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Distributed Letter Jam: Designing Distributed Board Game Play for Social Connection

Published: 23 October 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Playing board games together is a fun way for people to connect with friends and family, but social board game play can be challenging when people can't get together in-person. Using a Research through Design approach, we explored possibilities for enabling social distributed board game play amongst friends and family. We developed a video prototype of game play for a distributed version of Letter Jam. Through reflecting on this prototype, we discuss challenges for the design of distributed board games, including incorporating tangible inputs and accommodating a variety of household configurations. We also identify a set of design qualities, including spatiality, tangibility, and presence, that can inform the design of systems for social distributed board game play.

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  • (2024)Human-AI Collaboration in Cooperative Games: A Study of Playing Codenames with an LLM AssistantProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770818:CHI PLAY(1-25)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
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  • (2024)Passive Co-presence: Exploring How Peripheral Devices Connect People Over DistanceExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651126(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
CSCW '21 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
October 2021
370 pages
ISBN:9781450384797
DOI:10.1145/3462204
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 23 October 2021

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View all
  • (2024)Human-AI Collaboration in Cooperative Games: A Study of Playing Codenames with an LLM AssistantProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770818:CHI PLAY(1-25)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Designing Smart Home Technology For Passive Co-Presence Over DistanceProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661508(3389-3406)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Passive Co-presence: Exploring How Peripheral Devices Connect People Over DistanceExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651126(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)DungeonMaker: Embedding Tangible Creation and Destruction in Hybrid Board Games through Personal Fabrication TechnologyProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642243(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Lessons from Homebrewed Hybridity: Designing Hybrid Digital Boardgames for Distanced PlayProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110227:CHI PLAY(45-72)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Remote Wavelength: Design and Evaluation of a System for Social Connectedness Through Distributed Tabletop GameplayProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581142(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2022)The SMeFT Decks: A Card-Based Ideation Tool for Designing Hybrid Digital Boardgames for Distanced PlayProceedings of the 34th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3572921.3572933(298-309)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2022

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