This paper presents the motivation, design, and pilot evaluation of CountMeIn, a pervasive collaborative game to improve the waiting time experience (e.g., waiting for a train, or traffic light to turn green). We tested two versions of CountMeIn, an NFC-based and touchscreen version in a small pilot study. Our early results showed that the NFC-based version increases collaboration, and was overall more positively perceived than the touchscreen version. We discuss the challenges ahead in deploying CountMeIn in a real-world setting.

This paper presents the motivation, design and evaluation of CountMeIn, a mobile collaborative pervasive memory game to revive social interactions in public places (e.g. a train station or bus stop). Two versions of CountMeIn were tested; an NFC-based and a touchscreen version. In a 2x1 within-subject (NFC vs. Touch) experiment (N = 20), postexperiment group interviews and findings indicate the NFC version led to increased perception of social presence while participants were more aware of others' actions and intentions (mode of co-presence). However, we did not find quantitative evidence that attributes of social presence were higher from the Social Presence Game Questionnaire. Together, our findings suggest that placement of a physical NFC interface does not necessarily increase perceived social presence when users play collaboratively. However, social expansion in mobile collaborative pervasive games can greatly benefit from people's mutual awareness from such an interface. This mutual awareness has the potential to both attract users and spectators, and reduce anxiety of users to invite spectators, or accept an invite from users.