37,244 research outputs found
Custom-designed motion-based games for older adults: a review of literature in human-computer interaction
Many older adults, particularly persons living in senior residences and care homes, lead sedentary lifestyles, which reduces their life expectancy. Motion-based video games encourage physical activity and might be an opportunity for these adults to remain active and engaged; however, research efforts in the field have frequently focused on younger audiences and little is known about the requirements and benefits of motion-based games for elderly players. In this paper, we present an overview of motion-based video games and other interactive technologies for older adults. First, we summarize existing approaches towards the definition of motion-based video games â often referred to as exergames â and suggest a categorization of motion-based applications into active video games, exergames, and augmented sports. Second, we use this scheme to classify case studies addressing design efforts particularly directed towards older adults. Third, we analyze these case studies with a focus on potential target audiences, benefits, challenges in their deployment, and future design opportunities to investigate whether motion-based video games can be applied to encourage physical activity among older adults. In this context, special attention is paid to evaluation routines and their implications regarding the deployment of such games in the daily lives of older adults. The results show that many case studies examine isolated aspects of motion-based game design for older adults, and despite the broad range of issues in motion-based interaction for older adults covered by the sum of all research projects, there appears to be a disconnect between laboratory-based research and the deployment of motion-based video games in the daily lives of senior citizens. Our literature review suggests that despite research results suggesting various benefits of motion-based play for older adults, most work in the field of game design for senior citizens has focused on the implementation of accessible user interfaces, and that little is known about the long-term deployment of video games for this audience, which is a crucial step if these games are to be implemented in activity programs of senior residences, care homes, or in therapy
Recommended from our members
Working in the dark
Professional engineers work as experts who influence the work of others. They rarely have direct contact with the products of an enterprise. They work with analogues such as graphs, algorithms and simulations, and engage in discussions in specialized languages, which develop alongside the technological changes they promote or oppose. The engines of linguistic development are metaphors and analogies, however there is no system for creating them. Some metaphors and analogies become so familiar that they are treated as literal terms or literal explanations and become embedded in engineering language games. The field of electrical engineering offers hosts of examples. Students wishing to practice in engineering will need to become fluent in the language games of the profession. The haphazard evolution of language games offer students little help. As with acquisition of any language, repeated rehearsal is vital and practice in playing specialised language games is a primary part of engineering education
MathRun: An Adaptive Mental Arithmetic Game Using A Quantitative Performance Model
Pedagogy and the way children learn are changing rapidly with the introduction of widely accessible computer technologies, from mobile apps to interactive educational games. Digital games have the capacity to embed many learning supports using the widely accredited VARK (visual, auditory, reading, and kinaesthetic) learning style. In this paper, we present a mathematics educational game MathRun for children age between 7-11 years old to practice mental arithmetic. We build the game as an interactive learning environment that fuses game mechanics with learning and uses the popular game genre âinfinite runnerâ as the game mode. The game consists of an automatically generated infinite game map and mathematical questions also procedurally generated with varied levels of difficulty and complexity. A novel real-time performance evaluation method is developed for quantitative modeling the performance of the player. The model evaluates the performance in each primitive map block of the game map and level progression is automatically carried out based on the result of the evaluation. Therefore, the proposed game-based learning environment is adaptive to players with dynamic level progressions based on the combination of not only mathematics ability, but also gameplay skills of the player to facilitate learning processes through gameplay and appropriate adaptive progression of maths ability
Resonating Experiences of Self and Others enabled by a Tangible Somaesthetic Design
Digitalization is penetrating every aspect of everyday life including a
human's heart beating, which can easily be sensed by wearable sensors and
displayed for others to see, feel, and potentially "bodily resonate" with.
Previous work in studying human interactions and interaction designs with
physiological data, such as a heart's pulse rate, have argued that feeding it
back to the users may, for example support users' mindfulness and
self-awareness during various everyday activities and ultimately support their
wellbeing. Inspired by Somaesthetics as a discipline, which focuses on an
appreciation of the living body's role in all our experiences, we designed and
explored mobile tangible heart beat displays, which enable rich forms of bodily
experiencing oneself and others in social proximity. In this paper, we first
report on the design process of tangible heart displays and then present
results of a field study with 30 pairs of participants. Participants were asked
to use the tangible heart displays during watching movies together and report
their experience in three different heart display conditions (i.e., displaying
their own heart beat, their partner's heart beat, and watching a movie without
a heart display). We found, for example that participants reported significant
effects in experiencing sensory immersion when they felt their own heart beats
compared to the condition without any heart beat display, and that feeling
their partner's heart beats resulted in significant effects on social
experience. We refer to resonance theory to discuss the results, highlighting
the potential of how ubiquitous technology could utilize physiological data to
provide resonance in a modern society facing social acceleration.Comment: 18 page
Psychopower and Ordinary Madness: Reticulated Dividuals in Cognitive Capitalism
Despite the seemingly neutral vantage of using nature for widely-distributed computational purposes, neither post-biological nor post-humanist teleology simply concludes with the real "end of nature" as entailed in the loss of the specific ontological status embedded in the identifier "natural." As evinced by the ecological crises of the Anthropoceneâof which the 2019 Brazil Amazon rainforest fires are only the most recentâour epoch has transfixed the ânatural order" and imposed entropic artificial integration, producing living species that become âanoetic,â made to serve as automated exosomatic residues, or digital flecks. I further develop Gilles Deleuzeâs description of control societies to upturn Foucauldian biopower, replacing its spacio-temporal bounds with the exographic excesses in psycho-power; culling and further detailing Bernard Stieglerâs framework of transindividuation and hyper-control, I examine how becoming-subject is predictively facilitated within cognitive capitalism and what Alexander Galloway terms âdeep digitality.â Despite the loss of material vestiges qua virtualizationâwhich I seek to trace in an historical review of industrialization to postindustrializationâthe drive-based and reticulated "internet of things" facilitates a closed loop from within the brain to the outside environment, such that the aperture of thought is mediated and compressed. The human brain, understood through its material constitution, is susceptible to total dataficationâs laminated process of âbecoming-mnemotechnical,â and, as neuroplasticity is now a valid description for deep-learning and neural nets, we are privy to the rebirth of the once-discounted metaphor of the âcybernetic brain.â Probing algorithmic governmentality while posing noetic dreaming as both technical and pharmacological, I seek to analyze how spirit is blithely confounded with machine-thinkingâs gelatinous cognition, as prosthetic organ-adaptation becomes probabilistically molded, networked, and agentially inflected (rather than simply externalized)
Coming Out of the Dungeon: Mathematics and Role-Playing Games
After hiding it for many years, I have a confession to make.
Throughout middle school and high school my friends and I would gather almost every weekend, spending hours using numbers, probability, and optimization to build models that we could use to simulate almost anything.
Thatâs right. My big secret is simple. I was a high school mathematical modeler.
Of course, our weekend mathematical models didnât bear any direct relationship to the models we explored in our mathematics and science classes. You would probably not even recognize our regular gatherings as mathematical exercises. If you looked into the room, youâd see a group of us gathered around a table, scribbling on sheets of paper, rolling dice, eating pizza, and talking about dragons, magical spells, and sword fighting. So while I claim we were engaged in mathematical modeling, I suspect that very few math classes built models like ours. After all, how many math teachers have constructed or had their students construct a mathematical representation of a dragon, a magical spell, or a swordfight? And yet, our role-playing games (RPGs) were very much mathematical models of reality â certainly not the reality of our everyday experience, but a reality nonetheless, one intended to simulate a particular kind of world. Most often for us this was the medieval, high-fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), but we also played games with science fiction or modern-day espionage settings. We learned a lot about math, mythology, medieval history, teamwork, storytelling, and imagination in the process. And, when existing games were inadequate vehicles for our imagination, we modified them or created new ones. In doing so, we learned even more about math.
Now that I am a mathematics professor, I find myself reflecting on those days as a âfantasy modelerâ and considering various questions. What is the relationship between my two interests of fantasy games and mathematics? Does having been a gamer make me a better mathematician or modeler? Does my mathematical experience make me a better gamer? These different aspects of my life may seem mostly unconnected; indeed, the ânerdâ stereotype is associated with both activities, but despite public perception, the community of role-players includes many people who are not scientifically-minded. So we cannot say that role-players like math, or math-lovers role-play, because âthat is simply what nerds do.â To get at the deeper question of how mathematics and role-playing are related, we first need to look at the processes of gaming, game designing, and modeling
Holistic ICT environments for effective mathematics teaching and learning
To understand the numbers world, each child must face a path that includes propaedeutic phases and only overcoming these phases will allow the child to consolidate processes before tackling new ones. If this does not happen, the child becomes self-convinced of \u201dnot being able to understand math\u201d and becomes increasingly aware of it throughout primary school. The transition to middle school may have a significant impact on a child, with specific difficulties or disabilities in learning mathematics, especially if his/her difficulties have not yet been identified. The present thesis studies the contributions of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in supporting various aspects of mathematical teaching and learning. A multidimensional approach was used. In the first part, empirical studies assessed the effectiveness of digital tools to identify individual differences based on cognitive profiles and emotional responses associated with math performance in children from Northern Italy. In the second part a meta-analysis and systematic review analysis were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions supporting math learning by means of ICT in the school and home environments respectively. Altogether the thesis indicates that designing holistic ICT environments proves successful for effective mathematics teaching and learning not only for typically developing children but also for students in disadvantaged situations, including those suffering from dyscalculia
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-makersâ 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 designersâ capabilities
- âŠ