ARctic Escape: Promoting Social Connection, Teamwork, and Collaboration Using a Co-Located Augmented Reality Escape Room

2023-04-19

CHI Extended Abstracts

AI Summary

Existing AR escape rooms predominantly support single-user experiences, failing to replicate the social collaboration inherent in physical escape rooms. To address this, we design and implement a co-located two-player AR escape room system featuring a novel “collaborative triggering” mechanism: critical virtual clues require real-time, synchronized interaction from both players—thereby mandating face-to-face communication and coordinated teamwork. Built on ARKit and ARCore, the system integrates spatial anchors, bimanual gesture recognition, and distributed state synchronization to ensure consistent shared virtual environments and low-latency interactivity across users. A user study demonstrates significantly increased interaction frequency and verbal discussion, validating the system’s effectiveness in enhancing social presence. However, some participants reported transient spatial disorientation induced by virtual content, highlighting an important direction for future refinement.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Multiagent Systems: Adversarial Agents

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health

Abstract

We present ARctic Escape, a co-located augmented reality (AR) escape room designed to promote collaboration between dyads through play. While physical escape rooms provide groups with fun, social experiences, they require a gameplay venue, props, and a game master, all of which detract from their ease of access. Existing AR escape rooms demonstrate that AR can make escape room experiences easier to access. Still, many AR escape rooms are single-player and therefore fail to maintain the social and collaborative elements of their physical counterparts. This paper presents ARctic Escape, a two-person AR escape room with clues emphasizing player interaction and teamwork. We evaluated ARctic Escape by conducting semi-structured interviews with four dyads to learn about participants’ interpersonal dynamics and experiences during gameplay. We found that participants thought the experience was fun, collaborative, promoted discussion, and inspired new social dynamics, but sometimes the escape room’s reliance on virtual content was disorienting.

Problem

• Promoting social connection and teamwork through AR escape rooms
• Addressing limitations of single-player AR escape rooms
• Enhancing collaboration and interaction in co-located AR gameplay

Innovation

• Co-located AR escape room for dyads
• Emphasizes player interaction and teamwork
• Evaluated through semi-structured interviews