A Thing of Beauty: Steering Behavior in an Interactive Playground

Robby Van Delden, Alejandro Moreno, R.W. Poppe, Dennis Reidsma, Dirk K J Heylen

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    Interactive playgrounds are spaces where players engage in collocated, playful activities, in which added digital technology can be designed to promote cognitive, social, and motor skills development. To promote such development, different strategies can be used to implement game mechanics that change player's in-game behavior. One of such strategies is enticing players to take action through incentives akin to game achievements. We explored if this strategy could be used to influence players' proxemic behavior in the Interactive Tag Playground, an installation that enhances the traditional game of tag. We placed the ITP in an art gallery, observed hundreds of play sessions, and refined the mechanics, which consisted in projecting collectible particles around the tagger that upon collection by runners resulted only in the embellishment of their circles. We implemented the refined mechanics in a study with 48 children. The playground automatically collected the players' positions, and analyses show that runners got closer to and moved more towards taggers when using our enticing strategy. This suggests an enticing strategy can be used to influence physical in-game behavior.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
    Pages2462-2472
    ISBN (Electronic)978-1-4503-4655-9
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2017

    Keywords

    • Steering behavior
    • persuasion
    • entice
    • play
    • proxemics
    • social
    • interactive playgrounds
    • augmented reality
    • interactive floor

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'A Thing of Beauty: Steering Behavior in an Interactive Playground'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this