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This paper presents the concept, a system-overview, and the evaluation of EnArgus, the central information system for energy research funding in Germany. Initiated by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), EnArgus establishes a one-stop information system about all recent and ongoing energy research funding projects in Germany. Participants ranging from laypersons to experts were surveyed in three workshops to evaluate both the public and expert interfaces of the EnArgus system in comparison to peer systems. The results showed that the EnArgus system was predominantly evaluated positively by the various participants. It contributes to making the energy sector more transparent and offers clear advantages for professional use compared to similar systems. The system’s semantic processing enables more precise hits and better coverage by including semantically related terms in search results; its intelligence makes it fail-safe, rendering it suitable for areas where poor results can have dire consequences. Reporting on an actual real-world system, the paper also provides a roadmap-view of how electronic filing of administrative project data can be semantically enhanced and opened-up to provide the basis for new ways into the data that are key for future breakthrough AI interfaces.

In this article, we compare a Google Tango tablet with the Microsoft HoloLens smartglasses in the context of the visualisation and interaction with Building Information Modeling data. A user test was conducted where 16 participants solved four tasks, two for each device, in small teams of two. Two aspects are analysed in the user test: the visualisation of interior designs and the visualisation of Building Information Modeling data. The results show that the Tango tablet is surprisingly preferred by most users when it comes to collaboration and discussion in our scenario. While the HoloLens offers hands-free operation and a stable tracking, users mentioned that the interaction with the Tango tablet felt more natural. In addition, users reported that it was easier to get an overall impression with the Tango tablet rather than with the HoloLens smartglasses.

Zusammenfassung Im MILE-Projekt werden digitale Technologien fur mobile, ortsbezogene Lernangebote in der Ernahrungs- und Verbraucherbildung (EVB) genutzt. Ziel ist es, mit sog. MILEGeogames Jugendliche fur Themen der EVB zu sensibilisieren. Die im Projekt entwickelte MILE.Toolbox unterstutzt Multiplikatoren bei der Erstellung von MILE-Geogames. Der Beitrag diskutiert das Potential des Ansatzes fur die Ernahrungs- und Verbraucherbildung. Schlusselworter: Mobiles, ortsbezogenes Lernen, Geogames, Ernahrungs- und Verbraucherbildung ----- Bibliographie: Muller, Heike/Bartsch, Silke/Eisenhardt, Manuela/Oppermann, Leif/Schaal, Steffen: Mobiles, ortsbezogenes Lernen in der Ernahrungs- und Verbraucherbildung, HiBiFo, 2-2017, S. 78-90. https://doi.org/10.3224/hibifo.v6i2.07

Touring location-based experiences is challenging, as both content and underlying location services must be adapted to each new setting. A study of a touring performance called Rider Spoke as it visited three different cities reveals how professional artists developed a novel approach to these challenges in which users drove the co-evolution of content and the underlying location service as they explored each new city. We show how the artists iteratively developed filtering, survey, visualization, and simulation tools and processes to enable them to tune the experience to the local characteristics of each city. Our study reveals how by paying attention to both content and infrastructure issues in tandem, the artists were able to create a powerful user experience that has since toured to many different cities.

Part 18: Mobile Gaming, Mobile Life - Interweaving the Virtual and the Real; International audience; Over the last few years we have witnessed the smartphone dominating the market, the rapid growth of mobile apps, a surge in mobile augmented reality and location-based apps, and burgeoning mobile communities. While mobile topics continue to provide rich research challenges, people and companies outside academia already use these apps regularly. This is due to the increased availability of affordable devices, applications and technologies that support the creation of mixed reality experiences. Thus a core theme of our workshop at ICEC 2012 is authoring mixed realities, designing mobile games and creating mobile experiences. We would like to assess how professional designers and developers, as well as academics and end users, are using the technology to connect the digital and the real in a mobile context.

Designing Augmented Reality location aware games requires an understanding of how form and content issues impact on presence. A study of 60 players was conducted using questionnaires, video analysis and interviews. The results indicate that content including: moral dilemmas, strong narratives, using real locations effectively and applying simple physical behavior within virtual characters to improve embodiment have a positive impact on player experience. The results are presented in the form of guidelines.

Presence is usually assessed via a variety of subjective and objective measures. However, constraints often result in subjective measurements using questionnaires as a key method of data collection. In this paper we present a study of 44 participants of a collaborative augmented reality game known as TimeWarp which used both subjective and objective behavioral measures. Behavior as coded from video recordings of one scene of the game and self-reports about feelings of presence were compared. Our findings indicate that pointing behavior and verbal responses to the virtual content are correlated negatively to sense of presence. We further investigated the influence of subjectively perceived interactivity on perceived presence. We found that the interaction possibilities perceived by the participants predicted their experience of social presence with the virtual characters in the game. Furthermore, playing together with another person did not result in decreased social pre sence of the virtual characters. Implications for presence research are discussed.

This chapter (Boyd Davis principal author, project director) discusses issues arising from the development of a world-first location-aware game (’Ere be Dragons) using live bio-sensing, funded by the Wellcome Trust and supported by Hewlett Packard Research, who created the entirely new combinations of technology used for the project. The chapter contributes to the understanding of ‘serious games’, a field traceable to George Mallen’s 1968 Eco Game but increasingly significant in the past decade. The project used imagery and animation to represent combined data gathered from two live streams, location and heart-rate, exploring the new possibilities of media that are pervasive, multimodal and physical. It previously received international attention and awards reported in RAE2008; the new contribution here was to identify the relevance for medical information technology. This invited chapter was the only one in the book not written by medical experts. The research programme required a cross-disciplinary team of artists, interaction experts and health scientists, using art to explore bioscience in the context of public health; the science collaborator was Professor Riddoch, Senior Scientific Editor, Chief Medical Officer's report, Physical Activity and Health (2004). It combined novel mobile technologies with novel gameplay, unlike most digital games, which are reactionary and unimaginative in their models of play. Finally, formal and informal evaluation was undertaken with users. The chapter focuses on the use of digital gameplay as a means of modifying attitudes and behaviours, and the benefits of live feedback during use as distinct from retrospective review of performance. Two contexts are described: the crisis in health caused by widespread low levels of physical activity and the techno-cultural context in which the work was developed. Few projects have been based on live heart-rate, and the chapter explains the problems and the potential of exploiting this aspect of behaviour in digital play.

Pervasive gaming is a new form of multimedia entertainment that extends the traditional computer gaming experience out into the real world. Through a combination of personal devices, positioning systems and other multimedia sensors, combined with wireless networking, a pervasive game can respond to a player's movements and context and enable them to communicate with a game server and other players. We review recent examples of pervasive games in order to explain their distinctive characteristics as multimedia applications. We then consider the challenge of scaling pervasive games to include potentially very large numbers of players. We propose a new approach based upon a campaign model in which individuals, local groups and experts draw on a combination of pervasive games, online services and broadcasting to take part in national or even global events. We discuss the challenges that this raises for further research.

Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) is still a fragmented space to design for due to the rapidly evolving hardware, the interdisciplinarity of teams, and a lack of standards and best practices. We interviewed 26 professional AR/VR designers and developers to shed light on their tasks, approaches, tools, and challenges. Based on their work and the artifacts they generated, we found that AR/VR application creators fulfill four roles: concept developers, interaction designers, content authors, and technical developers. One person often incorporates multiple roles and faces a variety of challenges during the design process from the initial contextual analysis to the deployment. From analysis of their tool sets, methods, and artifacts, we describe critical key challenges. Finally, we discuss the importance of prototyping for the communication in AR/VR development teams and highlight design implications for future tools to create a more usable AR/VR tool chain.