ABSTRACT
AR games such as Pokemon Go, Jurassic world Alive and other games encourage us to venture out in the real open world to also see the beauty of it. However, tourism has come almost to a virtual stop during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery is slow. We present a tile-based experience-sharing PixoMap, which incorporates some aspects of smart tourism. For user requirements gathering, we first compare factors that make popular games such as Pokemon Go, Minecraft, and the Sims popular. Findings indicate that people enjoy collecting objects, such as monsters or cards, freedom and creativity, escape and sometimes nostalgia. Our PixoMap game allows players to virtually browse an area in the map, and choose a tile. Each tile contains memories (Memors)/experiences/stories. Users can read others' experiences and share their own experiences, play a minigame to earn in-game currency, to change his/her 2D avatar or change the tile's color or optionally, to own the tile. Alpha user feedback confirms and refines our design. Heuristic evaluation and user experience feedback at the end of the study, are positive and encouraging.
ABSTRACT
AR games such as Pokemon Go, Jurassic World Alive and other games encourage us to venture out in the real open world to also see the beauty of it. However, tourism has come almost to a virtual stop during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery is slow. We present a tile-based experience-sharing PixoMap, which incorporates some aspects of smart tourism. For user requirements gathering, we first compare factors that make popular games such as Pokemon Go, Minecraft, and the Sims popular. Findings indicate that people enjoy collecting objects, such as monsters or cards, freedom and creativity, escape and sometimes nostalgia. Our PixoMap game allows players to virtually browse an area in the map, and choose a tile. Each tile contains memories (Memors)/experiences/stories. Users can read others’ experiences and share their own experiences, play a minigame to earn in-game currency, to change his/her 2D avatar or change the tile’s color or optionally, to own the tile. Alpha user feedback confirms and refines our design. Heuristic evaluation and user experience feedback at the end of the study, are positive and encouraging. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.