Expanding exertion gaming

While exertion games - digital games where the outcome is determined by physical exertion - are of growing interest in HCI, we believe the current health and fitness focus in the research of exertion games limits the opportunities this field has to offer. In order to broaden the agenda on exertion games, we link the existing fields of sports and interactive entertainment (arguing these fields have much to offer) by presenting four of our own designs as case studies. Using our experiences with these designs we highlight three key strategies to guide designers in the creation of richer exertion game experiences: designing a temporal trajectory through games with reference to the way exertion changes over time, designing for the inevitable and not necessarily negative effects of pain in exertion games, and designing for the highly socially situated nature of exertion gaming

Sounds Like Home: Sonification and Physical Interaction in the Periphery and Center of the Attention

ABSTRACT Our auditory perception skills enable us to selectively place one auditory channel in the center of our attention and simultaneously monitor others in the periphery of our attention. In this paper, we present and discuss two design cases that explore the design of physical interactive systems that leverage this perception skill to unobtrusively communicate relevant information. Sounds are mechanically generated by these systems, which strengthens the coupling between sonification and physical interface. Both resulting designs are aimed to be used in a home environment. INTRODUCTION Sound is used in many interactive systems, mainly for alerts, status indication, data exploration, and entertainment As computing technology is becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, more and more physical objects have the potential to become interfaces. But placing all these interfaces in the center of the attention will likely cause users to be overburdened with information. However, the upcoming pervasiveness of the computer also raises the opportunity for information display to go beyond screens, and allow it to be presented more subtly. This is one of the aims of the area of calm technology, "technology that engages both the center and the periphery of our attention, and moves back and forth between the two" The miniaturization of computing technology has also led to the possibility of using physical, everyday objects for interaction by means of digital technology. This area of research, called Tangible Interaction In line with the calm technology vision [10], we present two design cases that explore a combination of unobtrusive sounds and physical interaction to engage both the center and the periphery of the attention. First, we will look into some related work in the area of sonification and calm technology. RELATED WORK Although most sonifications focus on direct interaction between user and system, some examples exist that apply sound as calm technology. 'Mediated Intuition' [3] for example unobtrusively informs office workers of the current printer queue through sonification. Similarly, 'ShareMon' [1] is a sound based application for monitoring background file sharing events. These examples however, do not incorporate any interactivity. The example of 'Audio Aura&apos

Game jam

Game Jams - energized, fast-paced get-togethers of developers and artists to make digital games - have recently emerged as a way to generate and inspire novel game ideas and new ways of thinking. We intend to introduce the CHI community to this collaborative, fast-paced method of design by holding a game jam with an emphasis on developing novel user inputs as a way to explore HCI and to connect participants from diverse backgrounds. This game jam will introduce a successful model from a related field to the HCI agenda while developing collaborations between the two growing areas