No abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected face-to-face social interaction with and among relational partners -relatives, friends, and others. Prior to the pandemic, many people relied on face-toface social play experiences to help them maintain relationships and satisfy relatedness needs. However, growing coronavirus-related concerns have made such activities unwelcome or inaccessible, leading many to turn to technology-mediated experiences, as a safer alternative means of supporting recreational play with nonproximal relational partners. But how does one design technologymediated recreational play experiences to satisfy a diverse range of user needs, interests, and preferences? To explore this area of interest we study the social experience afforded by the multiplayer game, Among Us. We conduct a diary study with students enrolled in an undergraduate HCI course and report on the findings of a post-study reflective activity. Our findings highlight that casual interdependent games that explicitly and implicitly foster social interaction among players, do provide opportunities for satisfying remote play social experiences when augmented by rich communication technologies.

Pokémon GO is a popular location-based mobile game that seeks to inspire players to be more active, socialize physically and virtually, and spend more time outside. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, several game mechanics of Pokémon GO were changed to accommodate socially-distanced play. This research aims to understand the impacts of the pandemic and subsequent game adjustments on user perceptions of the game. We used an exploratory mixed-method approach, a machine learning technique (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) for topic modeling, and thematic analysis for qualitative coding of top-level Reddit comments to identify whether and how the social distancing approach changes the players' behaviors. The results demonstrate that players were less physically active, less eager to discover, and more interested in remote social practices. We discuss which players leverage social distancing changes and reflect on key game features that provide a better gaming experience in the age of remote play.

Sharing recreational experiences with loved ones can improve wellbeing, experience enjoyment, relationship quality, and feelings of closeness. Despite these benefits, study participants report numerous barriers to shared recreation with loved ones. Among others, these include differences in recreational preferences and safety measures associated with the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In this paper we examine how loved ones use, and wish to use, technology to play together while apart. We take into account reported barriers to shared recreation and present the Planet Runner technology probe, a two-player digital-physical game which mediates a shared interdependent asymmetric recreational experience involving the outdoors. We share early findings from an exploratory study and conclude by highlighting design considerations for asymmetric games intended to mediate shared remote play experiences involving the outdoors. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Ubiquitous and mobile computing systems and tools; Human computer interaction (HCI); Interactive systems and tools.

Multiple-display environments (MDEs) have promise in helping co-located sensemaking tasks by supporting searching, organizing, and discussion tasks. Co-located sensemaking occurs when two or more sensemakers forage for useful information within a dataset, creating and leveraging knowledge structures individually and together. Group territories in MDEs support communicating and assembling findings, but questions remain regarding how to best represent individual sensemaking efforts in the group territory to support the sensemaking collaboration. This paper empirically examines exploration of a large Twitter dataset using three group territory paradigms: parallel, connected, and merged. Results reveal that merging group work increases task complexity while separating individuals' sections in the group territory supports monitoring, and more interactions are performed when individual work is not connected in the group territory.