In chapter one of Donald A. Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things, I found myself very surprised. I had never thought about even the most mundane things in my everyday life having such complex effects. For example, I have encountered similar glass swinging doors that Norman told about. I, too, was confused when I thought I was supposed to push a door, but it was actually intended to be pulled. It usually happens at department stores when they have the minimalistic look or at small shops whose handles go horizontally across on both sides, making the implication of pushing or pulling ambiguous.
The discussion about the complexity of the simple telephone made me laugh. It reminds me of the telephones that I have to use at my workplace. I work in retail, so the telephones are mostly used when a guest calls or when we must page for someone in the store. It has the standard numberpad and several buttons on the right hand side. Some of the phones have a template attached that shows what each button does, but for some reason or another, some of the phones have lost these templates. All you see is a column of white buttons. When any of the employees encounter these phones, they have to pause and figure out which button to press in order to page someone. Some people actually memorized (it's the fifth button down). Others just avoid those particular phones all together.
When I first started working at that store, I remember having so much trouble using the phone. In particular, I was unable to put someone on hold for a while. I was taught how to use the phone at the beginning, but I had forgotten which button was the hold button. There is a red button and a pink button at the top of the phone; one is to hang up the phone and the other is to put the caller on hold. I kept mixing them up in trying to guess which was which. Let's just say that we had a few very annoyed callers for a while...
Just reading the first chapter of this book has made me change my view of everyday things. Now I think about how some things come very naturally to me without instruction. I also think about what things give me trouble, and how they should be improved. I look forward to reading the rest of the book to find out about how everyday things affect my everyday life and how I can improve upon those things in my future endeavors.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Paper Reading #6: Profanity Use in Online Communities
Introduction
In their paper, "Profanity Use in Online Communities," Sara Owsley Sood, Judd Austin, and Elizabeth F. Churchill analyzed the current methods of list-based profanity detection systems and their limitations. Then they discussed how different communities have different interpretations what is profane. That is, there is different contexts in which differing degrees of profanity is appropriate. The authors presented this paper at CHI 2012 in Austin, Texas, in May 2012. Sood is an assistant professor at Pomona College and is interested on the impact of emotion on online communication, Antin and Churchill are research scientists at Yahoo! Research.Summary
In order to evaluate some of the current methods of profanity detection, they used a data set of user comments over a three-month period from the socials news website Yahoo! Buzz. They employed Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to evaluate a subset of the comments by answering several short questions to sort the comments. In order to train the Turkers to evaluate on similar standards, the authors used a 'gold data' model which gave examples and explanations of why certain comments were profane or insulting. The Turkers' evaluations became the basis on which they analyzed their results. |
| Figure 1: Different uses of symbols, like @ and #, in non-profane ways |
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
Sood, et al., said that research on profanity and other inappropriate content has been done before. After looking around, I also believe their observations. This paper is not novel in the sense that such work has been done and evaluated before.1. Maignan, Isabelle, and Bryan A. Lukas. "The Nature and Social Uses of the Internet: A Qualitative Investigation." Journal of Consumer Affairs. 31.2 (1997): 346-71. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Maignan and Lukas's work on how people use the internet can provide Sood, et al., with reasons why users use profanity in certain domains or contexts more than in others. Furthermore, Sood, et al., could probably look at their work and how marketing activities further affect internet usage and, in turn, profanity usage.
2. Greenfield, Paul, Peter Rickwood, and Huu Cuong Tran. "Effectiveness of Internet Filtering Software Products." CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences. (2001): n. page. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Greenfield, et al., looked a specific products that filtered internet content. Sood, et al., can use this work to give a concrete perspective on the commercial success of different products that tried to filter our profanity and other inappropriate material on websites.
3. Johnson, Thomas J., Barbara K. Kaye, et al. "Every Blog Has Its Day: Politically-interested Internet Users' Perceptions of Blog Credibility." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 13.1 (2007): 100-22. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Johnson, et al., provide another way through which users can comment: blogs. Sood, et al., can use their observations and interpretations from their own data to further their research into political-based blogs and see how users use profanity and insults in their comments compared to those on other blogs.
4. Finn, Jerry, and Mary Banach. "Victimization Online: The Down Side of Seeking Human Services for Women on the Internet." CyberPsychology & Behavior. 3.2 (2000): 243-54. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
For women seeking health and human services on the internet, they should not have to endure cyberstalking, identity theft, and attacks. Sood, et al., should also work towards filtering such content to protect these women and many other people from abusive attacks.
5. Semitsu, Junichi P. "Burning Cyberbooks in Public Libraries: Internet Filtering Software vs. The First Amendment." Stanford Law Review. 52.2 (2000): 509-45. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Semitsu offers a very different perspective on the effects of internet filtering. He discusses how it affects people's right to free speech. Sood, et al., did not consider the ethical use of the filtering of profane comments, but it is something that needs to be examined. In certain contexts, filtering is more appropriate, but it is not appropriate in all contexts.
6. Balkin, J.M., Beth S. Noveck, and Kermit Roosevelt. "Filtering the Internet: A Best Practices Model." (1999): n. page. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Balk, et al., provide guidelines for filtering content on websites. They also consider philosophical and legal ramifications of filtering content. Sood, et al., need to keep these things in mind when discussing filtering content for different communities.
7. Zimmer, Eric A., and Christopher D. Hunter. "Risk and the Internet: Perception and Reality." Communication and cyberspace. (2002): n. page. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Zimmer and Hunter provide data that there is not as much objectionable content on the internet as is perceived by many others. This data should be interpreted by Sood, et al., as meaning that they need to examine different websites because the amount of profane comments in different categories can be quite varied from the data that they have from one website.
8. Preston, Cheryl B. "Zoning the Internet: A New Approach to Protecting Children Online." Brigham University Law Review. (2007): 1417-67. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Preston gives another way to protect children from inappropriate content on the internet. She also give another perspective on why filters do not work, which reinforces Sood, et al.'s work.
9. Shin, J. "Morality and Internet Behavior: A study of the Internet Troll and its relation with morality on the Internet." Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2008. (2008): 2834-40. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Shin looks at a new phenomenon that has been seen on the internet these days: the Troll. Sood, et al., should wonder how the Troll affects web content and profanity.
10. Sood, Sara Owsley, Judd Antin, and Elizabeth F. Churchill. "Using Crowdsourcing to Improve Profanity Detection." AAAI Technical Report SS-12-06. n. page. Web. 11 Sep. 2012.
Sood, et al., used their own work on how crowdsourcing can be used to detect profanity more effectively than list-based methods. This is important because there work for this paper is based on their findings from that paper.
Evaluation
The authors used very objective measures to evaluate their work. These measures were both qualitative and quantitative. The methods were systemic. In this work, Sood, et al., wanted to find the answer to three main questions: whether current profanity detection systems were effective, how profanity differs between communities, and how profanity is received by different communities.First, to see if current profanity detection systems were effective, the authors used a shared profanity list from the website phorum.org. They built a system that simply flags a comment as profane if it contains any of the words on that list. Then they used a second list of words from noswearing.com, which has a list of community contributed profane terms. This means that this list evolves over time and is more comprehensive than the phorum.org list. They also used a stemmer which would check to see if the words in the comment had a shared stem with any word on a profanity list. They compared the Turkers' evaluations to the results of the systems that they built. They found that the best performance came from the list from noswearing.com combined with a stemming system, which detected 40.2% of the profanity cases at 52.8% precision. This is not impressive at all. The authors believe that this lack of precision and accuracy was caused by intentional or accidental misspellings (for example, shiiit) and the overlapping use of certain symbols, like the @ symbol, in different contexts.
Second, the authors evaluated how profanity differs between communities and domains. They examined how frequently profanity was used by looking at the data collected from the Turkers and the domains from which the comments came. They found that political stories contained more profanity, more insults, and more directed insults to others than any other domain. Each domain had a different emphasis on each of these three categories, implying that with differing communities and domains, there are different degrees of profanity, insults, and directed insult. They also looked at how profanity was used. Whenever a comment has profanity, it is more likely that it also contains an insult or a directed insult. Also, there was an existence of the inverse relationship; if a comment has an insult, it is more likely to contain profanity. When the comment is not an insult, profanity tends to be used when people have negative rants on the topic being discussed.
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| Figure 2: Distribution of comments containing profanity withing different topical domains |
Finally, to look at how profanity is received, they looked at the 'rate up' and 'rate down' votes for each comment. They used this to imply that a comment got more attention. The found that profane comments were more likely to get 'rate up' votes and 'rate down' votes. The authors think this means that profane comments are more popular or more widely read than non-profane comments.
Discussion
While I think this work is interesting, I do not this work was that novel. By the authors' admission, there has been a tremendous amount of work done before. However, no work has a precise and accurate solution to filtering out profane comments. I think the evaluation was appropriate on a small scale. The analysis included just about 6500 comments. They could have explored comments on other social news media, too. However, for the data that they did use, I think they used mostly valid methods. There were a lot of assumptions made, but it is difficult to make a standard for, say, popularity. I think continued work on this is important because of how accessible the internet and social media are. We need to be conscious of ourselves and others' actions in certain communities and contexts, and we must act appropriately.Thursday, September 6, 2012
Paper Reading #5: Playable Character: Extending Digital Games into the Real World
Introduction
In their paper "Playable Character: Extending Digital Games into the Real World," Jason Linder and Wendy Ju from California College of the Arts explored the world of games in order to find out how real-world activity could be incorporated into digital games. This resulted in the development of the game Forest for the non-profit organization Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF) in San Francisco. This was presented at CHI 2012 in May of 2012 in Austin, TX. Linder is pursing his MFA in Design and MBA in Design Strategy. Ju is an assistant professor and is interested in physical interaction design.Summary
Linder and Ju isolated certain aspects of games and analyzed how activities performed in the real world could be incorporated into a digital game system. This led to several game prototypes that were tested by various colleagues and friends. Finally, they developed their final game Forest which used these elements in an interesting manner. First, they created a game similar to SimCity called Simulation City. The players had to take pictures of real buildings in order to add items to their city. Second, they developed SphereQuest to see what connections could be made between someone's daily tasks, like eating a piece of fruit, and their video game character's stats, like magic. Third, in the game The Other End, players simply checked in at a sensor at one end of a hall and then somehow make their way to the other end of the hall and check in at a sensor there. There was a scoreboard with three categories listed: most points, most trips, and best time. Fourth, they developed Cubelord; the players had to give up personal information or perform different silly tasks to beat other players. They acquired territories (the cubicals of the studio) by buying them with funds that they acquired by doing the aforementioned things. Finally, they designed their final game Forest. They implemented a small version of the game to test the reception by volunteers of FUF and several others not affiliated with them. In the game, players could to check in a tree by taking a photo or adding information about the tree, which would earn them "leaves," a kind of currency that could be used to allow them to build and customize their Virtual Forest. They could mark a GPS location to be an ideal spot for a new tree with the "Tree Please!" function and earn more "leaves" that way. Players can earn tokens like badges or special game items by participating in team activities like volunteering. |
| Figure 1: Forest game - Adding information for a tree to earn "leaves" |
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
This work is not really novel. There has been a lot of research on games. The authors talked about background information about types of games and the gamification of day-to-day tasks, but they did not reference as many related works as I thought they should have. Some related works are listed below.1. Crabtree, Andy, and Tom Rodden. "Hybrid ecologies: understanding cooperative interaction in emerging physical-digital environments." Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 12.7 (2008): 481-93. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Crabtree and Rodden discuss how the merging of physical and digital environments are becoming more prevalent. Such background information is useful to add perspective when designing games that connect reality and digital games
2. Benford, Steve, Andy Crabtree, et al. "The Frame of the Game: Blurring the Boundary between Fiction and Reality in Mobile Experiences." CHI '06 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems. (2006): 427-36. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Benford, et al. give a perspective on how mobile experience on how mobile devices creates new opportunities to combine reality and the digital world. They offer ways that the line between acceptable behavior in the physical world and dramatic behavior in the digital world can be blurred.
3. Cheok, A.D., Fong Siew Wan, et al. "Game-City: a ubiquitous large area multi-interface mixed reality game space for wearable computers." Wearable Computers. (2001): 156-57. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Game-City is not so different from Forest because it can span a whole city. It also combine the physical world with a digital game. The only significant difference is that Game-City uses wearable computer components, which could be applied to Forest in some way.
4. de Kort, Yvonne, Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn, and Brian J. Gajadhar. "People, Places, and Play: A research framework for digital game experience in a socio-spatial context." n. page. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
de Kort, et al. explore how digital games can be shaped by the socio-spatial context of the game. For a game like Forest, that can be seen in both the physical world and the digital world.
5. Fails, Jerry Alan, Allison Druin, et al. "Child's play: a comparison of desktop and physical interactive environments." IDC '05 Proceedings of the 2005 conference on Interaction design and children. (2005): 48-55. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Fails, et al. compared physical games and digital games for young children. Both types of games can have different impact on their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. This is an interesting viewpoint that Linder and Ju can look at and maybe apply to their Forest game for children volunteers.
6. Bareford, CG. "Community as client: environmental issues in the real world. A SimCity computer simulation."Comput Nurs. 19.1 (2001): 11-6. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
SimCity has a lot more to offer than what Linder and Ju alluded to. They could probably take a few more elements from SimCity and add it into Forest and further enhance the game.
7. Babcock, C. "Lessons From Farmville." Information Week. (2011): 29-34. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Farmville is a much simpler game compared to Forest. However, a lot of similar elements are there, and Linder and Ju can use Farmville to come up with new ways to build upon their early version of Forest to make it more popular and increase FUF's numbers.
8. Shelley, Bruce. "Guidelines for Developing Successful Games."Gamasutra. (2001): n. page. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Shelley offers says to improve games so that they can become a success. Linder and Ju can use these suggestions to refine Forest or conduct more research on reality and digital hybrid games.
9. Churchill, Elizabeth, Andreas Girgensohn, et al. "Blending digital and physical spaces for ubiquitous community participation." Communications of the ACM - Information cities. 47.2 (2004): 38-44. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Churchill, et al. looks at how blurring the boundary between the digital and physical can increase face-to-face community participation. This is the kind of work Linder and Ju should look like because it is directly related to their goals.
10. Intille, Stephen S., Charles Kukla, et al. "Merging the Physical and Digital in Ubiquitous Computing Environments." n. page. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
There are many limitations to Forest right now. These need to be looked at critically from different angles. Intille, et al.'s work looks at how digital interfaces for physical environments, like a city, with ubiquitous displays and sensing can create some unique problems.
Evaluation
Linder and Ju's evaluations were largely subjective qualitative data. They looked at the responses of players and their own perceptions of the players' interaction between the real-world activity and the digital game element. First, for Simulation City, the players seemed to enjoy collecting interesting buildings just to have a collection of real-world items. Second, in the game SphereQuest, the more the player could connect with the action, the more fun they had; for example, they had to use public transportation to increase their stealth. The players enjoyed pretending that they were being stealthy in real life. Third, The Other End seemed to catch a lot of interest beause it was quick to play and it created lots of competition. They first tried to beat each other's times, and when that became difficult to accomplish, they focused on the other statistics. There was also an increase in social interaction; the players would linger and discuss stratgey. They also noticed that the players were trying to find a way to beat the game by bending the rules. Fourth, the Cubelord game showed that the players were more likely to do tasks that were convenient because it was the quickest way to earn funds. The game Forest combined all of the elements that Linder and Ju found engaging for players. The players tried out a small version of the game and commented on how they were excited to see the full version. There was generally positive feedback when asked about the game.Discussion
I think this work is very interesting in trying to recruit more volunteers for a non-profit organization by making the activities seem more like a game than a job or obligations. The game experiments leading up to Forest were less interesting to me. There were probably better ways to test or research such aspects of a game. The evaluation seemed okay but there was no real data collected other than observation and user feedback. The contribution was not novel to me. In fact, Forest sounded a lot like the popular Facebook game FarmVille, but with slightly different elements involved.Paper Reading #4: Supporting Face-To-Face Communication Between Clinicians and Children with Chronic Headaches Through a Zoomable Multi-Touch App
Introduction
In their paper "Supporting Face-To-Face Communication Between Clinicians and Children with Chronic Headaches Through a Zoomable Multi-Touch App," Juan Pablo Hourcade, Martha Driessnack, and Kelsey E. Huebner explored how zoomable drawing applications can be used to enhance the already existing Draw-and-Tell Conversation (DTC) method. DTC is used to allow children to communicate with adults their feelings or thoughts through drawings first before they use verbal descriptions. The drawings allow them to better show that they may find difficult to articulate well with words. This was presented at CHI 2012 in May of 2012 in Austin, TX. All three authors are from the University of Iowa. Hourcade is an associate professor and is interested in technology that supports creativity, collaboration, and information access for a variety of users. Driessnack is an assistant professor who finds interest in researching children's perspectives and art-based assessment and intervention methods. Finally, Huebner is interested in 3D modeling and graphic design.Summary
The authors simply wanted to know if using a multitouch tablet would be a better tool to use than regular pencil and paper when implementing the DTC method. In particular, they were trying to figure out whether children with chronic headaches were able to more effectively show and describe how they felt through drawings. Hourcade, et al. used three different media through which the children used to draw and describe their pain. They used (1) two sheets of paper, one with the outline of a human head and one with the outline of a human body, and colored pencils and markers, (2) a zoomable drawing application on a tablet, and (3) Photogoo. Photogoo allows the user to manipulate a picture shown on the screen and draw on top of the picture. In this case, the picture was of the child's head. Each child tried every method, but in different orders. |
| Figure 1: A child using the zoomable drawing application of a tablet |
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
The authors talked in depth about the related work. Driessnack had developed the DTC method. I do not think the work was incredibly novel; they were only exploring a different medium through which DTC could be used.1. Bradding, Angela, and Marie Horstman. "Using the write and draw technique with children." European Journal of Oncology Nursing. 3.3 (1999): 170-5. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
The paper by Bradding and Horstman provides background information on how drawing and writing can help adults understand what children are thinking, feeling, and perceiving in the medical field. Driessnack probably had done similar research.
2. Horstman, Maire, Susie Aldiss, et al. "Methodological Issues When Using the Draw and Write Technique With Children Aged 6 to 12 Years." Qualitative Health Research. 18.7 (2008): 1001-11. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Horstman, et al. explain how draw and write techniques need to be done in a responsible way in order to effectively and sensitively acquire information from children. Hourcade, et al. were aware of this and made sure someone who had experience with these techniques worked with the children.
3. Wesson, Michaela, and Karen Salmon. "Drawing and showing: helping children to report emotionally laden events." Applied Cognitive Psychology. 15.3 (2001): 301-19. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Wesson and Salmon offer another way for allowing children to express themselves: through reenactment. Hourcade, et al. could probably also try this technique in future work and compare it to the zoomable drawing application.
4. Butler, Sarnia, Julien Gross, and Harlene Hayne. "The effect of drawing on memory performance in young children." Developmental Psychology. 31.4 (1995): 597-608. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Butler, et al.'s work shows that children had a more accurate memory when they were allowed to draw versus when they only verbalized their memory. This has implications in the work of Hourcade, et al. because it reveals how much more accurate and therefore reliable the children's descriptions of their headaches were.
5. Maytal, Joseph, Robert S. Bienkowski, et al. "The Value of Brain Imaging in Children with Headaches."PEDIATRICS. 96.3 (1995): 413-16. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
MRIs or CT scans could have been used to give a medical perspective on children with chronic headaches. They could be used to link the descriptors with the medical diagnosis.
6. Shinnar, S., and B.J. D'Souza. "The diagnosis and management of headaches in childhood." Pediatr Clin North Am.. 29.1 (1982): 79-94. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Shinnar and D'Souza examined headaches in children. They described how they can be diagnosed and managed. Hourcade, et al. probably used information like this as a different perspective in how children were examined for chronic headaches.
7. De Carlo, L., B. Cavaliere, et al. "EEG evaluation in children and adolescents with chronic headaches."European Journal of Pediatrics. 158.3 (1999): 247-48. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
De Carlo, et al. explored the use of EEGs to help diagnose headaches in children and adolescents. This is yet another way Hourcade, et al. could use medical technology to help decipher children's chronic headaches.
8. Gladstein, Jack, and E. Wayne Holden. "Chronic Daily Headache in Children and Adolescents: A 2-Year Prospective Study." Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain. 36.6 (1996): 349-51. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Gladstein and Holden offer very distinct differences between adult and childhood chronic headaches. This goes with Hourcade, et al.'s emphasis on needing to distinguish difference between diagnosing adult chronic headaches and children chronic headaches.
9. Mikail, Samuel F., and Carl L. von Baeyer. "Pain, somatic focus, and emotional adjustment in children of chronic headache sufferers and controls." Social Science & Medicine. 31.1 (1990): 51-9. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Mikail and von Baeyer's work could offer Hourcade, et al. another perspective for children with chronic headaches. The images drawn by children could reflect a family history of chronic pain descriptors. This is because there is a trend of other family members having chronic pain, too.
10. Gascon, GG. "Chronic and recurrent headaches in children and adolescents." Pediatric Clinics of North America. 31.5 (1984): 1027-51. Web. 6 Sep. 2012.
Gascon gives a general overview of chronic headaches in children and adolescents. This can give more background information about chronic headaches and their different diagnoses for children.
Evaluation
Hourcade, et al. evaluated the work through both qualitative and quantitative means. The results were largely qualitative because they used the detail in the children's descriptions and what they observed to evaluate the effectiveness of the media used. They measured part of the DTC system: the medium on which the drawings took place. Interestingly, most of the children did not like Photogoo because they did not like to manipulate their own face or they did not know what they looked like when they had headaches. Therefore, the authors only focused on the other two media. The quantitative data they collected was the phrases that the children used to describe their pain, where the pain was, and how they felt and what they did when they had the headache. From this data, the authors saw that if the paper was used first, then there was an increase in descriptors when the tablet was used; however, when the tablet was used first, there was no increase nor decrease in the amount of descriptors when the paper followed. Time-wise, both methods were completed within a short amount of time, the longest being over 10 minutes. The children spent slightly more time on the tablet than on the paper, indicating that they had more to add to it. The subjective qualitative data included the drawings themselves and what the authors interpreted from them. They saw that children could provide more detail because they could zoom into the area of pain. They also observed that the zooming allowed the children to provide more context; they linked their headaches to pain or discomfort in other parts of the body, like the stomach and neck. Finally, they observed that the children used many more colors on the tablet with pen and paper, which baffled the authors; they could only speculate why that might be the case.Discussion
I personally think this work and contribution was slightly interesting, but not really profound. The evaluation seemed appropriate for what they wanted to measure: effectiveness in description. The contribution was not spectacularly novel. I would like to see more work like this done because children tend to be less emphasized when it comes to chronic headaches. I did not like how the authors included a section on how many children with chronic headaches tend to be treated through adult methods. I think that did not have anything directly to do with their research.Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Paper Reading #3: Reducing Compensatory Motions in Video Games for Stroke Rehabilitation
Introduction
In their paper "Reducing Compensatory Motions in Video Games for Stroke Rehabilitation" Gazihan Alankus and Caitlin Kelleher explored and developed a way to help people who have had strokes rehabilitate by using a video game that could be played at home. It would be used specifically to help reduce compensation for lack of motion in the torso. This paper was presented at CHI 2012 in May 2012 in Austin, TX. Gazihan Alankus is from both Washington University in St. Louis and Izmir University of Economics in Turkey. His interests reside with video games for rehabilitiation, virtual characters, and sensor networks. Caitlin Kelleher has varied interests within HCI. Currently she is working on a project that allows children to learn computer programming.Summary
Alankus and Kelleher conducted their research in two steps. They first designed a way to detect torso compensation and a way to evaluate such compensation. Then they designed a game which can be used as a theraputic tool to help patients get feedback on their personal conscious or unconscious compensation for lack of motion in the torso.For the first step, they designed a harness using Nintendo Wii remotes to help track a participant's torso movements. Then they analyzed data from the movements of the participants to evaluate how compensation data was collected. They took into account the location of the Wii remotes, the movements that users make when doing shoulder abduction and adduction exercises, and the range of error in comparison to a motion capture system.
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| Figure 1: The harness created for this study |
In the second step, the authors designed a game that would have users perform therapeutic exercises and would create situations in which users would have to naturally compensate. In this side-scrolling type game, the user has to control a floating hot air balloon. They have move their bodies to control the vertical position of the balloon to catch parachute jumpers. This causes the user to do shoulder abduction and adduction exercises. They calibrated the game for each user by including an seamless in-game method, making movements much more matched between calibration and actual performance. They placed the jumpers at both motion range extremes to create therapeutically beneficial motions and used obstacles to promote controlled motions. They used a point system and visual and audio ques to shape rewards and punishments for the users to help condition them to use less compensatory movements. They modified, improved, and tested the game in iterative steps.
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
The authors appropriately talked about related work. They divided there related works into three sections, each addressing a different aspect of their work. Their work is not very novel. Using technology (and games) to aid in rehabilitation is not new. However, it helps supplement the work that has already been done. Several other related works are listed below.1. McNeill, M.D.J., D.K. Charles, et al. "Evaluating user experiences in rehabilitation games." Journal of Assistive Technologies. 6.3 (2012): 173-181. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
McNeill, et al. analyzed the game-based systems that aided in rehabilitation and discussed how current work could be improved. Alankus and Kelleher could probably look at their work in order to improve their game and harness.
2.
Evaluation
In order to evaluate the possible success of the game, the authors created five versions of the game:- The balloon does not tilt, so there is no compensation feedback
- The balloon tilts only
- Punishments and rewards are provided depending on the amount of compensation
- Uses punishment and reward events with an adaptive algorithm
- Uses punishment and reward events with variable ratio feedback
Discussion
I think this is a very interresting thing that the authors looked at. I have read about how video games can help people learn, but rehabilitation is another perspective that I did not think about. I think this work is novel and significant. At the same time, since this is novel, I think more time and research must be done to refine how the game can be used to effectively help patients recover compared to once-a-week sessions in physical therapy. I think the evaluation was appropriate, but it, too, must be refined to further minimize error. A possible way to do this is to use some sort of sensor or device that is less bulky than the Wii remote. I hope that these authors continue this work and that others follow in their footsteps to extend to other types of rehabilitation methods.
Reference
Alankus, Gazihan, and Caitlin Kelleher. "Reducing Compensatory Motions in Video Games for Stroke Rehabilitation." CHI '12 Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (2012): 2049-2058. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Paper Reading #2: Understanding User Experience in Stereoscopic 3D Games
Introduction
Jonas Schild, Joseph J. LaViola Jr., and Maic Masuch collaborated together to complete their study of "Understanding User Experience in Stereoscopic 3D Games." They presented their paper at the CHI conference in May of 2012 in Austin, TX. Jonas Schild and Maic Masuch are from the University of Duisburg-Essen Forsthausweg 2 in Germany. Schild's research interests include entertainment computing and stereoscopic 3D games. Masuch is interested in the development of interactive multimedia systems. Joseph LaViola is from the University of Central Florida. LaViola's interests in lie in computer graphics, user interface, and virtual reality.Summary
Schild, et al. wanted to explore the actual impact that games played in 3D stereo had on players versus those played in 2D displays. They also wanted to compare the effects between different target groups and different game concepts. They decided to compare males to females. They choose three games with very different concepts: James Cameron's Avatar: The Game, Blur, and Trine. Avatar is a third-person 3D action game, Blur is a racing game, and Trine is an action-adventure game. All three games were played with similar keyboard keys and were relatively similar in game mechanics and tasks. There were sixty participants; twenty-six were male and thirty-four were female. Each participant played one of the games in both stereoscopic vision and monoscopic vision. |
| Figure 1: A participant playing one of the games |
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
The general area of stereoscopic vision has had much previous research. The authors did list and explain some of the previous research, but I think they tried to make their work seem more novel that it actually was. The following list shows some of related work previously done:1. Yeh, Yei-Yu, and Louis D. Silverstein. "Spatial Judgments with Monoscopic and Stereoscopic Presentation of Perspective Displays." Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 34.5 (1992): 583-600. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
In Schild, et al.'s paper, the authors compared how stereoscopic vision compared to monoscopic vision in games. In Yeh and Silversetein's paper, they studied how space was judged between a stereoscopic presentation and a monoscopic presentation. The depth that people perceive affects how users interact with the environment. It affects the user's orientation and perception in the environment.
2. Singer, Michael J., Jennifer Ehrlich, and Stephen Cinq-Mars. "Task Performance in Virtual Environments: Stereoscopic Versus Monoscopic Displays and Head-Coupling." (1995): n.pag. STIC Online: Information for the Defense Community. Web. 4 Sep 2012.
Singer, et al. looked at how stereoscopic presentations affected the training of dismounted soldiers in Virtual Environments. They compared this to the monoscopic version of the Virtual Environment. They used training program tasks and general soldier tasks to test the effects. Singer, et al.'s paper is just a practical application of Schild, et al.'s work.
3. Dang, Thao, Soren Kammel, et al. "Path Planning for Autonomous Driving Based on Stereoscopic and Monoscopic Vision Cues." Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems. (2006): 191-196. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Thao, et al. explored how stereoscopic and monoscopic perspectives can be used together to perform path planning for autonomous driving. This can be compared to the Blur driving game that was used in "Understanding User Experience."
4. Werkhoven, Peter J., and Joris Groen. "Manipulation Performance in Interactive Virtual Environments."Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 40.3 (1998): 432-42. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Werkhoven and Groen compared monoscopic and stereoscopic views to see how speed and accuracy of controllers can be manipulated. This can be considered another side of Schild, et al.'s work. While Schild, et al. consider the users are affected by stereoscopic vision, Werkhoven and Groen look at the accuracy of the use of controllers when participants use them.
5. Ogle, Kenneth N. "On the limits of stereoscopic vision."Journal of Experimental Psychology. 44.4 (1952): 253-259. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Ogle's work is significantly older than some of the other work done on stereoscopic vision, but it still applies to today's studies. He looked at how the brain try to compromise the stereoscopic perception of depth and how it is limiting. This is what causes the symptoms of sickness in Schild, et al.'s study. It give a psychological perspective to this HCI work.
6. Woods, Andrew, Tom Docherty, and Rolf Koch. "Image Distortions in Stereoscopic Video Systems."Proceedings of SPIE 1915. (1993): n. page. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Woods, et al. analyzed in depth how stereoscopic video systems are not perfect. There are few distortions that can be avoided or minimized. However, there are still others that cannot be completely eliminated. Schild, et al. can use this work to help reduce sickness symptoms for people playing games in stereoscopic vision.
7. Freeman, Ralph D. "Stereoscopic Vision: Which parts of the brain are involved?." n. page. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Freeman gives a biological view of stereoscopic vision. Schild, et al. can use this perspective to further refine their work on the effects of stereoscopic vision compared to monoscopic vision in games for players.
8. Hakkinen, Jukka, Monika Polonen, Jari Takatalo, and Gote Nyman. "Simulator sickness in virtual display gaming: a comparison of stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic situations." MobileHCI '06 Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services. 227-230. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Hakkinen, et al. give another perspective on how stereoscopic vision causes sickness. They add in a unique perspective with their use on mobile devices.
9. Bando, Takehiko, Atsuhiko Iijima, and Sumio Yano. "Visual fatigue caused by stereoscopic images and the search for the requirement to prevent them: A review." Displays. 33.2 (2012): 76-83. Web.
Bando, et al. offer some ways to reduce sickness caused by stereoscopic vision. Schild, et al. could try to implement these techniques to see if they improve the players' experiences with stereoscopic 3D games.
10. Xiao, Wu, and Wang Fei. "A study of stereoscopic display technology and visual fatigue caused by viewing stereoscopic images." Computing, Control and Industrial Engineering (CCIE). 1. (2011): 379-282. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Xiao and Fei offer a general overview of stereoscopic displays and their possible future.
Evaluation
The authors used both subjective qualitative and objective quantitative evaluation methods to measure their hypotheses. They asked users what they thought about the game play, their presence within the game, and feelings of sickness in the form of questionnaires. The NeuroSky MindSet was used to measure the psychophysiological data of attention and meditation. It is important to note that MindSet has not been proven to be a standard to measure such data.In regards to the questionnaire about game play, there was a higher rating of immersion and flow in stereoscopic vision compared to monoscopic vision. There was less tension and challenge in stereoscopic vision. Between the genders, there was a significant difference of immersion only for males. When it comes to game type, males seemed to have showed the more significant differences than females. For the measure of presence, there was significant difference in the feeling of presence in the game in stereoscopic vision versus monoscopic vision. When comparing the three games between one another, each felt increased presence. Once again, there were varied differences between the genders. Finally, when simulator sickness was analyzed, there was significantly more sickness in stereoscopic vision than in microscopic vision. When measuring the MindSet data, there was actually lower attention in stereoscopic vision for both males and females. When comparing the games to each other, Avatar and Blur showed lower attention, but Trine did to show any significant difference.
Discussion
I think the authors made a sincere effort in this research. However, I also feel that this research had no real direction. They were just providing a large amount of data. The results were not significant enough for me to find novel. The evaluation seemed appropriate except for the MindSet measure for objective data. Because it by admittance has not been validated, I do not feel completely comfortable basing results on this. I would have at least tried to find another objective measurement tool to help reinforce their conclusions. I think this paper is a good step in the right direction, but more work needs to be done before anything conclusive can be said about the effects of stereoscopic vision in video games for players.Reference
Schild, Jonas, Joseph, J. LaViola Jr., and Maic Masuch. "Understanding User Experience in Stereoscopic 3D Games." CHI '12 Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (2012): 89-98. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Paper Reading #1: Calibration games: making calibration tasks enjoyable by adding motivating game elements
Introduction
In their paper "Calibration games: making calibration tasks enjoyable by adding motivating game elements," David R. Flatla, Carl Gutwin, Lenmart E. Nacke, Scott Bateman, and Reagan L. Mandryk studied whether it is possible to make calibration procedures for interactive devices more entertaining for users and still maintain accuracy in the data. All of the authors except Nacke came from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Nacke was from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Ontario, Canada. The paper was presented at UIST'11 in October 2011 in Santa Barbara, CA.Summary
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| Figure 1: Screenshot of BabyLaunch game |
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
After spending some time searching for related studies and papers on turning calibration procedures into something more entertaining, I found that, just as the authors had appropriately explained in their work, there has not been much work done in this specific area. Flatla, et al. were exploring a relatively novel idea. The following list shows ten papers and how they compare to this work:In this paper, the authors observe how soccer referees unconsciously calibrate their judgments in soccer games. They use observations early in the game to determine how calls should be made for the rest of the game. This is related to this work because both include using games in some way to help them make decisions for future tasks.
2. Deterding, Sebastian, Miguel Sicart, et al. "Gamification. using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts." CHI EA . (2011): 2425-28. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Det
Deterding, et al. explained what gamification is and how it can be applied to many non-gaming systems to increase user engagement. The work of Flatla, et al. is a direct application of this.3. Renaud, Christian, and Bridgette Wagoner. "The Gamification of Learning." Principal Leadership. 12.1 (2011): 56-9. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
In "The Gamification of Learning," Renaud and Wagoner discuss how video games can be more effective educational tools than decontextualized skill-and-drill instruction. Video games allow for a more immersive environment and present novel situations. This is related to Flatla, et al.'s work because they are trying to make something that is decontextualized into something novel and more immersive.
4. Chorney, Alan. "Taking the Game Out of Gamification."Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management. 8.1 (2012): n. page. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Chorney takes a reverse approach to the gamification concept when compared to Flatla, et al.'s approach. Chorney deconstructs games into their simplest form: content. Flatla, et al. took the main objective a calibration procedure and added game mechanics to construct games.
5. Padilla, Stefano, Fraser Halley, and Mike J. Chantler. "Improving Product Browsing whilst Engaging Users." Digital Engagement '11. (2011): n. page. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Stafano, et al. used gamification techniques in order to make browsing a large number of objects more entertaining and less tedious. This is similar to the work of Flatla, et al. because they both modified an existing method of some sort and worked to make it more interesting and engaging.
6. Hamari, Juho, and Veikko Eranti. "Framework for Designing and Evaluating Game Achievements."Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play. (2011): n. page. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Hamari and Veikko's work focused on showing a framework of designing and evaluating achievements that would reward users for completing tasks in a satisfactory way. Flatla, et al. could use this work in the future to help participants be more entertained by calibration games by adding more achievements and rewards.
7. Sturm, Janienke, and Ben Schouten. "Ambient Gaming and Play: Opportunities and Challenges." n. page. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Ambient games are activities that are integrated in our lives. The boundaries between other activities and play are disappearing. They offer more natural interaction, which is what Flatla, et al. wanted to achieve through their calibration games.
8. Smith, R. "The future of work is play: Global shifts suggest rise in productivity games." Games Innovation Conference (IGIC). (2011): 40-43. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Smith explores how gamification of global, societal, technological, economic, and socio-political arenas will change the future. The work of Flatla, et al. is an example of how even the simplest tasks are becoming gamified. Gamification may be seen in other places, such as business and other workplaces.
9. Bernhaupt, Regina, Katherine Isbister, et al. "Games and HCI: perspectives on intersections and opportunities." CHI EA '11. (2011): 351-54. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Bernhaupt, et al., look at how gamification has become a new trend in the field of HCI. They consider what game designers do to contribute to this growing trend and what may lie ahead in the future. Flatla, et al. are contributing to this trend by making calibration procedures more game-like by adding game mechanics to it.
10. Nicholson, Scott. "A User-Centered Theoretical Framework for Meaningful Gamification." Games Learning Society 8.0. (2012): n. page. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Nicholson argues that the external rewards of an activity that has been turned into a game might undermine the internal rewards inherent within the activity. He proposes a different approach in using certain game design element to improve internal motivation so that there is less need for eternal rewards. Flatla, et al. has small elements of reward, which should be analyzed so that motivation to calibrate devices and tools is not lost.
Evaluation
The two main questions that the authors were looking to answer were whether turning a calibration procedure into a game rectifies a user's "lack of enjoyment and lack of motivation" to do the task and if it affected the accuracy of the calibration data. The authors only measured parts of calibration systems. They only changed the appearance and interaction with the calibration procedures. To measure the enjoyment and motivation factor, the authors used quantitative survey responses comparing the two calibration interactions. They used a ranking for each question. In all three games, there was a significant jump in enjoyment. Even adding decoration was able to notably entertain the users. In order to examine the accuracy of the data, they simply compared the data between the gamified calibration and the standard calibration. There were actually some differences in the data. For example, in the calibration of the sensor for measuring chest circumference change, the users actually performed better. However, the differences were relatively accurate; they showed similar trends or only differed by a constant factor. The author's believe that it was the increase in entertainment that might have increased response time or performance. They are unsure if this may have a negative or positive effect on calibration of devices and sensors though.Discussion
I think this work is long overdue. Most people who have experienced any kind of calibration procedure know that it is long, tedious, and boring. Even when game consoles with interactive devices, such as Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, have the user do several boring calibration tasks. This is especially concerning because of the Kinect's inherit purpose of providing entertainment. It surprised me that this kind of work has just been published. I think the evaluation process was appropriate, since they examined the perception of users as well as the data itself. The work was novel in a sense; no one else had explored this aspect of calibration procedures. However, at the same time, many users have complained about how boring and tedious these procedures are to complete, but no one did anything about them until now.
Reference
- Flatla, David, Carl Gutwin, Lenmart Nacke, Scott Bateman, and Reagan Mandryk. "Calibration games: making calibration tasks enjoyable by adding motivating game elements." UIST '11. (2011): 403-12. Web. 30 Aug. 2012.
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