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Newly emerging urban IoT infrastructures are enabling novel ways of sensing how urban spaces are being used. However, the data produced by these systems are largely context-agnostic, making it difficult to discern what patterns and anomalies in the data mean. We propose a hybrid data approach that combines the quantitative data collected from an urban IoT sensing infrastructure with qualitative data contributed by people answering specific kinds of questions in situ. We developed a public installation, Roam-io, to entice and encourage the public to walk-up and answer questions to suggest what the data might represent and enrich it with subjective observations. The findings from an in the wild study on the island of Madeira showed that many passers-by stopped and interacted with Roam-io and attempted to make sense of the data and contribute in situ observations.

Orientation is an emerging issue in cinematic Virtual Reality (VR), as viewers may fail in locating points of interest. Recent strategies to tackle this research problem have investigated the role of cues, specifically diegetic sound effects. In this paper, we examine the use of sound spatialization for orientation purposes, namely by studying different spatialization conditions ("none", "partial", and "full" spatial manipulation) of multitrack soundtracks. We performed a between-subject mixed-methods study with 36 participants, aided by Cue Control, a tool we developed for dynamic spatial sound editing and data collection/analysis. Based on existing literature on orientation cues in 360o and theories on human listening, we discuss situations in which the spatialization was more effective (namely, "full" spatial manipulation both when using only music and when combining music and diegetic effects), and how this can be used by creators of 360o videos.

This paper presents a study on urban data crowdsourcing driven by Geo-Zombie, a multimedia mobile application we designed and developed to engage pedestrians in taking note of urban architectural impediments and facilities by documenting them through pictures and multimedia data. Geo-Zombie aims at transforming the civic activity of contributing into a virtual gamified experience where players attempt to escape from horrific situations in which zombies are ready to cannibalize unsuspecting walkers. In some sense, walkers that kill zombies deeply reconnect with the concept of imminent danger which can be fought resorting to appropriate civic actions. To challenge our initial hypotheses we conducted a design process, starting with a concept generation where three different concepts were discussed which gave rise to five different multimedia mobile apps including the one with zombies. Then, focus group, experience prototyping, application design and implementation, and finally field trials were exploited to refine the design and to select the best apps out of the five that better responded to the need of involving common people in collecting urban accessibility data. It is worth noting that the experiences of use with 50 avid walkers have demonstrated that a multimedia mobile app with maps and zombies can be a concrete step towards a social inclusion strategy while inviting new reflections and discussions on the issue of urban data crowdsourcing.

In the light of the increasing adoption of participatory culture means by general consumers, this paper describes the design process, evaluations and discussion on four studies on public interactive storytelling system addressing findings and limitations in regards of its participatory nature. Previous bodies of work within interactive artworks and public displays cite difficulty in attracting passersby attention. Through an iterative design process and refinements to the storytelling concept, we advanced our experience of the mechanics of digital storytelling’ and passersby engagement within each space studied. This paper aims to share our research highlights, encountered difficulties and how the applied evaluation methods stood up to the task within public spaces that aren’t as easily accessible for research, such as airport terminals. Our findings further seek to go beyond a traditional technology-centered approach while examining the relationship between individual, object, and public spaces.

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.

Museums promote cultural experiences through exhibits and the stories behind them. Nevertheless, museums are not always designed to engage and interest young audiences, especially teenagers. Throughout this paper, we discuss teenagers as an important group to be considered within the Children-Computer Interaction field, and we report some techniques on designing with teens, in particular, arguing that participatory design methods can involve teenagers in the design process of technology for museums. For this purpose, we conceptualized, designed and deployed a co-design activity for teenagers (aged 15–17), where teenagers together with a researcher jointly created and designed a medium fidelity prototype. For this case study, participants were divided into groups and invited to think and create games and story plots for a selected museum. All the prototypes were made by the participants with the support and guidance of the researcher and the Aurasma software, an augmented reality tool.

Memories of Carvalhal’s Palace – Haunted Encounters is an Augmented Reality (AR) location-based game which involves players in uncovering the mystery behind the haunted aspects of a museum premises. The game deployed at the Natural History Museum of Funchal makes use of mobile interactive AR and gaming strategies to promote the engagement of teenage visitors (digital natives) in museum experiences. Through this game, the audience embarks in a journey through the museum spaces, collecting scientific information about selected exhibits, while interacting with their tridimensional (3D) AR models. The audience’s interactions with the museum exhibits are rewarded with pieces of a map, which will guide them to a hidden location, the scientific library of the museum. There participants can finally unlock the mysteries they have been summoned to solve. The game’s goal stems from the fact that digital native teenagers are identified as an audience group that is often excluded from a museum’s curatorial strategies [1] and as consequence, they appears to be generally disinterested in what museums might offer [2]. In this article, we present the description and rational behind Memories of Carvalhal’s Palace: Haunted Encounters mobile gaming application and then discuss the results of first empirical tests performed to evaluate the usefulness and usability of the game.

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.

As head mounted displays (HMDs) become everyday consumer items, the potential of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) as a design space becomes ever more promising. However, their usage is impeded by human factors inherent to the technology itself, such as visually induced motion sickness (VIMS), caused by the disconnect between what is visually and physically perceived. Previous work on VIMS reduction has explored techniques targeting HMDs, while others explored techniques that target the multimedia content itself through visual optimization. The latter are often studied individually and cannot be applied to certain VR content such as 360° video. Consequently, this paper describes an exploratory study comparing and combining such techniques (independent visual background and restricted field of view) in 360° video. The work provides constructive insights for VR designers, while also exploring how analytics of VR content and user experience can be used for VIMS prevention and evaluation.

Asthma is a complex disease caused by genetic and environmental factors, affecting 235 million people worldwide. The effects of chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma and respiratory ailments, can be particularly aggressive in islands, due to the optimal climate conditions and the rich nature and flora. Conceived as a case study on Madeira island, we applied user-driven innovation strategy to inform the design of a mobile app able to assist the users in tracking asthma symptoms through an intuitive interface and a smart analog button, providing real-time personalized recommendations. The app is the result of a workshop conducted with 28 17-year-old students from Madeira. The workshop goal was to involve users in thinking about how to exploit data about air quality and weather conditions collected by a pervasive low-cost infrastructure spreads across the island.

Recent years demonstrate an increased interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) applications when studying cetaceans. However, they remain expensive underwater systems and targeted for industrial and military purposes. While the usage of smartphones as acoustic sensors has been observed in terrestrial environments, ocean and nautical PAM applications remain greatly unexplored. This paper presents the design, deployment and testing of a POSEIDON system, used for real-time augmentation of whale-watching experiences. We collect and use cetaceans' vocal call acoustic samples (clicks, moans and whistles) and apply machine learning for offline model training and prediction. When discriminating the calls, we find that Extra Trees and Gradient Boosting outperform other classifiers (>0.95 confidence threshold). Collected samples are at disposal to citizen scientists and marine biologists. Future studies involve real-time on-boat user testing.

The availability of depth sensing technology in smartphones and tablets adds spatial awareness as an interaction modality to mobile entertainment experiences and showcases the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) for creating immersive and engaging experiences in real world contexts. However, the lack of design knowledge about interactions within MR represents a barrier to creating effective entertainment experiences. Faced with this challenge, we contribute a study of three navigation styles (NS) for MR experiences shown on a handheld device. The navigation styles range from fully virtual, through a mixed style that involves both on-screen and in-world activity, to fully real navigation. Our findings suggest that when designing an MR experience, the navigation style deployed should reflect the context, content and required interactions. For our MR experience, “The Old Pharmacy”, with its specific content, context and required interactions, results show that navigation styles relying on in-world activity leads to higher levels of Presence, Immersion and Flow.

Teenagers are an understudied group within the Interaction Design and Children community. Museums and cultural heritage spaces offer solutions for young children but do not target teenagers in particular. Teens, are a large pool of potential museum audiences. They should be given a “voice” and involved early in the design process to maximize chances of involvement in the museum practices and offers, hence, it is crucial to study their interests and desires to deploy a high quality and enjoyable product. For these reason, we deployed several co-design sessions with a total of 155 teenage participants, in order to understand how would they prefer to engage with museum tours. The authors, based on Madeira island (Portugal), used the Natural History Museum of Funchal as a case study. The participants were asked to ideate a mobile museum experience that they would enjoy. Through qualitative analysis, we gathered insights regarding six main themes that they reported as prompts in order to visit the Natural History Museum of Funchal, such as 1) gaming, 2) interactions, 3) localization, 4) social media, 5) aspects of the museum studied, and 6) photos. These findings are preliminary and still need testing and validation.

Teenagers have been identified as an audience group that is often excluded from museum curatorial strategies. One strategy to counteract this problem is to involve cultural heritage professionals (CHPs) in the design process of museum based digital experiences targeted at teens. In this paper, 12 CHPs from a local natural history museum took part in a co-design activity over 20 hours, aiming to create and deploy digital tours for teenagers aged between 16-19. We present the three prototypes that derived from these design sessions. These were then tested by both 12 CHPs and 12 teenagers separately, and we report on lessons learned from the evaluation of these prototypes by both groups.

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In the 360\(^\circ \) videos, the role of sound became crucial as it not only contributes to the participant’s level of Presence (the feeling of being in the virtual environment) but can also provide viewers with a periodical awareness of their surroundings; therefore, audio can guide user attention toward desired points. In this sense, the sonic elements of a 360\(^\circ \) video assume an interactive role, as sounds become notifying elements or icons. In the paper, we describe Cue Control, an audio editor that facilitates the creation of soundtracks for 360\(^\circ \) videos. The user can control the location of the sonic elements by positioning the sounds in the virtual 3D space following the desired timeline; Cue Control automatically creates a cue list of the spatial soundtrack events for playback. The software also allows for different interactive modalities of playback, adapting the cue list to the viewpoint of the user. We conducted a small pilot study where Cue Control was used to assemble the soundtrack of two 360\(^\circ \) videos. According to the data gathered, we present some preliminary reflections about the use of sound to guide users’ attention in 360\(^\circ \) videos towards points of interest.

In this paper we present a low-cost infrastructure to collect a variety of location-based multi-sourced data with the aim of providing personalized services and raising awareness for sustainable mobility solutions. The gathered data can be used to provide: (i) citizens and tourists with personalized location-based services to increase sustainability awareness; (ii) local authorities and tourism boards with a tool to identify and prevent mobility issues; and (iii) transport companies with an instrument to support urban mobility planning decisions. To collect data, we exploited a low-cost Wi-Fi passive tracking system and we augmented this infrastructure using sensors for detecting environmental conditions. To achieve this, we provided 60 points of interest and 20 buses with our solution, to spread out the sensors over the entire Madeira Island. Using the gathered data, we developed different scenarios to prove that in a world where sensing data is becoming inexpensive, there are opportunities to use our approach to deliver data back to the citizens, empowering local communities, with the goal of promoting sustainable mobility and tourism.

In this exhibition, we present “Ha-Vita”, a transmedia platform conceived to foster awareness and communication among locals and tourists regarding Madeira natural wealth. This work takes an artistic approach to the appropriation of a transmedia tool. We take into consideration graphic design aesthetics and interaction design principles in order to promote environmental sustainability and raise awareness in tourists about the biodiversity of Madeira Island, Portugal.

This paper investigates whether location and medium affect the experience of interactive storytelling in the context of mobile Virtual Reality systems. For this purpose, we discuss the development of Fragments of Laura, a location-aware multimedia application in a larger interactive transmedia story, where users can view a 360° narrative in a 3D environment. We conducted a user study with the intention of measuring Presence, Flow and Narrative Transportation and evaluate four scenarios resulting from the combination of two independent variables - location (existence and absence of links between the test location and the narrative location) and medium (tablet and mobile virtual reality with smartphones). Our results show that the user experience while watching a narrative fluctuates depending on the location where is viewed and the device in which is viewed. Locations linked with the content lead to a significantly increased Flow, Presence, and Narrative Transportation.

As 360° immersive Mobile Virtual Reality (MVR) experiences are reaching a wider public, thanks to inexpensive and more powerful mobile technology available on the shelves, it is also rapidly growing as a research arena to investigate how to best design such VR experiences. Adding to this research direction, in this paper we report on an exploratory study designed to evaluate users perception in "Fragments of Laura", a mobile location-aware storytelling experience that uses MVR in a public setting. Results from the study encourage us to pursuit investigation as the experience was well received by the participants and provided an enjoyable experience, however, we discovered that there are still design challenges to overcome in order for MVR to be widely adopted within a public setting. Such as, finding the balance between multimedia and immersive multimedia, providing an "onboarding" time for such media and proper locations for the content consumption.

The widespread affordability of digital technologies is encouraging artists to experiment and make use of them in their artworks. This paper describes the design and in-the-wild evaluation of DreamScope, a bespoke 360° mobile virtual reality (VR) interface designed for immersive interaction in the Lucid Peninsula physical narrative art installation. We evaluated the VR interface by means of a questionnaire based on the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and individual items related with the interaction within the exhibition. Results extracted from 53 subjects highlight how the interface supported engagement, positive affect and reflections on the narrated scenario of the art installation. The study reported in this paper provides evidence of the positive role of 360° mobile VR in strengthening the narrative and the artist's intent in the Lucid Peninsula artistic installation.

The widespread popularity of Pok\'emon GO presents the first opportunity to observe the geographic effects of location-based gaming at scale. This paper reports the results of a mixed methods study of the geography of Pok\'emon GO that includes a five-country field survey of 375 Pok\'emon GO players and a large scale geostatistical analysis of game elements. Focusing on the key geographic themes of places and movement, we find that the design of Pok\'emon GO reinforces existing geographically-linked biases (e.g. the game advantages urban areas and neighborhoods with smaller minority populations), that Pok\'emon GO may have instigated a relatively rare large-scale shift in global human mobility patterns, and that Pok\'emon GO has geographically-linked safety risks, but not those typically emphasized by the media. Our results point to geographic design implications for future systems in this space such as a means through which the geographic biases present in Pok\'emon GO may be counteracted., Comment: This version of the paper contains a fix for a reference issue that appeared in the original version. Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017)

In this paper I describe an ongoing project at the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira-ITI) that is concerned with making new discoveries in the field of creative writing through the use of repurposed technological artefacts. Recently the Madeira Story Generator (MStoryG) project has been conducting experiments in collaborative storytelling and exploring new authoring platforms using an analogue Solari Udine split-flap display—an old-style Arrivals board—formerly located at Madeira International Airport. The ‘hacked’ Arrivals board and a mirror software replica Departures board can receive messages via Twitter and Facebook. Using the physical and virtual boards we have looked into phenomena such as the attractive ambiguity of repurposed objects. We have also examined ways of engaging users with public storytelling and enticing them to collaborate and share their stories. In terms of content, we have staged a transatlantic Twitter fiction collaboration between our users (students and resear...

Part 8: Interactive Posters; International audience; In this poster, we are addressing the topic of “system’s evaluation” from the point of view of assessing the usability of a gamified experience with 20 teenagers aged 15–17 years. The currently tested experience was ideally designed for children 9–10 years. In order to adapt the application to teenagers, we tested it with 20 targeted users. In this poster, we share the results and encourage a discussion among the researchers about how to adapt the gamified experience designed for children to a teenage audience.

A necessary component in the mass adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) is the creation of support tools to help creators develop and evaluate content. Emphasising the importance of User Experience (UX) in VR, analytics platforms are setup to understand participant’s behaviour, therefore helping for a better understanding of the medium. This paper reviews evaluation methods for VR concerned with observation of user behaviour, and how these are structured in analytics platforms. By surveying existing platforms, we look at how these platforms support the creation and evaluation of VR experiences and apply this knowledge to design a platform for the specific context of VR Storytelling.

While gaming and storytelling are considered to be common approaches to engage audiences with a museum’s collections, a formal comparison of the two has not been found in literature. While gaming and storytelling are considered to be common approaches to engage audiences with a museum’s collections, a formal comparison of the two has not been found in literature. In this paper, we present the design and comparative study of two distinct interventions, namely a mobile game and a mobile story that were designed to engage a young audience with the exhibit of the local natural history museum. Focusing on the same scientific content derived from the museum’s collection, we compare the effects of both interactive experiences on a group of children. When comparing engagement, enjoyment and learning outcomes, we correlate results with data derived from observations and skin conductance biofeedback. The data collected so far suggest that children are 27% more excited when using the game application compared with the story driven one. Moreover, we find that children’s excitement peaks when encountering selected artefacts presented in the museum exhibit. Finally, children’s learning nearly doubled (44%) when using the game based experience versus the story. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of our findings and by proposing potential future improvements.

This research project proposes the use of Child-Robot Interaction principles to boost the interest and engagement of young children in the biodiversity curriculum. We propose an architecture where a robot learns from children through an Interactive Story, while at the same time teaches them previous knowledge acquired in past interactions.

Museums promote cultural experiences through the exhibits and the stories behind them. Nevertheless, museums are not always designed to engage and interest young audiences, particularly teenagers. This Ph.D. proposal in Digital Media explores how digital technologies can facilitate Natural History and Science Museums in fostering and creating immersive museum experiences for teenagers. Especially by using digital storytelling along with location-based gaming. The overall objectives of the work are to establish guidelines, design, develop and study interactive storytelling and gamification experiences in those type of museums focusing in particular on delivering pleasurable and engaging experiences for teens of 15–17 years old.

The active involvement of teenagers in the design of interactive technologies for museums is lacking further development. Adopting a user-driven innovation framework along with cooperative inquiry, we report and discuss a case study that has been designed to involve users in the ideation of interpretive experiences for a local museum. Working in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Funchal, this contribution will present and discuss co-design sessions that were aimed at participants with ages 15 to 17 and where they were asked to ideate an interactive museum experience. As a result of the co-design sessions, we have found several design patterns. We have grouped these patterns into four categories that express the interests of a teenage audience; these categories are: “interactions”, “gaming”, “localization” and “social media”. Our findings suggest that teenagers value interactive technologies when visiting museums and that user-driven innovation plays an important role when involving this specific audience in the design of user experiences for museums.

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.

Interactive technologies provide the tools to empower audiences to participate in new interactive storytelling experiences applied to tourism. We envisage studying how transmedia entertainment-education experiences can expose tourists towards local pressing issues and social good while providing them with a rich entertaining and educating experience. We describe the research approach that leads to design and implementation of a bespoke transmedia entertainment education experience, composed by two interconnected components: an online participatory portal (“Ha-Vita”) and a mobile context-aware story (Fragments of Laura). The experience was designed to encourage visitors to learn about Madeira’s rich natural heritage and develop knowledge and awareness about its history and biodiversity.

This paper introduces ClueKing, a children’s pervasive game which encompasses context-aware and parents mediation to create an informal learning environment. In this paper we review related theories of inquiry-based learning and parent involvement, the basic pedagogical model, and mobile learning and pervasive games as the technological framework. The basic concept of ClueKing defines an interactive environment where teachers define the learning goals and challenges and parents mediate their application on the home setting, the children schedule and how to promote their engagement. The system’s architecture is also presented, as well as the workflows for the development of ClueKing. Since this is work in progress the paper concludes with the next steps and future work to be carried out.

Location-based services, narratives and interactive experiences have a substantial tradition in human–computer interaction. Building on this background, we report the iterative design process, prototyping and evaluation of Seven Stories, a location-based narrative experience. The design includes two novel features that aim to link the user experience more closely to its physical context: visual markers scanning and a narrator. We have evaluated Seven Stories with two studies. Study 1, with 12 participants, was conducted using qualitative methods to assess the overall user experience. Study 2, with 21 participants, was conducted using quantitative methods, to evaluate the role of the markers and narrator as specific design features. Our contribution is to illustrate, through both qualitative and quantitative findings, how these two novel features influence the user experience, and what implications they have for design.

In this paper we present a study through which we intended to understand children's preference towards book formats, in particular digital or paper ones. To accomplish this, we created an original story (Ritinha) illustrated by two children. The traditional book format was composed by static images and text. The digital format had animated images, hyperlinks to navigate to different parts of the story and static text complemented by an audio narrative. We conducted a field study with 105 children in order to observe in which format children would prefer to read a book: if in paper or in digital format. The method used to accomplish this task was direct observation.

Crescendo is an ongoing project aimed to provide children with High Functioning Autism, their teachers and carers with a communication tool that bridges them. Crescendo guides carers in teaching and immersing their child in a virtual environment that mimics the real world, helping them to make sense of it and interact with objects and places in order to become self-reliant in atomized, step-by-step routines. Crescendo is a two-sided app design, one for carers and another for children. It provides both with tool for monitoring and incremental step-by-step learning.

This paper describes a tangible visualization that explores the link between the impact of energy feedback on household consumers and the resource demand impact on energy production. Specifically, it positions a novel perspective attempting to move beyond the known limitations of current eco-feedback systems and contributes to enhance our understanding of how consumers comprehend energy production. The work is informed by a comprehensive study of an installation that displays the ratio of current power generation sources and the percentage of grid renewables. The paper provides design insights for creating novel eco-feedback visualizations that leverage the balance between user lifestyles and the desire to influence consumption behaviors and practices. Evaluation results show an increase in energy literacy and awareness as well as identifies high consumer preferences towards simple, representative interfaces and ubiquitous immediate feedback. Our study shows potential in terms of future scenarios for eco-feedback in distributed energy micro-generation and other inevitable disruptive changes for the energy utility.

With the increasing sophistication of mobile computing, a growing interest has been paid to locative media that aim at providing immersive experiences. Location aware narratives are a particular kind of locative media that aim at ''telling stories that unfold in real space''. This paper presents a study that aimed at assessing an underlying hypothesis of location-aware narratives: that the coupling between the physical space and the narrative will result in increased levels of immersion in the narrative. Forty-five individuals experienced a location-aware video narrative in three locations: (a) the original location that contains physical cues from the narrative world, (b) a different location that yet portrays a similar atmosphere, and (c) a location that contains neither physical cues nor a similar atmosphere. Significant differences were found in users' experiences with the narrative in terms of immersion in the story and mental imagery, but not with regard to feelings of presence, emotional involvement or the memorability of story elements. We reflect on these findings and the implications for the design of location-aware narratives and highlight questions for further research.

Humanity benefits from natural ecosystems in a multitude of ways; collectively, these are known as ecosystem services. Our project investigates how storytelling, coupled with mobile interactive technologies, can be used to design interventions that bring awareness and engage people in understanding the benefits of ecosystems and their underlying biodiversity. “Fragments of Laura” a technology mediated transmedia story, reveals to its audience (mostly tourists) information related to the local natural capital and ecosystem services of a UNESCO-protected forest, and embodies many aspects of its history, culture and ecotourism potential. In this paper, we present the overall interaction and story design, together with the results from the “Fragments of Laura” experience prototype. We conclude with a description of the future work and how the results from the experience prototype will affect the final working prototype.

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.

This short paper presents some preliminary results (both quantitative and qualitative) gathered from field trials with three different mobile apps that allow walkers to map urban accessibility barriers/facilities, while wandering around. The three apps were designed based on different gamification mechanisms, respectively exploiting: i) intrinsic (i.e., altruistic) motivations, ii) extrinsic motivations expressed in terms of a concrete reward, and iii) extrinsic motivations expressed in terms of fun/entertainment. These preliminary results reveal that the apps designed on the basis of extrinsic motivations are able to drive users to provide a larger amount of contributions. Interesting differences between concrete rewards and fun used as effective means to motivate contributors are discussed.

In this paper we present the design and implementation of two different game applications, designed and developed in order to extend and motivate the community of mPASS, an urban accessibility mapping system. On the one hand, mPASS relays to collect a sufficiently dense, detailed and trustworthy amount of data. On the other hand, its niche goal somehow limits its natural audience, which is not enough to reach the critical mass of information needed by the system in order to provide effective accessibility maps for its users. To overcome this problem, we resorted to the use of a gamification strategy to develop both a traditional prizing add-on and a novel mobile game targeting young and adults players, aiming to include them into the data contributors community. Design process and development description of both games are presented, highlighting the design iterations of the concepts, motivated by contribution gathered from feedback sessions, focus group and experience prototyping.

In this paper we present Lucid Peninsula, an interactive installation designed to immerse participants in a dreamlike, post-apocalyptic story world. The goal of the installation is to offer a way for people to experience the future through a physical interactive installation. To achieve this aim we designed and developed the interactive DreamScope device, while the Time's Up collective designed and built the physical installation. On one side with the Dreamviewer binoculars users will be able to see the world outside and absorb data relating to factors such as air quality, presence of plant and other life forms, etc. On the other side of the installation, the audience will be able to borrow mobile devices (Dreamcatchers) and venture into the actual landscape of the city, in order to "catch" the dreams of the inhabitants of the peninsula, which are mixed with memories of the world before it was transformed.

This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an eco-feedback system capable of providing detailed household consumption information and also real-time production breakdown per energy source. We build on recent studies reporting an increased awareness generated by ecofeedback systems that also integrate micro-production information, taking advantage of a closed grid production network on an island with a high concentration of renewables, we deployed the What-a-Watt system in a building with 9 households for a period of 34 consecutive weeks. Results show that all the participating families have shown increased awareness of the production and distribution of electricity, thus becoming more familiarized with concepts such as the different sources of energy and how their availability relates to external variables such as weather conditions and time of day. Furthermore, our results also show, that the families using our system have managed to reduce their overall consumption. This research is a first attempt to provide more effective eco-feedback systems to consumers by integrating complex Smartgrid information in the feedback.

Arts, Real-Time Video and Interactivity for Sustainability (ARTiVIS) is an ongoing collaborative research project investigating how real-time video, DIY surveillance technologies and sensor data can be used as a tool for environmental awareness, activism and artistic explorations. The project consists of a series of digital contexts for aesthetic contemplation of nature and civic engagement, aiming to foster awareness and empowerment of local populations through DIY surveillance. At the core of the ARTIVIS efforts are a series of interactive installations (namely B-Wind!, Hug@tree and Play with Fire), that make use of surveillance technologies and real-time video as raw material to promote environmental awareness through the emotion generated by real-time connections with nature. Throughout the project development, the surveillance concept has been shifting from the use of surveillance technology in a centralized platform, to the idea of veillance with distributed peer-to-peer networks that can be used for science and environmental monitoring. In this paper we present the history of the ARTiVIS project, related and inspiring work, describe ongoing research work and explore the present and future challenges of appropriating surveillance technology for artistic, educational and civic engagement purposes.

Dream Scope is the interactive, stand alone, self-contained portion of a bigger Art installation named Lucid Peninsula. The goal of the installation is to offer a way for people to experience the future through a physical interactive installation. To achieve this aim we designed and developed the interactive DreamScope device, while the Time's Up collective designed and built the physical installation. On one side with the DreamViewer binoculars enable participants to see the Lucid Peninsula fictional world and absorb data relating to factors such as air quality, presence of plant and other life forms, etc. On the other side of the installation, the audience will be able to borrow mobile devices (DreamCatchers) and "catch" the dreams of the inhabitants of the peninsula, which are mixed with memories of the world before it was transformed.

The proliferation of interactive displays within public spaces has steered research towards exploring situated engagement, user interaction and user-generated content on public displays. However, user behaviors such as display blindness and display avoidance, social embarrassment and participation inequality are just some of the limiting factors restricting user commitment to interaction and participation. So-called “non-places”, which include transportation terminals, are homogenized public spaces that seem to exist outside conventional notions of time and identity. These anonymous, fast-paced, high-anxiety spaces provide a significant challenge for designers hoping to engage the attention of passersby. Our study proposes to go beyond a traditional technology-centered approach and examine the relationship between individual, object, and space. We attempt to engage airport travelers in serendipitous interactive storytelling through reminiscence and nostalgia. We present our “in-the-wild” study at the baggage claim area of an international airport where 26 h of observations and 49 semi-structured interviews were collected.

This paper describes Yasmine’s Adventures, a location aware multimedia story designed as a location based service for a museum. Yasmine’s Adventures follows a young local girl (Yasmine) through a series of short animated adventures, tailored specifically to engage visitors in exploring the relatively neglected streets of the area in which the museum is situated. Yasmine’s perceptions of the landmarks, identified by community members themselves, reflect the real concerns of the community. Results from the evaluation of the user’s experience suggest location connection and perception changes when locative media narratives include learning, understanding and discovery elements.