A Thing of Beauty: Steering Behavior in an Interactive Playground

Interactive playgrounds are spaces where players engage in collocated, playful activities, in which added digital technology can be designed to promote cognitive, social, and motor skills development. To promote such development, different strategies can be used to implement game mechanics that change player's in-game behavior. One of such strategies is enticing players to take action through incentives akin to game achievements. We explored if this strategy could be used to influence players' proxemic behavior in the Interactive Tag Playground, an installation that enhances the traditional game of tag. We placed the ITP in an art gallery, observed hundreds of play sessions, and refined the mechanics, which consisted in projecting collectible particles around the tagger that upon collection by runners resulted only in the embellishment of their circles. We implemented the refined mechanics in a study with 48 children. The playground automatically collected the players' positions, and analyses show that runners got closer to and moved more towards taggers when using our enticing strategy. This suggests an enticing strategy can be used to influence physical in-game behavior

Virtual Reality for Experience-based Healthcare Education

Health care professionals sometimes have to work in stressful situations. How can simulation through Virtual Reality (VR) help students and professionals prepare for this? To find out, the team brought together students, teachers and researchers from the departments of Nursing, Physiotherapy, Psychology and ICT in a multidisciplinary team

Mens en technologie: aandacht voor gedrag en beleving in een technologische wereld

Lectorale rede, in verkorte vorm uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van de functie van lector Mens en Technologie aan Fontys Hogeschool HRM en Psychologie op 7 juni 2013. In deze rede wordt men meegenomen op een tochtje door de wereld van mens en technologie. Eerst worden een aantal relevante ontwikkelingen op het snijvlak van psychologie en technologie getoond. Vervolgens wordt men meegenomen in de praktijk door voor verschillende toepassingsdomeinen de mogelijkheden van technologie te laten zien en relevantie onderzoeksvragen te bespreken. Tenslotte wordt door de wereld van het HBO en het lectoraat gereisd, waarbij wordt getoond wat de missie is van het lectoraat en hoe er gestalte aan gegeven zal worden. Onderweg wordt geregeld uit het raampje gekeken om inspirerende voorbeelden te zien van projecten, producten en samenwerkingsverbanden

Multimodal support for social dynamics in co-located meetings

In this paper, we present a system that employs perceptual technologies (i.e. technologies that perceive the context through sensors such as cameras and microphone) to provide feedback about people's behaviour in small group meetings. The system measures aspects of behaviour that are relevant to the social dynamics of the meeting, speaking time and gaze behaviour, and provides visual feedback about these aspects to the meeting participants through a peripheral display. We describe the system properties and the perceptual components. Also, we present a study aimed at evaluating the effect of such a system on meeting behaviour. Groups of participants, amounting to 82 participants in all, discussed topics of general interest. Analysis of the data of 58 participants showed that feedback influenced the behaviour of the participants in such a way that it made over-participators speak less and under-participators speak more. Analysis of the micro-patterns of six participants indicated that feedback on gaze behaviour had little effect on the interaction dynamics. We conclude that perceptual technologies can be used to build services that may help people to improve their meeting skills and we consider some ways in which such systems may be deployed in meetings

Beweeginterventies voor het vmbo op basis van spel en games

In dit artikel wordt aandacht besteed aan hoe voor een bepaalde doelgroep, de vmbo-scholieren, een speciale interventie is ontwikkeld waarin elementen van games en spel ervoor moeten zorgen dat ze meer gaan bewegen

Bubble Games Pocketsize: Bringing opposites closer together through Virtual Reality

The goal of the Bubble Games consortium is to narrow the gap between opposing groups and bring back nuance, tolerance and empathy in debates on social issues. We believe, and previous projects indicate, that using Virtual Reality (VR) can help create - or bring back - understanding between opposing groups. VR offers the opportunity to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, see what the other sees, hear what the other hears, and hopefully, feel what the other feels. This change of perspective could be the first step people take to come closer together