies, as well as focus groups consisting of two different groups of local residents and a group of visitors. Theoretically, Há-Vita is grounded in the concept of “community-based tourism ventures,” which is concerned with environmental preservation via ecotourism practices and, at the same time, the empowerment of local communities. Furthermore, the design rationale of the platform is also inspired by the authenticity theory, which examines tourists’ pursuit of meaningful interactions with locals. Our results indicate that, despite time constraints (for visitors), locals and visitors were willing to interact with each other as they acknowledged authentic benefits in such interaction. Furthermore, our focus groups with locals have shown the potential to stimulate different levels of local empowerment based on the community-based tourism framework in the design iterations of Há-Vita.

Part 10: Interactive Posters; International audience; This submission describes the analysis of an evaluation of 155 teenagers (15–19 years old) who took part in a co-design session centred around how mobile technology might enhance their own experiences in a natural history museum. At the end, participants were required to make a word association to evaluate the session. An analysis of how teen participants responded to the design session was conducted using thematic analysis to show the different categories of adjectives used by participants in their evaluations. The goal for the evaluation was mainly to pilot the design session process and if teens enjoyed participating in it. We believe this is of interest to designers and cultural heritage professionals.

This pictorial summarizes a qualitative study of children's perceptions of mobility through their own cognitive map drawings of the journey from home to school. We engaged 27 sixth-grade students (11 to 12 year-old) from Lisbon, Portugal, and analyze their drawings extracting 12 different design recommendations. We use these recommendations to provide design suggestions in terms of i) existing functionalities of mapping applications (that can be re-used); ii) improvements for existing map and wayfinding systems; iii) children's original design suggestions. The qualitative study reported here provides contributions that could help promote sustainable mobility for children in particular, with regards to innovation but also autonomy and supervision by caregivers.

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life on Earth and its biological diversity. It boosts ecosystem productivity, where each species has a role to play. Unfortunately, human activity is causing massive extinctions and biodiversity losses continue. Because of that, nature conservation efforts and environmental monitoring have become increasingly important to manage natural resources and reacts to changes. Following this line, we designed a game with a purpose (GWAP) aimed to address two emerging issues in this area: (i) engaging citizens in validating bioacoustic samples collected using smart bioacoustics sensors; and (ii) educating and enhancing the user’s biodiversity awareness while playing, inspiring them for later reflection and eventually inspire behavioural changes. In this paper, we describe the different design phases and the insights obtained from an early experience prototype session of the game, engaging 14 young-adults. From the prototype session, we collected insightful feedback on the design of the game and its mechanics as well as its interface. Moreover, preliminary positive responses of the users encourage us to refine and continue developing the game.

Over the years, humans have heavily contributed to environmental degradation. Because of that, nature conservation efforts and environmental monitoring are increasingly important, especially activities able to engage the general public to contribute to the cause. These initiatives fall under the citizen science paradigm and are heavily dependent on the public support. During our research, we found that the combination of game design with citizen science projects boosts user participation, resulting in the project overall success. With this in mind, we devised an approach that combines citizen science with a gameful experience via bioacoustic sensing, in order to create a game with the purpose (GWAP) with the final goal to classify animal sounds in a given area. Through different game modes and game mechanics, we support the analyses of historical and recent data, by the players, in the close proximity of the location or from a distance, through enjoyable and educational game experience. Finally, we did a preliminary evaluation of the designed mobile application. Participants enjoyed the game, with a majority stating that they would like to play the released version of this game in the future.

Submitted by António Freitas (amsf@uma.pt) on 2022-01-31T11:46:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Watt-I-see design and evaluation of an interactive installation using eco-feedforward strategies.pdf: 437000 bytes, checksum: 7a7955e7fdc68324d411c4179091e217 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2022-01-31T11:46:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Watt-I-see design and evaluation of an interactive installation using eco-feedforward strategies.pdf: 437000 bytes, checksum: 7a7955e7fdc68324d411c4179091e217 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018 info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This paper presents Beanstalk, an interactive platform to assist communities in easily running systematic analysis of mobility patterns of tourists at their destinations, contributing in new ways in visualizing spatio-temporal mobility data for forecasting, tracking trends, detecting patterns and noticing anomalies. The approach takes advantage of a combination of passive Wi-Fi tracking and ground truth data provided by tourism authorities. By analyzing a large dataset for a medium sized European island, we provide evidence of the accuracy and effectiveness of this low-cost method in inferring topological characteristics of tourist behavior and relevant typologies of trip itineraries. This helps decision makers in the touristic sector to plan and manage actions geared towards improving the sustainability and competitiveness of their touristic regions. In particular, we argue that in a world where sensing data is becoming inexpensive, there is an opportunity to use this approach to deliver data back to local communities which are empowered to act and leverage this information.

Bus stops are key touchpoints to improve the quality and engagement of citizens with public transports. Despite their ubiquity in modern urban landscapes they are seldom considered a key design/technology element in improving the public transport experience. This paper describes a design case study where different teams attempted to improve bus stops using interactive technologies. The resulting concept prototypes were designed to provide citizens and tourists with (i) safe, attractive and accessible public spaces, (ii) attractive, accessible and efficient public transport; and, (iii) smart traveller information tools and services for sustainable mobility. Our case was set in Madeira, a medium sized European island, where tourism widely contribute to the local economy and buses represent the only available public mean of transport. We present the research insights and the design concepts leading to improve engagement and use of public transport.

In this paper we present results gathered from field trials while using a pervasive game, called Geo-Zombie. It intermixes reality with virtual zombies, providing a game experience to be lived in the urban environment. Geo-Zombie is designed for a specific goal: engaging people in collecting geo- referenced data about urban accessibility. The game has been designed with the aim to involve a large number of players/volunteers in the activity of signaling urban barriers while walking. To get ammo to react to a zombie attack, in fact, players can sense/map (crowdsensing) urban barriers and facilities and transmit those information back to an operative center (crowdsourcing). With the aim to assess the efficacy of Geo-Zombie, we conducted real experiments contrasting three different mobile apps, specifically designed to: i) simply collect urban information without providing any gaming experience (Basic), ii) reward volunteers that participate in the crowdsourcing activity (Reward), and iii) provide fun and entertainment to players who contribute (Geo-Zombie). We here provide results along two different perspectives: a quantitative one (e.g., number of collected data and similar) and a qualitative one (i.e., the players' experience). These results confirm the feasibility and suitability of our approach and stimulate interesting discussions.

Mobile devices and web pages increasingly set not only the direction, but also the pace taken in many everyday life activities. In essence, the lives of many people today follow algorithmic paths, provided by navigation units and by social recommendation systems. Although this improves the efficiency and functionality of many tasks, this process may also lead to a standardized, and, perhaps, oversimplified approach to reality. In essence, many likes on social pages (e.g., Facebook), star ratings on leading traveler websites (e.g., Tripadvisor) and reviews provided by the online crowd may lead the lion's share of users to visit only a limited number of locations. This means that in many cases, people with very different backgrounds, taste, cultural awareness and sensitivity may end in the very same places while missing more appropriate ones, be them historical or commercial. The work presented in this paper aims at moving a first step in unveiling such problem, and experimenting with possible working strategies which may better represent the significance of a location, while still conserving the simplicity of the most commonly utilized evaluation systems.

Head-Mounted Display based Virtual Reality is proliferating. However, Visually Induced Motion Sickness (VIMS), which prevents many from using VR without discomfort, bars widespread adoption. Prior work has shown that limiting the Field of View (FoV) can reduce VIMS at a cost of also reducing presence. Systems that dynamically adjust a user’s FoV may be able to balance these concerns. To explore this idea, we present a technique for standard 360° video that shrinks FoVs only during VIMS inducing scenes. It uses Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping and peripheral optical flow to compute camera movements and reduces FoV during rapid motion or optical flow. A user study (N=23) comparing 360° video with unrestricted-FoVs (90°), reduced fixed-FoVs (40°) and dynamic-FoVs (40°-90°) revealed that dynamic-FoVs mitigate VIMS while maintaining presence. We close by discussing the user experience of dynamic-FoVs and recommendations for how they can help make VR comfortable and immersive for all.

According to UNESCO, Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) refers to the acts, expressions, and understandings and the associated objects and environments embedded within the ideas and customs of communities and individuals. Sometimes these facets are passed down through generations, but they can also be lost as people's surrounding circumstances change. This paper investigates how Digital Storytelling (DS) can explore and enable discussions surrounding the various interpretations of ICH, particularly in communities at risk of social exclusion. The authors outline a DS field study, which engaged with ICH notions with first and second-generation migrant participants in Portugal. This process's objectives were to observe what kinds of stories these methods could elicit and if some ICH form would feature in them. The outcomes were then analyzed to understand if and what sort of ICH is highlighted and how it connects to their present surroundings. These insights were used to inform the requirements of a new interactive DS platform for the authoring and viewing of stories that engage with the subject of ICH.