bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Co-creating a Transdisciplinary Map of Technology-mediated Harms, Risks and Vulnerabilities: Challenges, Ambivalences and Opportunities
Authors: Domínguez Hernández Andrés , Ramokapane Kopo M. , Das Chowdhury Partha , Michalec Ola , Johnstone Emily , Godwin Emily , Cork Alicia G. , Rashid Awais
Published: October 2023

The phrase "online harms'' has emerged in recent years out of a growing political willingness to address the ethical and social issues associated with the use of the Internet and digital technology at large. The broad landscape that surrounds online harms gathers a multitude of disciplinary, sectoral and organizational efforts while raising myriad challenges and opportunities for the crossing entrenched boundaries. In this paper we draw lessons from a journey of co-creating a transdisciplinary knowledge infrastructure within a large research initiative animated by the online harms agenda. We begin with a reflection of the implications of mapping, taxonomizing and constructing knowledge infrastructures and a brief review of how online harm and adjacent themes have been theorized and classified in the literature to date. Grounded on our own experience of co-creating a map of online harms, we then argue that the map---and the process of mapping---perform three mutually constitutive functions, acting simultaneously as method, medium and provocation. We draw lessons from how an open-ended approach to mapping, despite not guaranteeing consensus, can foster productive debate and collaboration in ethically and politically fraught areas of research. We end with a call for CSCW research to surface and engage with the multiple temporalities, social lives and political sensibilities of knowledge infrastructures.
Community Tech Workers: Scaffolding Digital Engagement Among Underserved Minority Businesses
Authors: Hui Julie , Seefeldt Kristin , Baer Christie , Sanifu Lutalo , Jackson Aaron , Dillahunt Tawanna R.
Published: October 2023

Small businesses are being encouraged to use digital technologies more than ever before. However, the greater emphasis on technology adoption puts underserved minority business owners (those who traditionally have faced barriers in accessing credit, capital and other resources) at greater risk of being left behind. We take an assets-based approach to understand business owners' strengths and challenges in adopting and using digital technologies. We then implement a community-based intervention---Community Tech Workers (CTWs)---to bridge the growing socio-technical gap in the context of small businesses on Detroit's Eastside, which are primarily Black-women-owned businesses. We take a mixed-methods approach, using a combination of a survey, interviews, and observations, to outline how the CTW program 1) helps businesses determine where to start with technology use, 2) offers support grounded in the day-to-day realities of running a business, and 3) builds caring relationships with business owners to foster trust in technology support services. We suggest opportunities for a more collective perspective on assets-based community development and outline considerations for building culturally-conscious ecosystems of support for digital engagement.
Form to Flow: Exploring Challenges and Roles of Conversational UX Designers in Real-world, Multi-channel Service Environments
Authors: Heo Jeongyun , Lee Uichin
Published: October 2023

Conversational agents are widely used in today's multi-channel service environments. However, little is known regarding the challenges faced by user experience (UX) designers. This study explores the challenges faced by conversational UX designers working in multidisciplinary teams for understanding the design process involved in the transformation of conventional graphical interfaces to conversation flows. In-depth interviews with UX designers working in industries reveal the key challenges in the form-to-flow transformation process. Moreover, collaborative work with various stakeholders in complex work environments involves conversational artificial intelligence-engendered gap-filling work phenomena wherein UX designers tend to work across role boundaries. Our results indicate the need for added support for CUX designer including tools and guidelines to suppport form-to-flow design, tools for testing, and defining extended roles for CUX designers with collaborative perspectives for designing conversational agents in multi-channel service environments.
Hate Raids on Twitch: Understanding Real-Time Human-Bot Coordinated Attacks in Live Streaming Communities
Authors: Cai Jie , Chowdhury Sagnik , Zhou Hongyang , Wohn Donghee Yvette
Published: October 2023

Online harassment and content moderation have been well-documented in online communities. However, new contexts and systems always bring new ways of harassment and need new moderation mechanisms. This study focuses on hate raids, a form of group attack in real-time in live streaming communities. Through a qualitative analysis of hate raids discussion in the Twitch subreddit (r/Twitch), we found that (1) hate raids as a human-bot coordinated group attack leverages the live stream system to attack marginalized streamers and other potential groups with(out) breaking the rules, (2) marginalized streamers suffer compound harms with insufficient support from the platform, (3) moderation strategies are overwhelmingly technical, but streamers still struggle to balance moderation and participation considering their marginalization status and needs. We use affordances as a lens to explain how hate raids happens in live streaming systems and propose moderation-by-design as a lens when developing new features or systems to mitigate the potential abuse of such designs.
Investigating Security Folklore: A Case Study on the Tor over VPN Phenomenon
Authors: Fassl Matthias , Ponticello Alexander , Dabrowski Adrian , Krombholz Katharina
Published: October 2023

Users face security folklore in their daily lives in the form of security advice, myths, and word-of-mouth stories. Using a VPN to access the Tor network, i.e., Tor over VPN, is an interesting example of security folklore because of its inconclusive security benefits and its occurrence in pop-culture media.

Following the Theory of Reasoned Action, we investigated the phenomenon with three studies: (1) we quantified the behavior on real-world Tor traffic and measured a prevalence of 6.23%; (2) we surveyed users' intentions and beliefs, discovering that they try to protect themselves from the Tor network or increase their general security; and (3) we analyzed online information sources, suggesting that perceived norms and ease-of-use play a significant role while behavioral beliefs about the purpose and effect are less crucial in spreading security folklore. We discuss how to communicate security advice effectively and combat security misinformation and misconceptions.
Making Meaning from the Digitalization of Blue-Collar Work
Authors: Sheehan Alyssa , Le Dantec Christopher A.
Published: October 2023

With rapid advances in computing, we are beginning to see the expansion of technology into domains far afield from traditional office settings historically at the center of CSCW research. Manufacturing is one industry undergoing a new phase of digital transformation. Shop-floor workers are being equipped with tools to deliver efficiency and support data-driven decision making. To understand how these kinds of technologies are affecting the nature of work, we conducted a 15-month qualitative study of the digitalization of the shipping and receiving department at a small manufacturer located in the Southeastern United States. Our findings provide an in-depth understanding of how the norms and values of factory floor workers shape their perception and adoption of computing services designed to augment their work. We highlight how emerging technologies are creating a new class of hybrid workers and point to the social and human elements that need to be considered to preserve meaningful work for blue-collar professionals.
MeetScript: Designing Transcript-based Interactions to Support Active Participation in Group Video Meetings
Authors: Chen Xinyue , Li Shuo , Liu Shipeng , Fowler Robin , Wang Xu
Published: October 2023

While videoconferencing is prevalent, concurrent participation channels are limited. People experience challenges keeping up with the discussion, and misunderstanding frequently occurs. Through a formative study, we probed into the design space of providing real-time transcripts as an extra communication space for video meeting attendees. We then present MeetScript, a system that provides parallel participation channels through real-time interactive transcripts. MeetScript visualizes the discussion through a chat-alike interface and allows meeting attendees to make real-time collaborative annotations. Over time, MeetScript gradually hides extraneous content to retain the most essential information on the transcript, with the goal of reducing the cognitive load required on users to process the information in real time. In an experiment with 80 users in 22 teams, we compared MeetScript with two baseline conditions where participants used Zoom alone (business-as-usual), or Zoom with an adds-on transcription service (Otter.ai). We found that MeetScript significantly enhanced people's non-verbal participation and recollection of their teams' decision-making processes compared to the baselines. Users liked that MeetScript allowed them to easily navigate the transcript and contextualize feedback and new ideas with existing ones.
Perspectives: Creating Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meeting Experiences
Authors: Tang John C. , Inkpen Kori , Junuzovic Sasa , Mallari Keri , Wilson Andrew D. , Rintel Sean , Cupala Shiraz , Carbary Tony , Sellen Abigail , Buxton William A.S.
Published: October 2023

With the shift to hybrid meetings in work spaces, there is an increasing need to create a more inclusive hybrid meeting experience where people meeting together in a room interact with those joining remotely. This paper describes a design exploration, implementation, and evaluation of Perspectives, a novel hybrid meeting system that aimed to create an inclusive and equitable space for hybrid meetings. Perspectives digitally composites everyone into a virtual room so that each person has a unique but spatially consistent viewpoint into the meeting. The user study compared Perspectives with three commercially available UX designs for hybrid meetings: Gallery, Together Mode, and Front Row. Results from this study revealed key benefits of Perspectives, including supporting natural interactions, creating a strong sense of co-presence, and reducing cognitive load. Results from the study also helped iterate on the design principles of Perspectives, which offer important insights on supporting hybrid meetings.
Privacy vs. Awareness: Relieving the Tension between Older Adults and Adult Children When Sharing In-home Activity Data
Authors: Li Jiachen , Zong Bingrui , Cheng Tingyu , Li Yunzhi , Mynatt Elizabeth D. , Dhekne Ashutosh
Published: October 2023

While aging adults frequently prefer to "age in place", their children can worry about their well-being, especially when they live at a distance. Many in-home systems are designed to monitor the real-time status of seniors at home and provide information to their adult children. However, we observed that the needs and concerns of both sides in the information sharing process are often not aligned. In this research, we examined the design of a system that mitigates the privacy needs of aging adults in light of the information desires of adult children. We apply an iterative process to design and evaluate a visualization of indoor location data and compare its benefits to displaying raw video from cameras. We elaborate on the tradeoffs surrounding privacy and awareness made by older adults and their children, and synthesize design criteria for designing a visualization system to manage these tensions and tradeoffs.
Selective Explanations: Leveraging Human Input to Align Explainable AI
Authors: Lai Vivian , Zhang Yiming , Chen Chacha , Liao Q. Vera , Tan Chenhao
Published: October 2023

While a vast collection of explainable AI (XAI) algorithms has been developed in recent years, they have been criticized for significant gaps with how humans produce and consume explanations. As a result, current XAI techniques are often found to be hard to use and lack effectiveness. In this work, we attempt to close these gaps by making AI explanations selective ---a fundamental property of human explanations---by selectively presenting a subset of model reasoning based on what aligns with the recipient's preferences. We propose a general framework for generating selective explanations by leveraging human input on a small dataset. This framework opens up a rich design space that accounts for different selectivity goals, types of input, and more. As a showcase, we use a decision-support task to explore selective explanations based on what the decision-maker would consider relevant to the decision task. We conducted two experimental studies to examine three paradigms based on our proposed framework: in Study 1, we ask the participants to provide critique-based or open-ended input to generate selective explanations (self-input). In Study 2, we show the participants selective explanations based on input from a panel of similar users (annotator input). Our experiments demonstrate the promise of selective explanations in reducing over-reliance on AI and improving collaborative decision making and subjective perceptions of the AI system, but also paint a nuanced picture that attributes some of these positive effects to the opportunity to provide one's own input to augment AI explanations. Overall, our work proposes a novel XAI framework inspired by human communication behaviors and demonstrates its potential to encourage future work to make AI explanations more human-compatible.
The Potential of Diverse Youth as Stakeholders in Identifying and Mitigating Algorithmic Bias for a Future of Fairer AI
Authors: Solyst Jaemarie , Yang Ellia , Xie Shixian , Ogan Amy , Hammer Jessica , Eslami Motahhare
Published: October 2023

Youth regularly use technology driven by artificial intelligence (AI). However, it is increasingly well-known that AI can cause harm on small and large scales, especially for those underrepresented in tech fields. Recently, users have played active roles in surfacing and mitigating harm from algorithmic bias. Despite being frequent users of AI, youth have been under-explored as potential contributors and stakeholders to the future of AI. We consider three notions that may be at the root of youth facing barriers to playing an active role in responsible AI, which are youth (1) cannot understand the technical aspects of AI, (2) cannot understand the ethical issues around AI, and (3) need protection from serious topics related to bias and injustice. In this study, we worked with youth (N = 30) in first through twelfth grade and parents (N = 6) to explore how youth can be part of identifying algorithmic bias and designing future systems to address problematic technology behavior. We found that youth are capable of identifying and articulating algorithmic bias, often in great detail. Participants suggested different ways users could give feedback for AI that reflects their values of diversity and inclusion. Youth who may have less experience with computing or exposure to societal structures can be supported by peers or adults with more of this knowledge, leading to critical conversations about fairer AI. This work illustrates youths' insights, suggesting that they should be integrated in building a future of responsible AI.
The Unseen Landscape of Abolitionism: Examining the Role of Digital Maps in Grassroots Organizing
Authors: Carrera Dashiel , Ovienmhada Ufuoma , Hussein Safa , Soden Robert
Published: October 2023

Prison and police abolition has become a major political philosophy in North American discourse following the 2020 George Floyd protests. The philosophy remains divisive, and North American abolitionists seeking to coalition-build, provide resources for vulnerable populations and garner public support continue to experience challenges. We explore current usage of digital tools among abolitionists and the potential of a digital mapping tool to address these challenges. We conduct an interview study with 15 abolitionist organizations to understand activists' perspectives on the value of digital tools for organizing and a content analysis of 25 existing digital tools that convey abolitionist ideas to the public. Our findings together reveal (1) opportunities for digital mapping and HCI to support abolitionist activism and grassroots activism more broadly and (2) the challenges of digitally and spatially representing a movement that is intentionally grassroots, clandestine, and often involves organizers working in disparate locations.
Understanding the Role of Human Intuition on Reliance in Human-AI Decision-Making with Explanations
Authors: Chen Valerie , Liao Q. Vera , Wortman Vaughan Jennifer , Bansal Gagan
Published: October 2023

AI explanations are often mentioned as a way to improve human-AI decision-making, but empirical studies have not found consistent evidence of explanations' effectiveness and, on the contrary, suggest that they can increase overreliance when the AI system is wrong. While many factors may affect reliance on AI support, one important factor is how decision-makers reconcile their own intuition---beliefs or heuristics, based on prior knowledge, experience, or pattern recognition, used to make judgments---with the information provided by the AI system to determine when to override AI predictions. We conduct a think-aloud, mixed-methods study with two explanation types (feature- and example-based) for two prediction tasks to explore how decision-makers' intuition affects their use of AI predictions and explanations, and ultimately their choice of when to rely on AI. Our results identify three types of intuition involved in reasoning about AI predictions and explanations: intuition about the task outcome, features, and AI limitations. Building on these, we summarize three observed pathways for decision-makers to apply their own intuition and override AI predictions. We use these pathways to explain why (1) the feature-based explanations we used did not improve participants' decision outcomes and increased their overreliance on AI, and (2) the example-based explanations we used improved decision-makers' performance over feature-based explanations and helped achieve complementary human-AI performance. Overall, our work identifies directions for further development of AI decision-support systems and explanation methods that help decision-makers effectively apply their intuition to achieve appropriate reliance on AI.
“Anything a Guardian Does Is Canonical”: Player Understanding of Canon in Destiny
Authors: Larsen Bjarke Alexander , Carstensdottir Elin
Published: October 2023

The narrative experience of perennial games---ongoing, live games---revolves around the community that plays it. These games serve a fractured form of storytelling, which leaves it to the community to determine what counts as part of the story; or what is considered “canon”. What is canon is a question of who and what the story is allowed to be about, and what is allowed to be in it. Therefore, it is important to understand how players of perennial games understand what is canon and what is not.
This paper presents a mixed methods study of an online survey (N=118) and interviews (N=15) of players of the game Destiny 2, with the goal of understanding what events players consider canon and why.
The findings indicate that while authorship and conventional game story elements are considered canon, there is still disagreement, especially as the storytelling methods become non-conventional. Players can provide nuanced viewpoints on why an event is or is not canon, and they do not always agree. These results can help designers understand how their decisions influence the community discussions of canonicity, and how properties of their game can help create experiences that lets players see themselves in the work.
The Relationship between Users’ Behavior and Their Flow Experience in Gamified Systems
Authors: Oliveira Wilk , Hamari Juho , Isotani Seiji
Published: October 2023

Modeling users' experience in gameful systems is one of the main contemporary challenges in the field of human-computer interaction. One of the most desired and complex experiences to be identified is the flow experience (i.e., challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and autotelic experience). Facing this challenge, we conducted a quantitative study (N = 313) based on structural equation modeling, aiming to model and predict the users' flow experience through their behavior (represented by performance-related, interaction with gamification, as well as the time they take in different actions) in the system. The main results indicate that i) gamification (i.e., doing well in points, badges, and leader-board) was positively related to users' experience of good challenge-skill balance, ii) whereas it was negatively related to users' concentration. Thirdly iii) user performance was positively related to users' concentration. However, overall, the results indicate that while associations between user behavior and flow experience could be established, there remains future work to be done to fully explain user flow experience while using a system. Our study contributes to the fields of human-computer interaction, gamification, and educational technologies, especially through insights related to modeling and predicting flow experiences in gameful systems through behavior data.
A Scoping Review of Heuristics in Videos Games Research: Definitions, Development, Application, and Operationalisation
Authors: Ozdowska Anne , Sweetser Penny , Daiiani Mahsuum
Published: October 2023

Heuristics present a cheap and effective way of evaluating usability. However, in video games, evaluating unique player experiences that are dependent on individual preferences and abilities presents a challenge that goes beyond usability. Video games are more than just functional software, so games heuristics have been adapted to help examine functionality and experience. This paper reports on how papers published in the ACM Digital Library between 2012 and 2022 develop and apply heuristics in video games research. We found that heuristics are often used outside their intended purpose of being used in an expert evaluation. Instead, they are used as survey instruments, interview guides, codes for thematic analysis, and as design guidelines. This research contributes to HCI and video games research by distinguishing the terms design guidelines and design principles from heuristics. We make recommendations for researchers around developing heuristics and conducting video game heuristic evaluations. We propose a method for operationalising heuristics and make recommendations for the implementation of heuristics to improve the quality of video game heuristic reviews.
Prospective Passion and Social Capital within DotA 2 Players
Authors: Johnson Daniel , Frommel Julian , Louis Winnifred , Lee Matthew David , Tanjitpiyanond Porntida , Mandryk Regan L.
Published: October 2023

The Dualistic Model of Passion (obsessive and harmonious passion) can explain motivations for videogame play along with associated outcomes, such as the development of social capital; however, existing research exploring passion and social capital in videogaming has been cross-sectional. In the current study we surveyed players of DotA 2 at three time points, over six months (T1 n=462, T2 n=182, T3 n=115), to explore the stability of passion for DotA 2 over time and how such passion may lead to the development or erosion of social capital. Our key findings include that passion for playing DotA 2 is relatively stable over time and that harmonious passion predicts future bridging social capital, while obsessive passion predicts future bonding social capital. Importantly, our findings suggest the absence of a "slippery slope" scenario in which players who have a healthy pattern of engagement development obsessive passion or problematic play. Equally, however, our findings also suggest that those who are obsessive are unlikely to naturally trend towards a more harmonious style of engagement over time. We consider the implications of our findings for health practitioners, players and videogame developers and identify the differences between our longitudinal findings and the existing cross-sectional research.
A Quest?!: The Secret Life of Gameworld Punctuation
Authors: LaLone Nicolas , Toups Dugas Phoebe O. , Cormier Michelle V.
Published: October 2023

At times, the interfaces of videogames -- gameworlds -- contain tiny details that go unnoticed.
One such detail is how designers employ ! and ? to communicate to players. These punctuation marks have existed in videogames since their creation, yet remain undiscussed by designers. They are used as ways to promote curiosity, as objects, as ways to symbolize excitement, and as a prompt to react. Their varied history is deserving of attention, so we present a chronicle of two pieces of gameworld punctuation: ! and ?. We discuss current and past uses and identify more ways that these could be used in the future. These symbols may present a useful space of inquiry not only for games and games research, but more generally, in terms of the rapid communication of complex information.
ExpanStick: Augmenting Gamepad Thumbstick using Force at the Limit
Authors: Shim Youngbo Aram , Lee Sangyoon , Yi HyeonBeom , Lee Geehyuk
Published: October 2023

We present ExpanStick, a novel thumbstick that augments video game interaction using the force that the user applies at the physical limit of the gamepad. Gamers frequently manipulate a thumbstick leaning on the limit, or physical boundary around it, either to apply maximum input or to secure physical support, which makes the contact force an easily accessible input channel. The ExpanStick preserves the form factor and usability of the thumbstick, while expanding its input space. We built the ExpanStick and inserted it in a commercial gamepad as a proof-of-concept prototype. Using the prototype, we conducted a design workshop with console gamers to design the ExpanStick game interaction. Through demonstration of the interactions, we found the early use experience with the ExpanStick is positive and well accepted by the game players.
How Location-Based Games Incentivize Moving About: A Study in the Context of Nature-Going
Authors: Laato Samuli , Fernández Galeote Daniel , Altarriba Bertran Ferran , Papangelis Konstantinos , Hamari Juho
Published: October 2023

Location-based multiplayer games such as Pokémon GO are tied to real-world locations. Past research has demonstrated that, consequently, these games influence where players move. In order to explore what dynamics in these games incentivize travel to specific places or areas, we engaged in interviews with active players. We discovered 11 unique game dynamics, which could be positioned under three overarching themes: (1) the playing field, as determined by the placement of points of interest, the players' habitat and their surroundings; (2) the player communities and real life relationships, which motivated and directed the playing; and (3) coincidental motivational support, which highlighted how location-based games offer multi-layered motivation for players to travel to, and engage with, specific real-world locations. Our study contributes to the fields of gamified human mobility and human-nature interaction by elucidating how playful technologies can influence where and when people move.
From Points to Progression: A Scoping Review of Game Elements in Gamification Research with a Content Analysis of 280 Research Papers
Authors: Hallifax Stuart , Altmeyer Maximilian , Kölln Kristina , Rauschenberger Maria , Nacke Lennart E.
Published: October 2023

We lack a shared and detailed understanding in gamification of what game elements are. To address this, we provide a scoping review of the last five years of gamification research, focusing primarily on how game elements have been applied and characterized. We retrieved the definitions of game elements from 280 research papers, conducted a content analysis, and identified their features. On the basis of this information, we provide responses regarding the frequently cited game elements, whether they are consistently characterized in the literature, and the frequently stated features of these elements. Our research has identified 15 game elements in the literature, with points, badges, and leaderboards being the most prevalent. As a first step toward clear definitions, we suggest a set of properties to characterize these game elements. The results of our review contribute to the formation of a consensus among gamification scholars about the application and definition of game elements.
“Conversations with pigeons”: Capturing Players’ Lived Experience of Perspective Challenging Games
Authors: Whitby Matthew Alexander , Iacovides Ioanna , Deterding Sebastian
Published: October 2023

Video games are increasingly designed to provoke reflection and challenge players’ perspectives. Yet we know little about how such perspective-challenging experiences come about in gameplay. In response, we used systematic self-observation diaries and micro-phenomenological interviews to capture players’ (n=15) lived experience of perspective challenges in purposely sampled games including Hatoful Boyfriend, The Stanley Parable, or Papers, Please. We found a sequence of trigger, reflection, and transformation constituting perspective-challenging experiences, matching Mezirow’s model of transformative learning. Most of these were game-related or ‘endo-game’, suggesting that medium self-reflection could be an overlooked part of everyday game reflection and appreciation. Reflections were accompanied by a wide range of emotions, including frequent epistemic emotions, and emotions could change drastically even during short gameplay experiences. Actual perspective change or transformation was rare. We construct a model of granular types of triggers, reflections, and transformations that can aid reflective game design.
Using Everyday Objects as Props for Virtual Objects in First Person Augmented Reality Games: An Elicitation Study
Authors: Greenslade Mac , Clark Adrian , Lukosch Stephan
Published: October 2023

In this paper, we present an elicitation study which explores how people use common household objects as props to control virtual objects in augmented reality first-person perspective games. 24 participants were asked to select items from a range of common household objects to use as controllers for three different types of virtual object: a sword, shield, and crossbow. Participants completed short gameplay tasks using their selected items and rated the AR experience using the Augmented Reality Immersion (ARI) questionnaire. Results found no strong consensus linking any specific household object to any virtual object across our test group and, in addition, those who chose the most commonly selected object for each task did not have significantly higher scores on the ARI questionnaire compared to those who did not. A short post-experiment interview indicated a few key factors that were important to participants when selecting their household object, such as shape, size, grip feel and weight distribution. Based on our findings we recommend that developers provide the ability for users to choose which household objects to use as props based on the user's own preferences, and that they design intuitive ways for users to interact with virtual objects.
My Heart Will Go On: Implicitly Increasing Social Connectedness by Visualizing Asynchronous Players’ Heartbeats in VR Games
Authors: Hirsch Linda , Müller Florian , Chiossi Francesco , Benga Theodor , Butz Andreas Martin
Published: October 2023

Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multi-player games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games. To increase social connectedness in such games, our work explores the visualization of physiological data from asynchronous players, i.e., electrocardiogram (ECG). We identified two visualization dimensions, the number of players, and the visualization style, after a design workshop with experts (N=4) and explored them in a single-user virtual escape room game. We spatially and temporally integrated the visualizations and compared two times two visualizations against a baseline condition without visualization in a within-subject lab study (N=34). All but one visualization significantly increased participants’ feelings of social connectedness. Heart icons triggered the strongest feeling of connectedness, understanding, and perceived support in playing the game.
The Effect of Gamification Mechanics on User Experiences of AdventureLEARN: A Self-Driven Learning Platform
Authors: Tan Chek Tien , Devilly Oran Zane , Lim Sok Mui , Divo Bavani , Kok Xiao-Feng Kenan , Jasin Jamil , Seaw Ker Boon , Htein Lin Aung
Published: October 2023

Structured curriculum in domain-specific knowledge and personal development of graduate attributes are both important components of tertiary education. Prior gamification research in tertiary education has mostly evaluated gamification as a system and largely in structured curriculum-based learning environments. There is insufficient understanding as to how different gamification mechanics affect learning experiences in self-driven personal development areas outside of the structured curriculum. We present a study with 20 tertiary students over seven days with AdventureLEARN, a gamified online platform to engage students in a self-driven journey of continuous personal development alongside their curriculum work. Through an analysis of data collected from experience sampling and focus group discussions, we found that, amongst other findings, gamification mechanics that were meticulously contextualized to specific platform features afforded the most positive experiences across various dimensions, leading to our main insight highlighting the importance of maintaining a co-development process between individual gamification mechanics and platform features.
The Effects of Hand Representation on Experience and Performance for 3D Interactions in Virtual Reality Games
Authors: Balcomb Nicholas , Birk Max V. , Bateman Scott
Published: October 2023

In Virtual Reality (VR), natural 3D interactions are performed with hand representations - the visualizations and interactors used for manipulating objects. Hand representations in VR games range from abstract shapes, to graphical versions of input controllers, to realistic human-like hands. Hand representations have been shown to have an important effect on play experience and performance. However, previous work has only considered them for individual 3D interactions or an entire game, giving designers little information about how a representation might perform and be experienced across different 3D interactions (like picking up and rotating objects, or opening a container). In this work, we compare three hand representations across 12 different 3D interactions and in a longer game experience in a study of 45 participants. We find that while representation did not affect performance, representations were overall experienced differently across 3D interactions. Our work provides a deeper understanding for VR game designers about how hand representations can be used to shape play experiences.
The Effects of Latency and In-Game Perspective on Player Performance and Game Experience
Authors: Halbhuber David , Schauhuber Philipp , Schwind Valentin , Henze Niels
Published: October 2023

Previous work shows that high latency, a prolonged delay between player in- and system output, negatively affects player experience and performance. However, previous work also comes to contrary conclusions about how the in-game perspective alters the latency sensitivity of video games. Currently, it is unclear if the in-game perspective independently modulates latency's effects. To investigate how a game's in-game perspective interacts with latency, we developed a shooting game incorporating three perspectives (First-Person-, Third-Person-, and Bird's-Eye-View). In a study, participants (N = 36) played with two levels of latency (low and high) and the three perspectives. We show that latency reduces performance and experience, independent of the perspective. Moreover, Bayesian analysis suggests that the in-game perspective does not interact with latency and does not affects performance or experience. We conclude that more robust means to categorize latency sensitivity of video games than the in-game perspective are required.
Face2Gesture: Translating Facial Expressions into Robot Movements through Shared Latent Space Neural Networks
Authors: Suguitan Michael , Depalma Nick , Hoffman Guy , Hodgins Jessica
Published: October 2023

In this work, we present a method for personalizing human-robot interaction by using emotive facial expressions to generate affective robot movements. Movement is an important medium for robots to communicate affective states, but the expertise and time required to craft new robot movements promotes a reliance on fixed preprogrammed behaviors. Enabling robots to respond to multimodal user input with newly generated movements could stave off staleness of interaction and convey a deeper degree of affective understanding than current retrieval-based methods. We use autoencoder neural networks to compress robot movement data and facial expression images into a shared latent embedding space. Then, we use a reconstruction loss to generate movements from these embeddings and triplet loss to align the embeddings by emotion classes rather than data modality. To subjectively evaluate our method, we conducted a user survey and found that generated happy and sad movements could be matched to their source face images. However, angry movements were most often mismatched to sad images. This multimodal data-driven generative method can expand an interactive agent’s behavior library and could be adopted for other multimodal affective applications.
A Synergistic Bidirectional LSTM and N-gram Multi-channel CNN Approach Based on BERT and FastText for Arabic Event Identification
Authors: Haffar Nafaa , Zrigui Mounir
Published: October 2023

Event extraction from texts continues to pose a challenge for many NLP systems. This article presents a novel neural network architecture that can extract and classify events from Arabic sentences. The model combines word representations and Part-Of-Speech (POS) tags and uses a bidirectional LSTM layer and a dual combined convolutional neural network. The first layer of the network focuses on sentence representations, while the second layer focuses on POS representations. The model takes advantage of both N-gram character features from FastText and contextual representations from bidirectional encoder representations from transformers. This combination proves to be successful, as evidenced by the good results obtained from evaluating the model on the Arabic TimeML corpus. Our results show that combining both contextual and N-gram representations outperforms the traditional skip-gram model.
Physics-Based Model to Represent Membrane-Electrode Assemblies of Solid-Oxide Fuel Cells Based on Gadolinium-Doped Ceria
Authors: Zhu Huayang , Ashar Akhil , Kee Robert J. , Braun Robert J. , Jackson Gregory S.
Published: October 2023

This paper reports a physics-based model that predicts membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) performance of solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) with Ce0.9Gd0.1O2−δ
(GDC10) electrolyte membranes. The paper derives self-consistent thermodynamic and transport properties for GDC1o mobile charged defects (oxide vacancies and reduced-ceria small polarons) by fitting published measurements of oxygen non-stoichiometry and conductivity over ranges of temperature and O2 partial pressures. The button-cell model is applied to evaluate how mixed ionic-electronic conductivity influences the performance of an SOFC MEA with a GDC10 electrolyte sandwiched between a porous, composite Ni-GDC10 anode and a porous, composite cathode of Sm0.5Sr0.5CoO3−δ
(i.e., SSC) and GDC10. SSC properties are also derived by fitting published conductivity and oxygen non-stoichiometry measurements. Mixed conductivity of GDC10 and competing charge transfer reactions at both electrodes reduce open circuit voltages due to leakage current and buildup of defect concentrations at electrode-electrolyte interfaces. To fit polarization data, the button-cell model includes heterogeneous reaction rates for defect incorporation on the GDC10 surface along with Butler–Volmer expressions derived for competing charge transfer reaction rates from rigorous analyses assuming rate-limiting, elementary charge transfer reactions for each electrode. The calibrated MEA model can support rigorous SOFC modeling with GDC10 electrolytes over the range of conditions within a fully operating cell.
Simulation Guided Design of a Hybrid Battery-Type Supercapacitor: A Case Study on MnO2@RVC//AC
Authors: Huang Man-Chen , Sarigamala Karthik Kiran , Chen Hsun-Yi
Published: October 2023

Theoretical and experimental understanding of physical and electrochemical mechanisms in hybrid supercapacitors will help improve their energy/power densities. This work explores a simulation-guided design for the fabrication of a high-performance hybrid supercapacitor rendered using optimized COMSOL simulation parameters acquired from Newman’s porous electrode theory. The comprehensive virtual simulations fostered a superior battery-type hybrid electrode with MnO2 nanoclusters formulated over reticulated vitreous carbon. The electrochemical phenomena in the hybrid capacitor were examined using three variables, namely the pore sizes, thicknesses of the positive electrode and the weight ratio of the active material on the negative electrode. The controllable design parameters were identified using numerical simulations and matched with experiments cost-effectively. Thus, the simulations facilitated the experimental fabrication of a superior hybrid battery-type electrode, and charge balancing on the electrodes helped to maximize the energy and power densities. These experimentally validated simulations give new insight that can aid the development of similar hybrid capacitor systems.
Quaternary AlInGaN/AlInGaN Polarization-Engineered Green Lights-Emitting Diodes by Using Inverted Trapezoidal Quantum Barriers
Authors: Xie Yafang , Zou Bingzhi , Zhang Zhixiang , Wu You , Lin Jingjing , Wei Kejun , Huang Zeyu , Wang Tiankai , Yin Yi-an
Published: October 2023

In this paper, a structure design using grading quaternary AlInGaN as inverted trapezoidal multiple quantum barriers is shown. This paper proposes an inverted trapezoidal structure in quantum barriers to decelerate the transmission of the electron which will enhance efficient carrier injection into the quantum wells and get a more uniform distribution of carriers. The polarization-matched AlInGaN/AlInGaN structures have less polarization and increase the overlap of electron and hole wave function, effectively improving the internal quantum efficiency and wall-plug efficiency, and making the In composition adjustable. The results show that the Inverted trapezoidal polarization-matched AlInGaN structure significantly improves the phenomenon of “green gap” and “green droop.” As a result, the new structure mitigates the droop ratio from 25.5% to 7%, and the LED power is increased from 59.95 mW to 109.68 mW at 200 mA. Finally, the device exhibits a uniform current distribution and greater radiative recombination while reducing resistance.
Long-Read Sequencing Identified a Large Novel δ/β-Globin Gene Deletion in a Chinese Family
Authors: Zhuang Jianlong , Zheng Yu , Jiang Yuying , Wang Junyu , Zeng Shuhong , Liu Nansong
Published: October 2023

Objective. Increasingly rare thalassemia has been identified with the advanced use of long-read sequencing based on long-read technology. Here, we aim to present a novel δ/β-globin gene deletion identified by long-read sequencing technology. Methods. Enrolled in this study was a family from the Quanzhou region of Southeast China. Routine blood analysis and hemoglobin (Hb) capillary electrophoresis were used for hematological screening. Genetic testing for common α- and β-thalassemia was carried out using the reverse dot blot hybridization technique. Long-read sequencing was performed to detect rare globin gene variants. Specific gap-polymerase chain reaction (gap-PCR) and/or Sanger sequencing were further used to verify the detected variants. Results. None of the common α- and β-thalassemia mutations or deletions were observed in the family. However, decreased levels of MCV, MCH, and abnormal Hb bands were observed in the family members, who were suspected as rare thalassemia carriers. Further, long-read sequencing demonstrated a large novel 7.414 kb deletion NG_000007.3:g.63511_70924del partially cover HBB and HBD globin genes causing delta-beta fusion gene in the proband. Parental verification indicated that the deletion was inherited from the proband’s father, while none of the globin gene variants were observed in the proband’s mother. In addition, the novel δ/β-globin gene deletion was further verified by gap-PCR and Sanger sequencing. Conclusion. In this study, we first present a large novel δ/β-globin gene deletion in a Chinese family using long-read sequencing, which may cause δβ-thalassemia. This study further enhances that long-read sequencing would be applied as a sharp tool for detecting rare and novel globin gene variants.
A Challenging Case of Oral Ulcers and Gastrointestinal Bleeding: Crohn’s or Behçet’s Disease
Authors: Dantas Marina A. S. , Graneiro Ana Luiza , Cavalcante Rodrigo , Felipez Lina Maria
Published: October 2023

Introduction. Differentiating Crohn’s disease (CD) and Behçet’s disease (BD) with gastrointestinal (GI) manifestations can be clinically challenging, as current diagnostic criteria are not clear between both conditions and multiple symptoms could overlap. Case Presentation. The patient is an 8-year-old boy of Brazilian descent, who initially presented with a 1-year history of painful oral ulcers. Before presenting to the hospital, he had been treated for periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis, and adenitis and placed on steroids, with relapsing symptoms on attempts to wean the doses. The initial workup was largely unremarkable. Buccal biopsies showed no granulomas, and the ophthalmologic exam was normal. Infectious and rheumatological tests were negative. Prometheus IBD sgi testing showed a pattern consistent with CD; however, the patient had multiple negative endoscopies, colonoscopies, and capsule endoscopies. He developed intermittent bloody stools and severe malnutrition and did not respond to infliximab, colchicine, or methotrexate. After a large GI bleed, a 4th colonoscopy was performed, which showed large round ulcers in the terminal ileum, and no granulomas. He was started on ustekinumab with clinical improvement. One month later, he developed bilateral hip effusion and meningismus, being diagnosed with aseptic meningitis secondary to COVID-19. He improved, but in one month developed worsening symptoms, and MRV showed extensive venous sinus thrombosis. The patient was started on enoxaparin, methylprednisolone, and colchicine, with resolution of the thrombus on a 3-month follow-up. The patient’s overall symptoms remained controlled with clinical and biochemical remission on monthly ustekinumab. Discussion and Conclusion. Our patient had a challenging clinical course, with nonspecific systemic and intestinal manifestations which proved difficult to differentiate between BD and CD. Given endoscopic findings and the worsening of an auto-inflammatory reaction in the central nervous system after COVID-19 in a patient with controlled GI symptoms, the most likely diagnosis is BD.