@inproceedings{10.1145/3611057,
author = {Hirsch, Linda and Mueller, Florian and Chiossi, Francesco and Benga, Theodor and Butz, Andreas},
title = {My Heart Will Go On: Implicitly Increasing Social Connectedness By Visualizing Asynchronous Players' Heartbeats in VR Games},
year = {2023},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
doi = {10.1145/3611057},
abstract = {Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience
and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multiplayer
games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games.
To increase social connectedness in such games, our work explores the visualization of physiological data from
asynchronous players, i.e., electrocardiogram (ECG). We identified two visualization dimensions, the number
of players, and the visualization style, after a design workshop with experts (N=4) and explored them in a
single-user virtual escape room game. We spatially and temporally integrated the visualizations and compared
two times two visualizations against a baseline condition without visualization in a within-subject lab study
(N=34). All but one visualization significantly increased participants’ feelings of social connectedness. Heart icons triggered the strongest feeling of connectedness, understanding, and perceived support in playing the
game.},
booktitle = {CHI Play},
location = {Stratford, Canada},
series = {CHI Play 2023}
}