Introduction to this special issue on HCI and games

Games have been part of human–computer interaction (HCI) research since the first CHI conference in 1982. At that gathering, Tom Malone, then at Xerox PARC, presented insights from the study of computer games to motivate a set of design principles for “enjoyable” user interfaces (Malone, 1982). Over the ensuing years, games-related HCI research has steadily grown as a subarea of CHI (e.g. Keeker, Pagulayan, Sykes, & Lazzaro, 2004; Pausch, Gold, Skelly, & Thiel, 1994), with more rapid acceleration in the last 10 years. A recent metareview (Carter, Downs, Nansen, Harrop, & Gibbs, 2014) analyzed game- and play-related content at CHI between 2003 and 2013, finding that the overall percentage of the CHI proceedings related to play and games rose from 2.5% to a peak of 9.5% in 2012. In the last few years, venues for game-related HCI work have expanded as well. From 2011 to 2013, two of this special issue’s editors (Bernhaupt & Isbister, 2013) formed a Games and Entertainment Special Community devoted to game-related HCI research at CHI, leading to the permanent addition to CHI venues of a Student Game Design Competition. And in 2014, a new ACM-sponsored conference was created as a specialized peer-reviewed venue for the intersection of HCI and Games—CHI-Play. Game-related research is clearly a valued, integral, and growing segment of HCI research

Designing assisted living technologies 'in the wild' : preliminary experiences with cultural probe methodology

Background There is growing interest in assisted living technologies to support independence at home. Such technologies should ideally be designed ‘in the wild’ i.e. taking account of how real people live in real homes and communities. The ATHENE (Assistive Technologies for Healthy Living in Elders: Needs Assessment by Ethnography) project seeks to illuminate the living needs of older people and facilitate the co-production with older people of technologies and services. This paper describes the development of a cultural probe tool produced as part of the ATHENE project and how it was used to support home visit interviews with elders with a range of ethnic and social backgrounds, family circumstances, health conditions and assisted living needs. Method Thirty one people aged 60 to 98 were visited in their homes on three occasions. Following an initial interview, participants were given a set of cultural probe materials, including a digital camera and the ‘Home and Life Scrapbook’ to complete in their own time for one week. Activities within the Home and Life Scrapbook included maps (indicating their relationships to people, places and objects), lists (e.g. likes, dislikes, things they were concerned about, things they were comfortable with), wishes (things they wanted to change or improve), body outline (indicating symptoms or impairments), home plan (room layouts of their homes to indicate spaces and objects used) and a diary. After one week, the researcher and participant reviewed any digital photos taken and the content of the Home and Life Scrapbook as part of the home visit interview. Findings The cultural probe facilitated collection of visual, narrative and material data by older people, and appeared to generate high levels of engagement from some participants. However, others used the probe minimally or not at all for various reasons including limited literacy, physical problems (e.g. holding a pen), lack of time or energy, limited emotional or psychological resources, life events, and acute illness. Discussions between researchers and participants about the materials collected (and sometimes about what had prevented them completing the tasks) helped elicit further information relevant to assisted living technology design. The probe materials were particularly helpful when having conversations with non-English speaking participants through an interpreter. Conclusions Cultural probe methods can help build a rich picture of the lives and experiences of older people to facilitate the co-production of assisted living technologies. But their application may be constrained by the participant’s physical, mental and emotional capacity. They are most effective when used as a tool to facilitate communication and development of a deeper understanding of older people’s needs

The new SIGCHI EC's values and strategic initiatives.

The SIGCHI EC has articulated the following 10 values. Specifically, these are instrumental values: They are our preferred methods of behavior. They are not an end goal, but they translate into a means by which an end goal is accomplished

Smart homes and their users:a systematic analysis and key challenges

Published research on smart homes and their users is growing exponentially, yet a clear understanding of who these users are and how they might use smart home technologies is missing from a field being overwhelmingly pushed by technology developers. Through a systematic analysis of peer-reviewed literature on smart homes and their users, this paper takes stock of the dominant research themes and the linkages and disconnects between them. Key findings within each of nine themes are analysed, grouped into three: (1) views of the smart home-functional, instrumental, socio-technical; (2) users and the use of the smart home-prospective users, interactions and decisions, using technologies in the home; and (3) challenges for realising the smart home-hardware and software, design, domestication. These themes are integrated into an organising framework for future research that identifies the presence or absence of cross-cutting relationships between different understandings of smart homes and their users. The usefulness of the organising framework is illustrated in relation to two major concerns-privacy and control-that have been narrowly interpreted to date, precluding deeper insights and potential solutions. Future research on smart homes and their users can benefit by exploring and developing cross-cutting relationships between the research themes identified

User experience evaluation methods in the games development life cycle

User Experience (UX) evaluation methods can be applied at any stage in the design and development life cycle. While the term user experience is still not well defined, this chapter gives an overview on a large number of UX related terms, dimensions, factors and concepts. It presents specialized UX evaluation methods classified in (a) user-oriented methods including focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, experiments, observation, bio-physiological measurements, (b) expert-oriented methods like heuristic evaluations, (c) automated methods like telemetry analysis and (d) specialized methods for the evaluation of social game play or exertion games. Summarizing the contributions in this book, a user-experience centered game development is presented, allowing readers to understand when in the life cycle to apply what kind of UX evaluation methods

Natural Language Dialog

\u3cp\u3eA method for controlling a multimedia appliance during a menu setup, which is initiated by a user based on the database query using a remote control for controlling the multimedia appliance, comprising acquiring the database query by way of an input of the user on the remote control, transmitting the database query to a database, receiving a response to the database query from the database after a processing time, playing an acoustic playback on the multimedia appliance during the processing time, and setting up the menu based on the response to the database query.\u3c/p\u3

Natural Language Dialog

\u3cp\u3eDie Erfindung betrifft ein Verfahren zum Steuern eines Multimediagerätes während eines Menüaufbaus, der durch einen Benutzer basierend auf einer Datenbankabfrage mit einer Fernbedienung zur Steuerung des Multimediageräts inittiert wird, umfassend:Erfassen der Datenbankabfrage durch eine Eingabe des Benutzers auf der Fernbedienung;Absenden der Datenbankanfrage an eine Datenbank;Empfangen einer Antwort auf die Datenbankanfrage von der Datenbank nach einer Verarbeitungszeit;Abspielen einer akustischen Wiedergabe auf dem Multimediagerät während der Verarbeitungszeit, undAufbauen des Menüs basierend auf der Antwort auf die Datenbankanfrage.\u3c/p\u3

Natural Language Dialog

\u3cp\u3eA method for controlling a multimedia appliance during a menu setup, which is initiated by a user based on the database query using a remote control for controlling the multimedia appliance, comprising acquiring the database query by way of an input of the user on the remote control; transmitting the database query to a database; receiving a response to the database query from the database after a processing time; playing an acoustic playback on the multimedia appliance during the processing time; and setting up the menu based on the response to the database query.\u3c/p\u3