arXiv subjects

Johanna Pirker

Publications and source records attributed to Johanna Pirker.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

VR4UrbanDev: An Immersive Virtual Reality Experience for Energy Data Visualization

In this demonstration paper, we present our interactive virtual reality (VR) experience, which has been designed to facilitate interaction with energy-related information. This experience consists of two main modes: the world in miniature for large-scale and first-person for real-world scale visualizations. Additionally, we presented our approach to potential target groups in interviews. The results of these interviews can help developers for future implementation considering the requirements of each group.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

A Qualitative Investigation to Design Empathetic Agents as Conversation Partners for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can profoundly affect reciprocal social communication, resulting in substantial and challenging impairments. One aspect is that for people with ASD conversations in everyday life are challenging due to difficulties in understanding social cues, interpreting emotions, and maintaining social verbal exchanges. To address these challenges and enhance social skills, we propose the development of a learning game centered around social interaction and conversation, featuring Artificial Intelligence agents. Our initial step involves seven expert interviews to gain insight into the requirements for empathetic and conversational agents in the field of improving social skills for people with ASD in a gamified environment. We have identified two distinct use cases: (1) Conversation partners to discuss real-life issues and (2) Training partners to experience various scenarios to improve social skills. In the latter case, users will receive quests for interacting with the agent. Additionally, the agent can assign quests to the user, prompting specific conversations in real life and providing rewards for successful completion of quests.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Project Beyond: An Escape Room Game in Virtual Reality to Teach Building Energy Simulations

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) has found its way into different fields besides pure entertainment. One of the topics that can benefit from the immersive experience of VR is education. Furthermore, using game-based approaches in education can increase user motivation and engagement. Accordingly, in this paper, we designed and developed an immersive escape room game in VR to teach building energy simulation topics. In the game, players must solve puzzles like, for instance, assembling walls using different materials. We use a player guidance system that combines educational content, puzzles, and different types of hints to educate the players about parameters that influence energy efficiency, structural resistance, and costs. To improve user onboarding, we implemented a tutorial level to teach players general interactions and locomotion. To assess the user experience, we evaluate both the tutorial and the game with an expert study with gaming and VR experts (n=11). The participants were asked to play both the tutorial level and the escape room level and complete two sets of post-questionnaires, one after the tutorial and one after the puzzle level. The one after the tutorial level consisted of NASA-TLX and SUS questionnaires, while after the escape room level we asked users to complete the NASA-TLX, UESSF, and PXI questionnaires. The results indicate that the onboarding level successfully provided good usability while maintaining a low task load. On the other hand, the escape room level can provide an engaging, visually appealing, and usable learning environment by arousing players' curiosity through the gameplay. This environment can be extended in future development stages with different educational contents from various fields.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Investigating Trading Mechanisms as a Driver for User Experience in Racing Games

The exchange of digital goods has become a significant aspect of the global economy, with digital products offering inexpensive reproduction and distribution. In-game objects, a type of digital currency, have emerged as tradable commodities within gaming ecosystems. Despite extensive research on various aspects of digital goods, little attention has been given to the impact of in-game trading mechanisms on user experience. This paper presents a study aimed at evaluating the influence of trading systems on user experience in a racing game context. We developed a simple racing game featuring an in-game market for buying and selling car variants and conducted an A/B study comparing user experiences between groups utilizing the trading system and those unlocking cars through race completion. Our findings suggest that while the trading system did not significantly alter the overall user experience, further exploration of diverse trading approaches may offer insights into their impact on user engagement.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

GameDevDojo -- An Educational Game for Teaching Game Development Concepts

Computer Science (CS) has experienced significant growth and diversification in recent decades. However, there is a lack of diversity in CS learning approaches. Traditional teaching methods and hands-on learning dominate this field, with limited use of playful and interactive learning methods such as educational games. This gap is particularly evident in game development as a subfield of CS. To address this problem, we present a game-based learning approach to teach foundational concepts for game development. The paper aims to expand the educational landscape within CSE, offering a unique and engaging platform for learners to explore the intricacies of game creation by integrating gamified learning strategies. In this paper, we investigate the user's learning experience and motivation, and the differences between traditional learning and game-based learning methods for teaching game development concepts. The study involves 57 participants in an AB test to assess learners' motivation, user experience, and learning outcomes. The results indicate a significantly increased learning outcome for the game-based learning approach, as well as higher motivation in learning game development concepts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

FemQuest -- An Interactive Multiplayer Game to Engage Girls in Programming

In recent decades, computer science (CS) has undergone remarkable growth and diversification. Creating attractive, social, or hands-on games has already been identified as a possible approach to get teenagers and young adults interested in CS. However, overcoming the global gap between the interest and participation of men and women in CS is still a worldwide problem. To address this challenge, we present a multiplayer game that is used in a workshop setting to motivate girls to program through a 3D game environment. The paper aims to expand the educational landscape within computer science education by offering a motivating and engaging platform for young women to explore programming quests in a collaborative environment. The study involved 235 girls and 50 coaches for the workshop evaluation and a subset of 20 participants for an in-game analysis. In this paper, we explore the engagement in programming and assess the cognitive workload while playing and solving programming quests within the game, as well as the learning experience and the outcome. The results show that the positive outcomes of the workshop underscore the effectiveness of a game-based collaborative learning approach to get girls interested in computer science activities. The variety of solutions found for the different tasks demonstrates the creativity and problem-solving skills of the participants and underlines the effectiveness of the workshop in promoting critical thinking and computational skills.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Politics in Games -- An Overview and Classification

The representation of politics in media influences societal perceptions and attitudes. Video games, as a pervasive form of media, contribute significantly to this phenomenon. In this work, we explore political themes within video games by analyzing politically-themed games on game distribution platforms including Steam. We conducted a statistical examination of games with political context to identify patterns and use this as a basis to introduce a first taxonomy to categorize and better understand the interplay between politics and video games. This taxonomy offers a first framework for analyzing political content in games and also sets a foundation for future research in this field.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

A Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Environment for Computer Science Education

Skills in the field of computer science (CS) are increasingly in demand. Often traditional teaching approaches are not sufficient to teach complex computational concepts. Interactive and digital learning experiences have been shown as valuable tools to support learners in understanding. However, the missing social interaction affects the quality of the learning experience. Adding collaborative and competitive elements can make the virtual learning environment even more social, engaging, and motivating for learners. In this paper, we explore the potential of collaborative and competitive elements in an interactive virtual laboratory environment with a focus on computer science education. In an AB study with 35 CS students, we investigated the effectiveness of collaborative and competitive elements in a virtual laboratory using interactive visualizations of sorting algorithms.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2024

A Literature Review and Taxonomy of In-VR Questionnaire User Interfaces

Previous research demonstrates that the interruption of immersive experiences may lead to a bias in the results of questionnaires. Thus, the traditional way of presenting questionnaires, paper-based or web-based, may not be compatible with evaluating VR experiences. Recent research has shown the positive impact of embedding questionnaires contextually into the virtual environment. However, a comprehensive overview of the available VR questionnaire solutions is currently missing. Furthermore, no clear taxonomy exists for these different solutions in the literature. To address this, we present a literature review of VR questionnaire user interfaces (UI) following PRISMA guidelines. Our search returned 1.109 initial results, which were screened for eligibility, resulting in a corpus of 25 papers. This paper contributes to HCI and games research with a literature review of embedded questionnaires in VR, discussing the advantages and disadvantages and introducing a taxonomy of in-VR questionnaire UIs.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

The Application of Procedurally Generated Libraries in Immersive Virtual Reality

While digital libraries offer essential benefits for the digital age such as constant availability and accessibility, they often fail in providing a similarly enjoyable browsing experience that benefits engagement and serendipitous exploration inherent to traditional library experiences. In this paper, we propose a virtual reality (VR) library environment that emulates a traditional library promoting an engaging browsing experience that benefits browsing enjoyment and serendipity. The implemented system uses procedural content generation to dynamically generate a library-like environment, wherein each room corresponds to a specific category of the digital library. To assess the usability of the implemented system, we conducted an A-B study comparing the VR environment with the web interface of Project Gutenberg. The results of the study suggest that while the physical demand for using the VR environment is higher, the system can significantly benefit the browsing experience and entice users curiosity. Furthermore, the study suggests that the system can increase user engagement and users generally felt that using the system was rewarding.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Two Decades of Game Jams

In less than a year's time, March 2022 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the first documented game jam, the Indie Game Jam, which took place in Oakland, California in 2002. Initially, game jams were widely seen as frivolous activities. Since then, they have taken the world by storm. Game jams have not only become part of the day-to-day process of many game developers, but jams are also used for activist purposes, for learning and teaching, as part of the experience economy, for making commercial prototypes that gamers can vote on, and more. Beyond only surveying game jams and the relevant published scientific literature from the last two decades, this paper has several additional contributions. It builds a history of game jams, and proposes two different taxonomies of game jams - a historical and a categorical. In addition, it discusses the definition of game jam and identifies the most active research areas within the game jam community such as the interplay and development with local communities, the study and analysis of game jammers and organisers, and works that bring a critical look on game jams.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Comparing the Structures and Characteristics of Different Game Social Networks -- The Steam Case

In most games, social connections are an essential part of the gaming experience. Players connect in communities inside or around games and form friendships, which can be translated into other games or even in the real world. Recent research has investigated social phenomena within the player social network of several multiplayer games, yet we still know very little about how these networks are shaped and formed. Specifically, we are unaware of how the game type and its mechanics are related to its community structure and how those structures vary in different games. This paper presents an initial analysis of Steam users and how friendships on Steam are formed around 200 games. We examine the friendship graphs of these 200 games by dividing them into clusters to compare their network properties and their specific characteristics (e.g., genre, game elements, and mechanics). We found how the Steam user-defined tags better characterized the clusters than the game genre, suggesting that how players perceive and use the game also reflects how they connect in the community. Moreover, team-based games are associated with more cohesive and clustered networks than games with a stronger single-player focus, supporting the idea that playing together in teams more likely produces social capital (i.e., Steam friendships).

cs.SI↗

arXiv2021

#StayHome Playing LoL -- Analyzing Players' Activity and Social Bonds in League of Legends During Covid-19 Lockdowns

Humans are social beings. It is therefore not surprising that the social distancing and movement restrictions associated with the Covid-19 pandemic had severe consequences for the well-being of large sections of the population, leading to increased loneliness and related mental diseases. Many people found emotional shelter in online multiplayer games, which have already proven to be great social incubators. While the positive effect games had on individuals has become evident, we are still unaware of how and if games fostered the fundamental need for connectedness that people sought. In other words: how have the social bonds and interaction patterns of players changed with the advent of the pandemic? For this purpose, we analyzed one year of data from an online multiplayer game (League of Legends) to observe the impact of Covid-19 on player assiduity and sociality in three different geographical regions (i.e., Europe, North America, and South Korea). Our results show a strong relationship between the development of Covid-19 restrictions and player activity, together with more robust and recurrent social bonds, especially for players committed to the game. Additionally, players with reinforced social bonds-i.e., people played with similar teammates-were more likely to stay in the game even once the restrictions were lifted.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2020

Do Influencers Influence? -- Analyzing Players' Activity in an Online Multiplayer Game

In social and online media, influencers have traditionally been understood as highly visible individuals. Recent outcomes suggest that people are likely to mimic influencers' behavior, which can be exploited, for instance, in marketing strategies. Also in the Games User Research field, the interest in studying player social networks has emerged due to the heavy reliance on online influencers in marketing campaigns for games, as well as in keeping players engaged. Despite the inherent value of those individuals, it is still difficult to identify influencers, as the definition of influencers is a debated topic. Thus, how can we identify influencers, and are they indeed the individuals impacting others' behavior? In this work, we focus on influence in retention to verify whether central players impacted others' permanence in the game. We identified the central players in the social network built from the competitive player-vs-player (PvP) multiplayer (Crucible) matches in the online shooter Destiny. Then, we computed influence scores for each player evaluating the increase in similarity over time between two connected individuals. In this paper, we were able to show the first indications that the traditional metrics for influencers do not necessarily apply for games. On the contrary, we found that the group of central players was distinct from the group of influential players, defined as the individuals with the highest influence scores. Then, we provide an analysis of the two groups.

cs.SI↗