Mitchell Harrop’s research while affiliated with University of Melbourne and other places

Understanding the navigation flows of health website visitors can lead to strategies for improved support for health information-seeking. In this study, we have obtained the navigation data of visitors to Better Health Channel - one of the largest consumer health information websites in Australia, and visualised the data to compare the different patterns of visitors' activities, as accessed on desktop and mobile devices. These visualisations provide insights about the preferences for search strategies, and the traffic flows patterns of visitors. We then discuss these insights with the existing work of health information-seeking behaviour. This paper extends our observations to design recommendations, specifically to facilitate exploratory search in health information-seeking, and establishes directions for future research.

In HCI, the honeypot effect describes how people interacting with a system passively stimulate passers-by to observe, approach and engage in an interaction. Previous research has revealed the successive engagement phases and zones of the honeypot effect. However, there is little insight into: 1) how people are stimulated to transition between phases; 2) what aspects drive the honeypot effect apart from watching others; and 3) what constraints affect its self- reinforcing performance. In this paper, we discuss the honeypot effect as a spatiotemporal model of trajectories and influences. We introduce the Honeypot Model based on the analysis of observations and interaction logs from Encounters, a public installation that interactively translated bodily movements into a dynamic visual and sonic output. In providing a model that describes trajectories and influences of audience engagement in public interactive systems, our paper seeks to inform researchers and designers to consider contextual, spatial and social factors that influence audience engagement.

In this paper, we report on Encounters, an interactive public installation that provides a basis for studying the effect of dance performances on the emergence of creative, social experiences. Based on observations and interviews with dancers and participants, we identified a range of tensions that arise from integrating a staged performance with participatory interaction. These tensions occurred among both participants and performers, and influenced the social and performative experience. Based on our analysis, we propose several strategies to smoothen the integration of performative and participatory interaction. These strategies reconsider the role of the interactive installation, the effect of digital cues that draw on existing conventions, and mechanisms to direct gaze. We believe our findings and strategies are valuable to HCI researchers and performative artists seeking to design for public participation in interactive experiences.

In this paper we argue that games and play research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction can usefully be understood as existing within 4 distinct research paradigms. We provide our rationale for developing these paradigms and discuss their significance in the context of the inaugural CHI Play conference.

In this article we discuss the role that the physicality of dice has in the experience of the non-digital tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000. Numerous previous approaches towards the digital augmentation of non-digital games have considered dice rolling a menial or tedious computational task to be designed away. We disagree. In this article we argue that the physicality of dice has a positive effect on players’ experience and enjoyment of the game. This occurs through their tangibility, their role as a representational object (situationally, imaginatively and audibly), and through enabling shared experiences. Thus, while digital augmentation of physical games has the potential to make strong contributions to game play experiences, more careful consideration should be given to what might be lost through such efforts.

Multiple recent works have emphasized the contribution that nondigital game scholarship can make to the study of games and gameplay. Warhammer 40,000 is the market dominator of the nondigital tabletop wargame genre. In this article, we perform a ludological analysis of the process of preparing, or drafting, an army for a competitive Warhammer 40,000 tournament. We find that there are four interrelated categories of resources that influence this fundamentally playful process. Our results indicate that this process of preparation constitutes a core component of the appeal of Warhammer 40,000. This emphasizes the importance of understanding the diverse activities that go into gameplay that often exceed the computer game "client" or board of play. We suggest the category of engagement pastime to encapsulate these extended, ongoing elements of Warhammer 40,000's appeal, which we define as a collection of interlinked and associated activities that serve to occupy one's time and thoughts pleasantly.

The term 'metagaming' is widely used to describe a variety of conceptually difficult activities associated with game play. This wide use has lead to a conceptual overload of the term, mitigating its potential use for game studies. This paper will suggest two new terms to use, 'orthogame and 'paragame', in conjunction with a more clearly defined notion of 'metagame'. We argue that these new terms have the potential to be highly useful for defining and understanding peripheral play activities common in modern digital games. We apply this new vocabulary to a variety of play practices in EVE Online to illustrate its strength for analysing and defining play practices.

This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a study examining the nature of rules in the online multiplayer game modification Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It was found that players use numerous truce calls (categorised broadly as fainties, parlay, pax and cheap) to negotiate rules or the maintenance of 'fair play' in a game. The possibility of providing feedback on the use of truce calls to developers as part of the design process is also considered.