Human factors in entertainment computing: designing for diversity

Although several casual gaming systems have been developed during the past years, little research examining the impact of human factors on the design and use of digital games has been carried out, and commercially available games are only partially suitable for audiences with special needs. The research project described within this paper aims to analyze and explore design guidelines for diverse audiences and results of focus group gaming sessions to develop a research toolbox allowing for the easy creation of adaptable and accessible game scenarios. Thereby, a controllable environment for the detailed evaluation of the interrelations between human factors and entertainment systems is provided. Results obtained by further testing will be integrated in the toolbox, and may foster the development of accessible games, thus opening up new opportunities for diverse audiences and allowing them to further engage in digital games. Copyright 2011 ACM

Design Thinking and Participation: Lessons Learned from Three Case Studies

This paper examines how design thinking and serious games approaches can be used to support participation through the analysis of three case studies. Indeed we will analyze these approaches in three different contexts: (i) a state-owned multi-utilities company; (ii) a political party; (iii) an information system strategic committee. Our analysis framework relies on the concepts of "perceived usefulness" and "perceived ease of use" and we will use it to discuss the lessons learned. Our main finding is that these approaches really contributing in making complex and abstract matters more "tangible" and thus understandable.participation; design thinking; serious games; case study; perceived usefulness

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Assessment and development of cognitive skills using tangible electronic board games : serious games on the TUI TagTiles

When designing the educational tools and methods of the future, putting the child and its natural way of developing at the center offers great benefits. The child will be more motivated and at the same time the educational yield will be higher and more targeted. In this dissertation it is shown that electronic tangible systems like the TagTiles console can offer integral, personalized development of children in the areas of cognitive, fine motor and social skills for assessment, education and therapy, in a manner that builds on natural forms of play of children. Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) are potentially highly effective tools for education combining physical interfaces with computing power, enabling easy-to-use and robust applications that are enjoyable and motivating. The topic of this dissertation is whether and how TUIs can be developed that are effective for developing cognitive skills of children. Classical theories on cognitive development were used as a theoretical foundation for the development of a TUI-based educational application, such as the role of sensorimotor abilities for cognitive development as described by Piaget. Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development was used to inspire the implementation of adaptivity in the educational application. The research described consisted of three phases, each including an empirical study conducted at primary schools. In the first phase the influence of the type of interface on the performance of children on an educational task was investigated. The use of a virtual, pc-based interface was compared to the use of a tangible, non-electronic interface for the same puzzle task. It was found that children (N=26, aged 5-7 years) were able to solve the tangible puzzle tasks on average almost twice as fast as the PC based task, and needed considerably less instruction for the tangible version. The results of the study support the hypothesis that tangible interfaces offer a more suitable interface than a pc-based interface to educational tasks, at least for young children. In the second phase it was validated whether a range of TUI-based tasks can be used to address nonverbal, cognitive skills. The applied tasks had been developed for use with ‘TagTiles’. TagTiles is a tabletop electronic console with tangible game pieces developed by Serious Toys B.V. (www.serioustoys.com). The console includes a sensing board with an array of LED lights underneath and audio output. The system is controlled by manipulating game pieces on the TagTiles surface. Eight visual-spatial tasks were created, intended to address different nonverbal cognitive skills such as (working) memory and spatial reasoning. Each task included abstract patterns consisting of colored tiles. For each task a different assignment is given to the player, such as mirroring the pattern, or repeating a sequence of tiles that lit up on the board. To validate which skills can be addressed with these tasks, children’s performances on the TagTiles tasks were correlated with performances on several conventional psychometric instruments. This study included children aged 8-10 years and consisted of a pilot study (N=10) and an experiment (N=32). Significant correlations were found between the performances of children on the TagTiles tasks and the performances on nonverbal subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children IIINL (WISC IIINL). Some tasks also showed significant correlations with Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which is an intelligence test measuring deductive reasoning skills. The results of this study indicate that the developed tasks can be used to train skills that are measured in IQ tests. In the third phase it was investigated whether the developed visual-spatial tasks kept their ability to address cognitive skills when embedded in a game. It was also tested whether children experienced this game, called ‘Tap the little hedgehog’, to be fun and intrinsically motivating. A fantasy theme was added to include the tasks in a natural way, to minimize and simplify the instructions needed to understand the game play and to make the tasks more fun to play. The difficulty of the task levels was made adaptive to the player’s achievements. A reward structure was added to increase children’s motivation to reach certain goals in the game as well as a support structure, created to help the child when needed, enabling independent play. The results of the empirical study (N=52, aged 7-9 years) with this game indicated that the added game context had not changed the essence of the tasks, as the performances were similar to those in the study in phase two. These findings support the hypothesis that TagTiles tasks applied in a game context can be used to assess and train a range of nonverbal skills. For assessment purposes we concluded that TagTiles can be used to test at least part of the cognitive skills that are addressed with the applied conventional psychological measures, given the significant correlations that were found. Studies by others have shown that training of relevant skills such as working memory can improve aspects of intellectual functioning, in particular executive functioning and efficient use of working memory. This opens the exciting prospect that by practicing with TagTiles the performance on the mentioned skills may be enhanced, or that these skills may be more effectively used. This means that it would be useful to investigate whether, after further refinement and validation, the TagTiles tasks can be used for assessment and training of specific cognitive skills. Based on the results of the conducted studies, it was concluded that the integral and personalized development of children in the areas of cognitive, fine motor and social skills for assessment, education and therapy can be facilitated with TUIs like TagTiles. Educational TUIs can profoundly change current education and assessment practices, offering an alternative that is enjoyable to the child and effective and accurate to the educational or assessment expert. The described way of creating a challenge using the Zone of Proximal Development can also be used to improve the experience with educational games

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Live Biofeedback as a User Interface Design Element: A Review of the Literature

With the advances in sensor technology and real-time processing of neurophysiological data, a growing body of academic literature has begun to explore how live biofeedback can be integrated into information systems for everyday use. While researchers have traditionally studied live biofeedback in the clinical domain, the proliferation of affordable mobile sensor technology enables researchers and practitioners to consider live biofeedback as a user interface element in contexts such as decision support, education, and gaming. In order to establish the current state of research on live biofeedback, we conducted a literature review on studies that examine self and foreign live biofeedback based on neurophysiological data for healthy subjects in an information systems context. By integrating a body of highly fragmented work from computer science, engineering and technology, information systems, medical science, and psychology, this paper synthesizes results from existing research, identifies knowledge gaps, and suggests directions for future research. In this vein, this review can serve as a reference guide for researchers and practitioners on how to integrate self and foreign live biofeedback into information systems for everyday use

Sampling the past:a tactile approach to interactive musical instrument exhibits in the heritage sector

In the last decade, the heritage sector has had to adapt to a shifting cultural landscape of public expectations and attitudes towards ownership and intellectual property. One way it has done this is to focus on each visitor’s encounter and provide them with a sense of experiential authenticity.There is a clear desire by the public to engage with music collections in this way, and a sound museological rationale for providing such access, but the approach raises particular curatorial problems, specifically how do we meaningfully balance access with the duty to preserve objects for future generations?This paper charts the development of one such project. Based at Fenton House in Hampstead, and running since 2008, the project seeks to model digitally the keyboard instruments in the Benton Fletcher Collection and provide a dedicated interactive exhibit, which allows visitors to view all of the instruments in situ, and then play them through a custom-built two-manual MIDI controller with touch-screen interface.We discuss the approach to modelling, which uses high-definition sampling, and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the exhibit as it currently stands, with particular focus on its key shortcoming: at present, there is no way to effectively model the key feel of a historic keyboard instrument.This issue is of profound importance, since the feel of any instrument is fundamental to its character, and shapes the way performers relate to it. The issue is further compounded if we are to consider a single dedicated keyboard as being the primary mode of interface for several instrument models of different classes, each with its own characteristic feel.We conclude by proposing an outline solution to this problem, detailing early work on a real-time adaptive haptic keyboard interface that changes its action in response to sampled resistance curves, measured on a key-by-key basis from the original instruments