Designing games for chidren's rehabilitation.

The upsurge of video games applied to various contexts such as health care and education has led to an increased interest in strategies on how to design games that generate real-life outcomes, knowledge or skills useful outside of the game itself. However, the current state of game design research that borrows extensively from game studies is at the risk of inheriting a predisposition for descriptive over prescriptive theories, to the detriment of potential applicability and industrial relevance. This MPhil project explores a design strategy that is focused on producing and predicting real-life behavioural outcomes by emphasizing mechanics and interactions over rules and content. With the aim of scrutinizing this design strategy a multi-method case study was conducted during the concept phase of a video game that utilizes the Nintendo Wii’s motion-control capabilities, for the rehabilitation of children within the age range of 8 – 16 with an acquired brain injury (ABI). The action research method was used to explore the design thinking underpinning the mechanics and interactions that bring about behavioural outcomes; those which satisfy specific therapeutic needs in the areas of motor, socio-emotional, and cognitive skills. Design decisions were subsequently evaluated through a series of playtests performed with the purpose of tracing real-life behavioural outcomes back to their roots in mechanics and interactions. This study has led to a thorough understanding of the advantages and limitations of the applied game design strategy under scrutiny, and contributes to the field of game design studies by: 1) critically analysing some of the formal concepts that underpin our current understanding of applied game design; 2) promoting an applied game design strategy for therapeutic effect, that emphasizes mechanics and interactions over rules and content; 3) providing the basis for a playtest method for validating design decisions

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Distant pointing in desktop collaborative virtual environments

Deictic pointing—pointing at things during conversations—is natural and ubiquitous in human communication. Deictic pointing is important in the real world; it is also important in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) because CVEs are 3D virtual environments that resemble the real world. CVEs connect people from different locations, allowing them to communicate and collaborate remotely. However, the interaction and communication capabilities of CVEs are not as good as those in the real world. In CVEs, people interact with each other using avatars (the visual representations of users). One problem of avatars is that they are not expressive enough when compare to what we can do in the real world. In particular, deictic pointing has many limitations and is not well supported. This dissertation focuses on improving the expressiveness of distant pointing—where referents are out of reach—in desktop CVEs. This is done by developing a framework that guides the design and development of pointing techniques; by identifying important aspects of distant pointing through observation of how people point at distant referents in the real world; by designing, implementing, and evaluating distant-pointing techniques; and by providing a set of guidelines for the design of distant pointing in desktop CVEs. The evaluations of distant-pointing techniques examine whether pointing without extra visual effects (natural pointing) has sufficient accuracy; whether people can control free arm movement (free pointing) along with other avatar actions; and whether free and natural pointing are useful and valuable in desktop CVEs. Overall, this research provides better support for deictic pointing in CVEs by improving the expressiveness of distant pointing. With better pointing support, gestural communication can be more effective and can ultimately enhance the primary function of CVEs—supporting distributed collaboration

Effects and applications of video games and virtual environments

The widespread use of virtual environments in today’s society leads to the importance of researching how using these virtual environments affect us, as well as how we can best use them. Video games are a very commonly used type of virtual environment/application of virtual environments. Video game research is rife with conflicting results, from studies into training, effects on emotion, to effects on visual attention. Chapter 2 considers the impacts of playing video games on visual attention and shows that the effects depend on the type of attentional process measured, and the video game genres played. Chapter 3 looks at how studies measure video game experience, and suggests a more sophisticated measure, including video game genres and platforms. This chapter also considers to what extent different video game genres are linked to different cognitive skills. Chapter 4 covers research between video game playing, task switching, and impulsivity. Chapter 5 shows that home video game playing (i.e. on home console platforms) affects both implicit memory and explicit memory, but mobile video game playing does not. Recent technological advances allowed the development of a newer form of virtual environment, virtual reality. Virtual reality has become more popular over the last few years in manufacturing and entertainment industries. However, studies into applying virtual reality to educational settings are limited. Chapter 6 presents a study that tests the effects of virtual reality on learning. The results show increased motivation and engagement with learning materials, when xxiv compared to learning with textbook-style or video materials. Chapter 7 compares learning in virtual reality, mixed reality and traditional lecture style modalities, and finds that participants report higher levels of engagement in both Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality conditions, and higher levels of positive emotions in the Virtual Reality condition. Implications for how individuals are affected by both of these types of virtual environments is discussed, including how they can be applied to learning