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Design for emergence: experiments with a mixed reality urban playground game

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Abstract

In this paper we present our work in the design of ubiquitous social experiences, aiming to foster group participation and spontaneous playful behaviours in a city environment. We outline our approach of design for emergence: to provide just enough of a game context and challenge for people to be creative, to extend and enrich the experience of play through their interaction in the real world. CitiTag is our mixed reality testbed, a wireless location-based multiplayer game based on the concept of playground ‘tag’. We describe the design and implementation of CitiTag and discuss results from two user studies.

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Acknowledgments

CitiTag has been developed jointly by The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMI) and the Mobile Bristol team at HP Labs Bristol. The authors would like to thank the following people for their significant input to the implementation of CitiTag and their assistance with the user trials: Kevin Quick and Jon Linney (KMi), who programmed the multiplayer networking capabilities, Richard Hull (HP Labs), Ben Clayton, Tom Melamed (University of Bristol), Paul Marsh who provided the Mobile Bristol GPS location-based support for the game, Peter Scott (KMi) for overall supervision and support for the project, Lewis McCann (KMi), Stuart Martin and John Honniball (University of Bristol) who provided technical support during the trial and all our participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, MK7 6AA, Milton Keynes, UK

    Yanna Vogiazou & Marc Eisenstadt

  2. Interaction Design Department, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU, UK

    Bas Raijmakers

  3. Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Filton Road, Bristol, BS34 8QZ, UK

    Erik Geelhoed & Josephine Reid

  4. Design Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, SE14 6NW, UK

    Yanna Vogiazou

Authors
  1. Yanna Vogiazou
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  2. Bas Raijmakers
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  3. Erik Geelhoed
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  4. Josephine Reid
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  5. Marc Eisenstadt
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Correspondence to Bas Raijmakers.

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Vogiazou, Y., Raijmakers, B., Geelhoed, E. et al. Design for emergence: experiments with a mixed reality urban playground game. Pers Ubiquit Comput 11, 45–58 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0068-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0068-5

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