Search Results (23)

Background: Adolescents’ use of step tracker mobile applications (apps) could be influenced by their assessment of the mobile app used. Objectives: To analyze differences in the dropout rate, app assessment, and problematic mobile phone use based on prior physical activity levels and the app used. Methods: A study with a quasi-experimental design was carried out with the participation of 240 adolescents, who were further categorized as either active or inactive. The adolescents carried out a 10-week intervention promoted as a part of the physical education curriculum, three days a week, in which they randomly used the Pokémon Go, MapMyWalk, Pacer, or Strava mobile apps after school for cardiorespiratory training. Results: The results showed a higher dropout rate from Pokémon Go in the group of inactive adolescents (p = 0.012). No differences were found in the assessment of apps based on the level of activity of the adolescents, neither overall nor when analyzing this question based on the app used (p > 0.05). As for problematic mobile phone use, only previously inactive adolescents assigned to the Pacer group significantly increased their final score after the intervention (p = 0.044), with no changes being identified in the other groups or apps (p > 0.05). Furthermore, the active adolescents showed a positive relationship between the volume of training and problematic mobile phone use (p = 0.023), specifically with the conflicting use of this device (p = 0.017). Conclusions: The inactive adolescents had a higher dropout rate when using Pokémon Go. There were no differences in app assessment between the active and the inactive participants. However, the active adolescents showed a link between their training volume and problematic mobile phone use. Full article

Physical inactivity represents a significant public health challenge globally. Mobile applications, particularly those utilizing augmented reality (AR), have emerged as innovative tools for promoting physical activity. However, a systematic evaluation of their efficacy is essential. This systematic review aims to evaluate and synthesize the evidence regarding the effectiveness and benefits of mobile applications with augmented reality in enhancing physical activity and improving health outcomes. A comprehensive search was conducted in Scopus, PubMed, WOS, and the Cochrane Library databases following PRISMA guidelines. Observational and interventional studies evaluating AR mobile applications for physical exercise were included, without restrictions on publication date or language. The search terms included “Mobile Applications”, “Augmented Reality”, “Physical Fitness”, “Exercise Therapy”, and “Health Behavior”. The methodological quality was assessed using the ROBINS tool. The review identified twelve eligible studies encompassing 5,534,661 participants. The findings indicated significant increases in physical activity and improvements in mental health associated with the use of AR applications, such as Pokémon GO. However, potential risk behaviors were also noted. The evidence suggests that AR interventions can effectively promote physical activity and enhance health. Nonetheless, further research is needed to address limitations and optimize their efficacy. Future interventions should be tailored to diverse cultural contexts to maximize benefits and mitigate risks. AR mobile applications hold promise for promoting physical activity and improving health outcomes. Strategies to optimize their effectiveness and address identified risks should be explored to fully realize their potential. Full article

The educational landscape is an environment prone to change due to the volatile and ever-changing nature of the digital society in which we all live. Although the world moves at different speeds and any generalization is bound to have some exceptions, there is evidence from research conducted in different places and contexts that educational methods are becoming increasingly digitized and driven by technological innovation. Among the technological trends fueled in many cases by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to stay at home but online, augmented reality solutions received an additional boost as a valid and versatile educational technology worth exploring and eventually integrating into several teaching methods already in use. Although the technology still faces problems related to affordability, accessibility, and the technical skills required of users, some ongoing projects have already provided evidence that using augmented reality solutions as teaching and learning tools can improve teacher and student learning outcomes by increasing engagement and interactivity. The same issues arose when personal computers, tablets, and smartphones were first discussed as valuable tools for education and have now found their way into most classrooms. This paper reviews some of the key concepts related to augmented reality, as well as some current trends, benefits, and concerns related to its integration into educational contexts in areas such as life sciences, engineering, and health. The work conducted and presented in this paper provides an interesting insight into a technology that has given rise to global phenomena such as Pokémon Go, and continues to improve in terms of portability, usability, and overall user experience. Throughout the paper and in the conclusion section, we discuss the relevance of using the best features of augmented reality and how they can contribute to positive educational outcomes. Full article

The overwhelming growth and popularity of mobile devices and games have motivated initiatives to explore mobile and augmented reality to bring the physical and virtual together. While several domains have been the recipient of such focus, particular importance has been placed on the cultural heritage (CH) field, with examples demonstrating the promise of location-based games (LBGs) at enhancing the CH experience aimed at promoting awareness. Games like Pokémon GO have exacerbated the appeal of LBGs, showing that they can be as popular as blockbuster video games. However, as much potential as LBGs have in raising CH awareness, they can be challenging to build because, unlike their commercial counterparts, their primary aim is learning, emphasizing the cultural significance of the real-world location rather than augmented assets. With limited research that explicitly identifies elements in creating these games in CH contexts, this work aimed to identify design practices and considerations in the design of LBGs. This work is intended for educators, researchers, instructional designers, game developers, and those in the CH field interested in exploring creative ways to embody a deeper understanding of and appreciation for CH. Full article

Augmented reality (AR) has found application in online games, social media, interior design, and other services since the success of the smartphone game Pokémon Go in 2016. With recent news on the metaverse and the AR cloud, the contexts in which the technology is used become more and more ubiquitous. This is problematic, since AR requires various different sensors gathering real-time, context-specific personal information about the users, causing more severe and new privacy threats compared to other technologies. These threats can have adverse consequences on information self-determination and the freedom of choice and, thus, need to be investigated as long as AR is still shapeable. This communication paper takes on a bird’s eye perspective and considers the ethical concept of autonomy as the core principle to derive recommendations and measures to ensure autonomy. These principles are supposed to guide future work on AR suggested in this article, which is strongly needed in order to end up with privacy-friendly AR technologies in the future. Full article

With the exception of Pokémon Go, relatively little is known about other Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) games, and the attitudes of middle-aged and elderly adults towards them are hitherto poorly examined. The aim of this research is to examine the opinions of young, middle-aged, and elderly adults about the location-based MAR game Ingress. The responses to questions related to Ingress were collected from 24 adult players aged 20–60 from Greece and subsequently were analyzed by means of content analysis, both qualitatively and quantitatively, using the Jaccard index of similarity. Our findings showed that opinions of young people (20–35) agree more with those of elderly adults (>52) than with those of the intermediate age group of 36–51. It was also revealed that knowledge of geography facilitates the ability to play the game better, the game’s scenario is very interesting to adults, and the feeling of playing locally in a global game is also appreciated by all age groups. Along with these findings, with this research, it was shown that (a) content analysis is a valuable method for exploring opinions and attitudes of adult users towards MAR games and (b) Jaccard indices can be used to quantitatively explore themes emerging from content analysis. Full article

Deep learning applications on computer vision involve the use of large-volume and representative data to obtain state-of-the-art results due to the massive number of parameters to optimise in deep models. However, data are limited with asymmetric distributions in industrial applications due to rare cases, legal restrictions, and high image-acquisition costs. Data augmentation based on deep learning generative adversarial networks, such as StyleGAN, has arisen as a way to create training data with symmetric distributions that may improve the generalisation capability of built models. StyleGAN generates highly realistic images in a variety of domains as a data augmentation strategy but requires a large amount of data to build image generators. Thus, transfer learning in conjunction with generative models are used to build models with small datasets. However, there are no reports on the impact of pre-trained generative models, using transfer learning. In this paper, we evaluate a StyleGAN generative model with transfer learning on different application domains—training with paintings, portraits, Pokémon, bedrooms, and cats—to generate target images with different levels of content variability: bean seeds (low variability), faces of subjects between 5 and 19 years old (medium variability), and charcoal (high variability). We used the first version of StyleGAN due to the large number of publicly available pre-trained models. The Fréchet Inception Distance was used for evaluating the quality of synthetic images. We found that StyleGAN with transfer learning produced good quality images, being an alternative for generating realistic synthetic images in the evaluated domains. Full article

Outdoor cultural heritage is exposed to several detrimental factors, so involving people in its care can greatly help in its preservation. We conducted four focus groups with participants recruited through a screening questionnaire to find ways of including travelers in a citizen science project by learning about how they interact with monuments through photography, travel apps, and location-based games, as well as their preferences regarding these apps. Since people can be apprehensive about installing new apps, we also verified the potential of games like Geocaching and Pokémon Go for cultural heritage conservation. We found that monuments appear as a photographic motif if they allow for interaction, are part of a photogenic scene or the visitor is attracted to their story. Some use travel apps to get additional information about the sights and discover hidden sites. Since cultural heritage is frequently part of the Pokémon Go and Geocaching gameplay, there is significant potential to use these apps, not only for tourism, but also for citizen science projects involving cultural heritage. While descriptive in nature, these findings provide useful insight into how to combine ubiquitous devices, smart tourism, consumer behavior, and cultural heritage protection for a more sustainable future. Full article

New technology has dramatically changed online games and blurred the boundary between active and passive activities. This study aims to explore the meanings and values of augmented reality online games by examining users’ Pokémon Go experiences through the means-end chain theory. Using data from interviews with 34 Pokémon Go users, this study adopts the soft laddering method to identify Pokémon Go’s potential attributes, consequences, and values, and to construct a hierarchical value map. The results indicated that Pokémon Go users pursue social relationships through play, and these relationships are triggered by the benefits of making new friends, maintaining current relationships with friends and family, and the attributes of prevalence, childhood memory, game design, and augmented reality. Subsequently, this study describes how Pokémon Go can be considered an active leisure activity because of its social, mental, and physical benefits and assesses the implications of its findings. Full article

Augmented reality (AR) mobile game, Pokémon GO, leverages gamification and location tracking technology to encourage players to walk in different places to catch Pokémon characters in real-world settings. The systematic review sought to explore the impact Pokémon GO has on players’ physical activity (PA), and psychological and social outcomes. Six research databases (PubMed, SPORTDiscus, PsycInfo, Web of Science, Science Direct, and Scopus) were used. Study inclusion criteria were: (1) quantitative research published in English; (2) examined the relationships between or impact of Pokémon GO on PA, psychological, and/or social outcomes; and (3) included participants played or exposed to Pokémon GO. Thirty-six studies were included with a total sample of 38,724 participants. Players had significantly greater PA than non-players in terms of daily steps and number of days spent in moderate PA. Pokémon GO game also improved players’ social interactions and their mood/affects. Selective attention and concentration improved in adolescents and memory improved in young adults after playing the game. Findings suggest playing Pokémon GO could promote meaningful improvements in walking behavior, as well as psychological and social well-being. More multidimensional research with randomized controlled trial design is needed to identify factors that influence adoption and sustainability of Pokémon GO playing. Full article

Pokémon Go is one of the most successful mobile games of all time. Millions played and still play this mobile augmented reality (AR) application, although severe privacy issues are pervasive in the app due to its use of several sensors such as location data and camera. In general, individuals regularly use online services and mobile apps although they might know that the use is associated with high privacy risks. This seemingly contradictory behavior of users is analyzed from a variety of different perspectives in the information systems domain. One of these perspectives evaluates privacy-related decision making processes based on concepts from behavioral economics. We follow this line of work by empirically testing one exemplary extraneous factor within the “enhanced APCO model” (antecedents–privacy concerns–outcome). Specific empirical tests on such biases are rare in the literature which is why we propose and empirically analyze the extraneous influence of a positivity bias. In our case, we hypothesize that the bias is induced by childhood brand nostalgia towards the Pokémon franchise. We analyze our proposition in the context of an online survey with 418 active players of the game. Our results indicate that childhood brand nostalgia influences the privacy calculus by exerting a large effect on the benefits within the trade-off and, therefore, causing a higher use frequency. Our work shows two important implications. First, the behavioral economics perspective on privacy provides additional insights relative to previous research. However, the effects of several other biases and heuristics have to be tested in future work. Second, relying on nostalgia represents an important, but also double-edged, instrument for practitioners to market new services and applications. Full article

In early 2020, as a countermeasure to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments issued limitations on the movements of their citizens, cancelling social events and advising people to stay home. As location-based games (LBGs) have been found to influence human movement, their role during COVID-19 deserves closer inspection. Under regular circumstances, the very aim of these games is to motivate people to go out, explore and meet other people. However, during COVID-19, people were advised to do the exact opposite. To study how LBG developers and players reacted to the situation, we used the netnography research method utilizing three types of data: (1) COVID-19 related in-game changes made by seven popular LBG developers during March 2020; (2) social media reactions on 20 posts across three popular Pokémon GO subreddits; and (3) the raiding activity (collaborative play) in Pokémon GO in a Finnish municipality during February–May 2020. All observed LBGs made in-game changes due to COVID-19. The social media reactions showed overwhelming appreciation towards these changes, and two central second order themes arose: (1) LBGs have the ability to influence human movement during pandemics; and (2) people should be able to self-regulate their behaviour during COVID-19 independent of LBG influence. Surprisingly, recorded Pokémon GO player activity in Finland was more influenced by offered in-game rewards than the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings have implications on how games and gamification can be used to direct human movement in situations such as COVID-19 where population-level interventions are needed. Full article

User-generated map data is increasingly used by the technology industry for background mapping, navigation and beyond. An example is the integration of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in widely-used smartphone and web applications, such as Pokémon GO (PGO), a popular augmented reality smartphone game. As a result of OSM’s increased popularity, the worldwide audience that uses OSM through external applications is directly exposed to malicious edits which represent cartographic vandalism. Multiple reports of obscene and anti-semitic vandalism in OSM have surfaced in popular media over the years. These negative news related to cartographic vandalism undermine the credibility of collaboratively generated maps. Similarly, commercial map providers (e.g., Google Maps and Waze) are also prone to carto-vandalism through their crowdsourcing mechanism that they may use to keep their map products up-to-date. Using PGO as an example, this research analyzes harmful edits in OSM that originate from PGO players. More specifically, this paper analyzes the spatial, temporal and semantic characteristics of PGO carto-vandalism and discusses how the mapping community handles it. Our findings indicate that most harmful edits are quickly discovered and that the community becomes faster at detecting and fixing these harmful edits over time. Gaming related carto-vandalism in OSM was found to be a short-term, sporadic activity by individuals, whereas the task of fixing vandalism is persistently pursued by a dedicated user group within the OSM community. The characteristics of carto-vandalism identified in this research can be used to improve vandalism detection systems in the future. Full article

Users are attracted by augmented reality games to fulfil their needs. Two objectives are proposed: (1) to research the motivations of those using augmented reality mobile games; (2) to define a structural model based on Uses and Gratifications Theory for the adoption of augmented reality mobile games. The present study examines the case of Pokémon Go. The model is composed of eight constructs: enjoyment, fantasy, escapism, social interaction, social presence, achievement, self-presentation and continuance intention. The SEM model was empirically assessed based on 1183 responses from Pokémon Go users around the world. Results clearly confirmed the positive influence of almost all the proposed constructs on continuance intention for Pokémon Go. First, these findings may be helpful for the online gaming industry in identifying the game functions that retain more gamers and improve the user experience. Second, the online gaming industry might use these results in order to classify those players with behaviours that favour the use of online games. Full article

Location-based games have become popular in recent years, with Pokémon Go and Ingress being two very prominent examples. Some location-based games, known as Serious Games, go beyond entertainment and serve additional purposes such as data collection. Such games are also found in the OpenStreetMap context and playfully enrich the project’s geodatabase. Examples include Kort and StreetComplete. This article examines the role of spatially structured scoring systems as a motivational element. It is analysed how spatial structure in scoring systems is correlated with changes observed in the game behaviour. For this purpose, our study included two groups of subjects who played a modified game based on StreetComplete in a real urban environment. One group played the game with a spatially structured scoring system and the other with a spatially random scoring system. We evaluated different indicators and analysed the players’ GPS trajectories. In addition, the players filled out questionnaires to investigate whether they had become aware of the scoring system they were playing. The results obtained show that players who are confronted with a spatially structured scoring system are more likely to be in areas with high scores, have a longer playing time, walk longer distances and are more willing to take detours. Furthermore, discrepancies between the perception of a possible system in the scoring system and corresponding actions were revealed. The results are informative for game design, but also for a better understanding of how players interact with their geographical context during location-based games. Full article