Never mind the bollocks, I wanna be anarCHI: a manifesto for punk HCI

This paper presents two fingers to the HCI establishment. We reject the status quo that defines what language and forms are appropriate “contributions” for this staid “community” of quasiscientific poseurs. We argue that CHI in particular is a tool that serves to reinforce the political and ideological status quo, favouring sell-out researchers wielding arcane verbiage and p-values, all paid for by corporate and government interests that reward the building of systems that distract, subdue and subjugate. We present our manifesto for Punk HCI, which celebrates principles of anarchy and freedom in exploring the impact of technology on human culture, values, social structures and psychology. We encourage research motivated by passion and dissent over patents

Exploring mischief and mayhem in social computing or: how we learned to stop worrying and love the trolls

In this paper, we explore the role of mischief as borderline socially acceptable behaviour within social computing applications. Mischievous activity pushes the boundaries of the implicit social contract present in all online social systems, and, we argue, is of vital importance understanding online social interactions. Using examples from games and other applications, we explore mischief as an act of appropriation, which reinterprets mechanics defined by developers in unexpected and sometimes upsetting ways. Although frequently interpreted as negative and anti-social behaviour, we argue that mischief serves a vital social role, and find surprising richness in the chaos

A behavioural analysis of computer game playing competence, experience and related physiological processes

The current research programme represents a rst step in the psychological analysis of on-line game playing. In the literature review presented in Chapter 1, Network Latency and 'game challenge' were identied as two important variables affecting participants' enjoyment of on-line games. The experiments presented in Chapter 2 define 'game challenge' in terms of levels of derived relational responding, and found that participants were able to consistently respond in accordance with both one and three-node derived relations in the context of a computer game. The presence of Network Latency in a game was found to be detrimental to the game playing experience, but increasing the length of those delays was not. The experiments presented in Chapter 3 defined 'game challenge' in terms of more complex forms of derived relational responding and found that participants were able to consistently respond in accordance with derived 'Same' and 'Opposite'relations in the context of a computer game. As in Chapter 2, the presence of Network Latency in a game was found to be detrimental to the game playing experience, but increasing the length of those delays was not. Participants were more successful at and preferred the simpler levels of the games examined in Chapter 3. Experiments in both Chapters 2 and 3 successfully modeled on-line game playing in terms of derived relational responding. The experiments reported in Chapter 4 were conducted in order to develop novel behavioural and physiological measures of enjoyment in game playing. It was found that participants' preference for games of varying diculty was dependent on their experience with those games. In addition, a novel methodology was developed for analyzing electro-dermal activity, which successfully differentiated games on the basis of the preference shown for them by participants. Finally, Chapter 5 reviewed the relevance of the research findings to the research literature

Mario, Luigi and Dave: the effect of language on the social structure of a bilingual online mobile game

In this paper, we explore the structure of a social community built in an online game that was released in two languages, specifically examining the behaviours of players involved in inter-lingual interaction. This asynchronous social game was released simultaneously in Italian and English. The player base was seeded with English and Italian players but allowed to grow organically without restriction. Despite the built-in segregation by language, we found that the entire player-base formed into a single social network and developed strategies for overcoming the challenges faced by a multi-lingual game community. Using Network Analysis, we break down the community in the game based on language and play style. We demonstrate that the behaviour of both English and Italian players was equivalent, and that play style had no effect on the likelihood of players deliberately engaging in inter-lingual communication. In the context of the strategies used by the players in our experiment, we discuss game design patterns that provide incentives for users to behave more socially and how to create tools to enable the players to cross the lingual and cultural barriers in online games

Motivating physical activity at work: using persuasive social media extensions for simple mobile devices

Powerful behaviour change programmes can be developed through a combination of very simple, accessible technology, and an understanding of the psychological processes that drive behaviour change. We present a study in which very basic digital pedometers were used to record the number of steps taken by participants over the course of a normal working day. A Facebook application, named Step Matron, was utilised to provide a social and competitive context for pedometer readings. We were particularly interested in whether interactions between users via the application more successfully motivated physical activity than simply recording daily step counts in a similar application. Ten participants (1 male), all nurses working in a UK hospital, used the application across two conditions over the course of the study. In the socially-enabled condition, participants could view each other’s step data and make comparisons and comments. In the non-social condition, participants could only view their own personal step data. A significant increase in step activity was observed in the socially enabled condition. Our findings highlight the potential of social media as a means for generating positive behaviour change. They also suggest that simple mobile devices can function as an inexpensive, accessible and powerful trigger towards this behaviour change without necessitating the use of overly complex and expensive mobile applications or device

Tabletop prototyping of serious games for ‘soft skills’ training

Serious games offer a relatively low cost, highly engaging alternative to traditional forms of soft skills training. The current paper describes an approach taken to designing a serious game for the training of soft skills. A tabletop prototype of the game was created and evaluated with a group of 24 participants. Initial findings suggest that the game successfully created an environment in which it was advantageous to engage in appropriate collaborative decision making behaviors, as well as providing built-in opportunities for a tutor to guide under-performing groups

Gaming on and off the social graph: the social structure of Facebook games

Games built on Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become a phenomenon since 3rd party developer tools were released by OSNs such as Facebook. However, apart from their explosive popularity, little is known about the nature of the social networks that are built during play. In this paper, we present the findings of a network analysis study carried out on two Facebook applications, in comparison with a similar but stand-alone game. We found that games built both on and off a social graph exhibit similar social properties. Specifically, the distribution of player-to-player interactions decays as a power law with a similar exponent for the majority of players. For games built on the social network platform however, we find that the networks are characterised by a sharp cut-off, compared with the classically scale-free nature of the social network for the game not built on an existing social graph

A behavioural analysis of computer game playing competence, experience and related physiological processes

The current research programme represents a rst step in the psychological analysis of on-line game playing. In the literature review presented in Chapter 1, Network Latency and 'game challenge' were identied as two important variables affecting participants' enjoyment of on-line games. The experiments presented in Chapter 2 define 'game challenge' in terms of levels of derived relational responding, and found that participants were able to consistently respond in accordance with both one and three-node derived relations in the context of a computer game. The presence of Network Latency in a game was found to be detrimental to the game playing experience, but increasing the length of those delays was not. The experiments presented in Chapter 3 defined 'game challenge' in terms of more complex forms of derived relational responding and found that participants were able to consistently respond in accordance with derived 'Same' and 'Opposite'relations in the context of a computer game. As in Chapter 2, the presence of Network Latency in a game was found to be detrimental to the game playing experience, but increasing the length of those delays was not. Participants were more successful at and preferred the simpler levels of the games examined in Chapter 3. Experiments in both Chapters 2 and 3 successfully modeled on-line game playing in terms of derived relational responding. The experiments reported in Chapter 4 were conducted in order to develop novel behavioural and physiological measures of enjoyment in game playing. It was found that participants' preference for games of varying diculty was dependent on their experience with those games. In addition, a novel methodology was developed for analyzing electro-dermal activity, which successfully differentiated games on the basis of the preference shown for them by participants. Finally, Chapter 5 reviewed the relevance of the research findings to the research literature

An empirical analysis of ‘challenge’ as a motivational factor for educational games

Since one of the most basic and important predictors of student achievement is the amount of time a student spends engaged in learning (or time-on-task; Karweit, 1984; Frederick & Walberg, 1980); and because computer games are hugely successful at motivating users to spend time-on-task (Dondlinger, 2007; Gee, 2003; Mayo, 2007), there has understandably been a great deal of recent interest in harnessing the motivational qualities of computer games in order to create powerful, engaging educational tools (i.e., Gee, 2003; Pivec, 2007; Ruben, 1999). However, to date very little empirical academic research has investigated how, exactly, games achieve these motivational qualities. If we are to create games that produce genuinely educational outcomes, we must understand what exactly it is about games that make them so good at maintaining the player’s motivation to continue playing

Power ballads: deploying aversive energy feedback in social media

This paper reports on the pilot evaluation of “Power Ballads”, an evocative social media application which displays aversive feedback based on excessive household energy usage. Work by other researchers in persuasive technologies has previously suggested the use of aversive feedback should be avoided as it leads to a lack of engagement by users. This work evaluates whether punishment of non-desirable behaviour discourages users from engaging with a persuasive application. To this end we recruited 9 households to use the Power Ballads application over a period of 4 weeks. We found the use of aversive feedback did not act as a deterrent to regularly interacting with the application through evaluating user engagement