Design for Emergence: Collaborative Social Play with Online and Location-Based Media

Y. Vogiazou1586037013, 978-1-58603-701-7

Design for Emergence investigates spontaneous, unpredictable uses of technology that are driven by social contexts and collaborative processes, based on our ability to communicate our presence, both virtual and physical, in symbolic ways. In light of the fact that social dynamics and unexpected uses of technology can inspire innovation, this book proposes a research model of design for emergence, focusing on emergent phenomena as part of an iterative design process. By providing playful, technology-mediated experiences with minimal structure, unpredictable user behaviors can emerge through exploration, resulting in a richer and more complex, social experience. The research methodology is practice-based; two interactive prototypes were designed, implemented and evaluated in different contexts: an online multiplayer BumperCar game and a wireless, location-based urban game of ‘tag’, called CitiTag. User studies showed that collaborative, spontaneous play can enhance the sense of social participation in a group activity. Collective and individual behaviors and creative uses of technology emerged from a simply designed application based on symbolic presence, both in the virtual and the physical world. CitiTag experiments showed that virtual elements in a mixed reality game can instigate novel experiences in the context of our everyday physical and social environment, with often unexpected results. The observed emergent behaviors are personal and collective extensions of the virtual experience in the real world. The book concludes with a positive view of ubiquitous and social computing, in which the virtual world becomes a ‘first class citizen’ rather than a substitute for the realworld, creating new situations and engaging experiences in the setting of our daily life that were not possible before.

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Table of contents :
DESIGN FOR EMERGENCE……Page 2
Foreword……Page 8
Contents……Page 10
Researching Spontaneous Collaborative Play……Page 14
Thesis Structure……Page 15
Foundations: Social Play as a Design Framework for Emergence……Page 18
Defining Presence Based Group Play……Page 20
What Is Presence?……Page 21
Why Play?……Page 27
Crowd Behaviour and Group Dynamics……Page 30
Emergent Self-Organisation……Page 34
The Challenge of Mixed Reality Collective Experiences……Page 36
Participant Observation in Flash Mobs……Page 37
Wireless Location-Based Multiplayer Games……Page 40
Location-Based Social Software……Page 43
A Categorization of Ubiquitous Social Experiences……Page 46
Research Framework……Page 51
A Model for Design for Emergence……Page 54
Presence Is Symbolic……Page 58
Large Scale Is Important for Emergent Interaction……Page 60
Keep the Design Lightweight……Page 61
By Employing Affordances Users Understand and Can Extend the Design……Page 62
Early Design Sketches for Design for Emergence……Page 64
Online Games……Page 65
Pixeltag: A Mobile Game……Page 68
Mixed Reality Games……Page 72
Final Thoughts Towards a Playground Social Game……Page 78
Online Case Study: Experiments with a Multiplayer Bumper Car Game……Page 80
The Idea……Page 82
Storyboards and Variations……Page 83
Technical Limitations and Design Considerations……Page 85
The Game Design……Page 86
Experimental Design……Page 89
Analysis Method……Page 93
Emergence……Page 95
Spontaneous Collaboration and Group Behaviours……Page 98
Game Experience……Page 101
Visual Communication and Design……Page 105
Conclusions……Page 110
Design for Emergence in the Real World: Experimenting with a Mixed Reality Urban Playground……Page 114
The Idea……Page 116
The Action of Tagging……Page 118
Group Formations and Swarming……Page 120
Views……Page 121
Metaphor……Page 123
CitiTag Design……Page 125
CitiTag System Architecture……Page 128
Method: User Studies……Page 129
Game Experience……Page 130
Emergence……Page 136
Awareness, Group Belongingness and Collaboration……Page 146
Usability and Design……Page 149
Conclusions and Future Work……Page 151
Reflections on How to Design for Emergence……Page 154
Revisiting the Research Framework……Page 156
Emergence in BumperCars and CitiTag……Page 157
Emergence as Experiential Variability……Page 160
Emergence Feeding Back into the Design Process……Page 163
Guidelines for Design for Emergence for Online and Ubiquitous Multi-User Applications……Page 165
Key Research Questions and Opportunities……Page 169
UrbanSwarm: A Proposed Example for Further Research……Page 171
Conclusion: So What?……Page 177
References……Page 178
Acknowledgements……Page 186