Co-located social interaction using mobile devices

Abstract

Majority of the smartphone games of today are designed for individual-based or remote interactions, led to a decrease in social interactions such as verbal and body language communications. Given its collaborative and arithmetic processing nature, Number Bonds provides a platform to explore interactivity for co-located collaboration within a same physical space. The project aims to encompass social interactions, collaboration, group process and effective communications all in one game for children. A user study was done to solicit and evaluate on the project with respect to users' experiences with it. The result of the study suggests that the design of the game achieved in engaging and encouraged children and adults of varied ages and backgrounds to work and collaborate as a team to complete the game by using effective communications, strategies and group processing. The project have great potential as an educational game for classroom teaching of mathematics of number bonds concept, results have proven children enjoys the numerical calculations game. Results obtained from the field trials has shown that the level of enjoyment experienced by players are in relation with the challenges experienced in the game.