O fenômeno metafórico, caro às ciências da linguagem, tem recentemente adentrado também os estudos cognitivos, visto que se tem advogado que a metáfora não ocorre apenas na linguagem, mas constitui processos do pensamento. Argumento aqui que a metaforização articula singularidades que operam na contiguidade entre linguagem e cognição e, nela, na invenção de si e do mundo. Para tanto, um projeto de pesquisa-intervenção foi cartografado, através da criação de um método com retalhos, denominado pat(c)hwork. No projeto, desenvolvido pelo Núcleo de Pesquisas em Ecologias e Políticas Cognitivas (NUCOGS-UFRGS), um jogo digital móvel baseado em localização foi produzido para ser jogado no Parque Jardim Botânico de Porto Alegre, em um contexto não formal de aprendizagem. O jogo foi testado por estudantes do 4º e 5º ano do ensino fundamental de uma escola pública conveniada com o parque e com o grupo de pesquisa, através de oficinas. O foco cartográfico enfatizou o linguajar como agir humano na linguagem, com especial atenção à hipótese de que o mesmo caracteriza-se também pela metaforicidade O referencial teórico apóia-se na teoria autopoiética, por meio da concepção de linguagem como linguajar, entrelaçada ao emocionar e ao conversar, compondo redes de conversação; na teoria da enação, mediante a noção de cognição incorporada; na linguística cognitiva, especialmente na teoria da metáfora conceitual, como processo de fabricação e organização que pressupõe a corporeidade; e na cognição inventiva, pela costura dos conceitos de políticas, ecologias e tecnologias cognitivas. Ao cartografarmos retalhos linguageiros de conexões entre os domínios físico e digital, necessários à jogabilidade de um jogo móvel de localização, esperamos contribuir para uma compreensão do fenômeno metafórico como modulador da linguagem e da cognição como ações corporificadas, emergentes e acentradas, processos e produtos de recorrências e recursões operadas no entrelaçamento linguajar-conhecer ao longo do viver. / The metaphorical phenomenon, dear to the sciences of language, has also recently entered the cognitive studies, since it has been argued that metaphor does not occur only in language, but constitutes processes of thought. I argue here that metaphorization articulates singularities that operate in the contiguity between language and cognition and, within it, in the invention of oneself and of the world. For this, a research-intervention project was mapped through the creation of a patchwork method, called pat(c)hwork. In the project, developed by the research group Núcleo de Ecologias e Políticas Cognitivas (NUCOGS-UFRGS), a location-based mobile game was produced to be played at the Botanical Garden of Porto Alegre, in a non-formal learning context. The game was tested by students from the 4th and 5th grades of an elementary public school that entered a partnership with the park and the research group, through workshops. The cartographic focus emphasized languaging as human action in language, with special attention to the hypothesis that it is also characterized by metaphoricity The theoretical research framework is based on autopoietic theory, through the conception of language as languaging, intertwined with emotion and conversation, composing conversation networks; on enactivism, through the notion of incorporated cognition; on cognitive linguistics, especially on the theory of conceptual metaphor, as a process of fabrication and organization that presupposes corporeality; and on inventive cognition, by sewing the concepts of cognitive policies, ecologies and technologies. By mapping patches of connections between the physical and the digital domains, necessary for the gameplay of a location-based mobile game, we hope to contribute to an understanding of the metaphorical phenomenon as a modulator of embodied, emerging and decentralized language and cognition as modes of actions, processes and products of recurrences and recursions operated in the intertwining of languaging and knowing along living.

In recent years, mobile devices have become an integral part of our everyday life in various fields. The technology that powers them is used in various devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and PDAs. These devices hold extensive computation capabilities, along with advanced communication abilities, which are supported by an internet connection and diverse types of motion and location sensors. Mobile devices have changed the way people communicate with each other, for example by providing options to send instant text messages, perform live video calls with others in addition to voice conversations. These capabilities have encouraged educators to exploit mobile technology and promote new types of learning options. There are several new learning possibilities based on tools such as mobile dedicated applications, location-based learning activities, and interactive social related tasks. These new uses require adjustments to educational programs to allow support for this type of learning. The uniqueness of mobile learning, in contrast with the classic learning paradigm, is the ability to connect the learner through enhanced learning materials to the outside environment. This breaks the physical borders that exist in the traditional classroom and creates new learning possibilities, but it has its drawbacks. One of the difficulties that arise from this type of learning is the loss of contact in real time between teacher and student, especially when performing outdoor activities. The Treasure-HIT platform was conceived to create outdoor Treasure Hunt-based games, mainly for educational purposes, by introducing an authoring web platform and a supporting mobile application. The platform includes communication capabilities based on social interactions and cooperative learning with the integration of social networks, and yet real-time educator and student communication is still lacking. Adding real-time communication features provides a way to better support ongoing learning activities, and can take pressure off the learning process for the students, by providing them with a more personal experience and immediate support when needed. This thesis follows the process of addressing this concern in TreasureHIT, including the rationale, the background, the possible options and gradual development of a prototype solution to the problem under the existing Treasure-HIT infrastructure. In the thesis, the advantages of two features are explored: (1) the Realtime Group Tracking Map, which provides a way to monitor the movement and action of groups of players during game time, and (2) Instant Text Messaging service, which allows the game instructor to send custom text messages to the different game groups. The research findings indicate that the new monitoring options provide a solid tool for real-time analysis of the progress of the game and the ability to inform about various issues and solve them in real time. ii Furthermore, the instant message service feature received positive responses from the game-manager and players alike, on the grounds of major improvements to the general game flow and problem solving in real-time.

The cellular phone network has been increasing rapidly during the last years. For many people the mobile phone has become an every day gadget with a wide performance and functional range. The usage of technologies like GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE and UMTS as well as the bandwidth of networks and consequently the connectivity of the phones has also increased persistently. Coming along with that, three technologies, which are ubiquitous or pervasive computing, mobile and wireless networks and location-based technologies, are making rapid progress. The aim of this thesis is to offer an architecture for a location-based user interface in the intersection of the three technologies mentioned above. The system should work with a minimum of special hardware requirement. Not to overload the user with information, the user interface should be adaptable, context-aware and location-based. The context-data should remain extendible and adaptable.

This thesis focuses on how location-based games can be used to experience places of cultural heritage in new ways. A prototype game was created in which players follow a day in the life of a sergeant while walking to different locations at Karlsborg fortress and unravel a plot about the plan to steal Sweden’s gold reserve. To analyze how well a location-based game worked in this setting gameflow theory was used to measure the player experience, focusing on how concentration and immersion was handled. Since players will switch their focus a lot between the game and their surroundings it is important that the game helps them know what to concentrate on and stay immersed during the game. A small testing session was conducted at Karlsborg fortress which showed an indication that players were able to stay immersed while playing the game and that the social interaction between players played an important role in their experience.

Recent developments in modern computing and wireless networks allow mobile devices to be connected to the Internet regardless of their physical location. These mobile devices, such as smart phones and PDAs, have turned into powerful multimedia units allowing users to become producers of rich media content. This latest development contributes to the ever-growing amount of digital material existing on the World Wide Web, and at the same time creates a new information landscape that combines content coming from both, the wired and mobile Internet. Thus, it is important to understand the context or settings in which mobile devices are used, and what is the digital content produced by the different users. In order to gain more knowledge about this domain, we have investigated how to extend the standard metadata related to content with a metadata domain describing the context, or settings in which the content has been created. In order to limit the scope of our work, we have focused our efforts in a specific case taking place in a project called AMULETS. The AMULETS-project contains all of the elements we need in order to resemble the contextual setting in a metadata model. Combined with the technical metadata associated to the digital content, we try to display the benefits of capturing the different attributes of the context that were present when the content was generated. Additionally, we have created a proof-of-concept Entity Relation (ER)-diagram which proposes how the metadata models can be implemented in a relational database. As the nature of the thesis is design-oriented, a model has been developed and it will be illustrated throughout this report. The aim of the thesis is to show how it is possible to design new metadata models that combine both relevant attributes of the context and content in order to develop new educational activities supported by location-based services.

Recent development in modern computing has led to a more diverse use of devices within the field of mobility. Many mobile devices of today can, for instance, surf the web and connect to wireless networks, thus gradually merging the wired Internet with the mobile Internet. As mobile devices by design usually have built-in means for creating rich media content, along with the ability to upload these to the Internet, these devices are potential contributors to the already overwhelming content collection residing on the World Wide Web. While interesting initiatives for structuring and filtering content on the World Wide Web exist – often based on various forms of metadata – a unified understanding of individual content is more or less restricted to technical metadata values, such as file size and file format. These kinds of metadata make it impossible to incorporate the purpose of the content when designing applications. Answers to questions such as "why was this content created?" or "in which context was the content created?" would allow for a more specified content filtering tailored to fit the end-users cause. In the opinion of the authors, this kind of understanding would be ideal for content created with mobile devices which purposely are brought into various environments. This is why we in this thesis have investigated in which way descriptions of contexts could be caught, structured and expressed as machine-readable semantics. In order to limit the scope of our work we developed a system which mirrored the context of ubiquitous learning activities to a database. Whenever rich media content was created within these activities, the system associated that particular content to its context. The system was tested during live trials in order to gather reliable and “real” contextual data leading to the transition to semantics by generating Rich Document Format documents from the contents of the database. The outcome of our efforts was a fully-functional system able to capture contexts of pre-defined ubiquitous learning activities and transforming these into machine-readable semantics. We would like to believe that our contribution has some innovative aspects – one being that the system can output contexts of activities as semantics in real-time, allowing monitoring of activities as they are performed.

In this thesis we are presenting a design-based research aimed to extend an existing mobile-based environment named “Treasure-HIT”. “Treasure-HIT” is an environment which uses the available mobile technology to enable teachers to conduct pedagogical “Treasure Hunt” games for their students. At baseline (January 2013), “Treasure-HIT” was at its early stages and has not yet been officially released; only a few teachers were granted access to it. The goal of this thesis was to test the system with teachres in order to understand the actual needs to detect difficulties and usabily limitations and to improve the system accordingy.The sudy was conducted as a design-based research that included three iterations. Within each iteration we have identified needs expressed by teachers and improved the relevant system features. The outcome of this thesis was the design, development and implementation of 7 different features that increased the usability of the “Treasure-HIT” environment and its potential to effectievy support the creation and enactment of pedagogical location based activities.

The brick and mortar stores are decreasing their field of activity meanwhile online retail is increasing. Hence the purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine if the clothing industries’ brick a nd mortar stores could change their down going trend by using both location-based marketing and the digital footprints of a customer as part of their strategy.

There’s no denying the ever increasing presence of social networking in our daily lives. Every day, people share what they are thinking, doing, and experiencing. But even more so, they check their favorite networks to see what the people in their lives are sharing. Social networking has become so prevalent that most applications incorporate it since it keeps users engaged and beckons them back to the application again and again. PolyXpress is an interactive, location-based storytelling mobile application that functions as a platform for creating and experiencing stories. Written as a research project at California Polytechnic State University, it allows users to play through stories in real-world locations by using their smart phones. However, in an age of social networking, PolyXpress falls behind the curve, as it does not contain any social features. The work in this thesis aims to test if adding social networking features to PolyX- press will increase user engagement by performing a usability study. The new social features allow users to participate in public forums about stories, message friends while playing stories, and view their friends’ experiences within the app. The results of the study indicate that the overall user experience of PolyXpress was not increased by the social networking features; however, these features are desired and liked by the users. 70% of the experimental group enjoyed using the social features, while 30% remained indifferent. The problem is that the new features disrupted app satisfac- tion, as UI satisfaction decreased from 100% with the control group to 40% with the experimental group.

The current study examines how college students participate in the use of location-based real-time dating (LBRTD) applications and the correlates of in-person and cyber victimization. Using an exploratory lens, the present study draws on the classical criminological theories of lifestyle-routine activities (L-RAT), self-efficacy, and low self-control which have been applied to various forms of abuse. Although the use of LBRTD applications has become relatively common place, with approximately 15% of Americans reporting having used a mobile dating application or online dating site, little is known concerning the role these applications play, particularly among college students (Boillot-Fansher, 2017; Smith, 2016). Using self-report data (n=324), the current study uses an adapted survey instrument, reviewing the three theoretical frameworks discussed. Descriptive statistics provided indicate a prevalence of both in-person and cyber victimization, as facilitated by LBRTD applications. Overall, the current thesis’ findings and the implemented analyses show mixed support for L-RAT, substantial support for self-control, and no support for self-efficacy.