There is now a Flickr group devoted to street cleaning vehicles. Please hop in! It's absolutely unrelated to our work, we just targeted lomo-users, urban drifters, C-level excutives, extreme-ironers, turbo-golfers... that means everybody.
Alex Wiltshire's take on gamespaces in ICON is very interesting. Here are some excerpts (I put some emphasis on parts I found relevant):
The aim of every gamespace is to provide for and enhance gameplay with engaging and believable environments. The design must take into account how players will use, interact with and move through the space, and how they will approach and depart from it. A successful design will subtly control the player's behaviour and evoke emotion, using an array of devices, such as architecture, lighting and camera work.It will also suspend the player's disbelief by providing a consistent set of physical and behavioural rules that govern the way the game environment and its inhabitants act. (...) Technology is a vital factor in creating believable environments, as it defines the level of possible detail in a gamespace. (...) More processing power also enables more visual effects.(...) But processing power is still profoundly limited. (...) Technology is by no means the only influence in the creation of a gamespace. Designers consider two other sets of choices when creating game environments: how to make a space that provides good gameplay, and how to present the gamespace aesthetically in order to create atmosphere and a sense of place. (...) esigners consider where the start point, or tee, in a level is. They must think about all the things that the player can see from that point, decide on the view distance and which hazards to show and which to hide. The goal of the level should either be shown or hinted at, with the mechanics - or, to continue the analogy, the golf clubs - to achieve the goal made clear. (...) A basic way of creating a sense of movement is with types of walls: long, linear walls encourage movement along them; tall, thin walls suggest movement up them; concave structures invite players inside; and convex structures encourage them to move around the building. Rhythm can be achieved with the repetition of certain structures, such as bulkheads along the length of a corridor on a space ship, which move or nudge the player forward with confidence and security. Tension can then be introduced with a sudden break in the pattern, like a collapsed strut in the corridor, that makes the pattern unpredictable. The designer can thus direct the player's mood and movement. A problem with creating richly detailed environments in games is a resulting loss of legibility, which leads to players not noticing elements that are meant to prompt specific behaviour, such as a certain action that must be performed or the direction for progression. (...) Viktor Antonov. "Our art department uses basic design principles close to those of photography, such as contrast, silhouette, grouping elements together in larger masses, the use of perspective to draw attention and define a focal point and the use of colour to suggest depth and to play with moods. Sometimes we want to overwhelm the player's senses with a large amount of visual noise, and at other times offer a moment of rest with a low-contrast area." (...) he lack of such a narrative in multiplayer first-person shooter games, like Quake 3 Arena (1999) and Unreal Tournament (1999), means that the principles of design behind these gamespaces are entirely different. Levels are designed to enable as much player-to-player interaction as possible. Each space in a level features multiple entry points so players can snipe, assault and escape, with the only limit to freedom being their skill. Important beneficial items are placed in certain areas to intensify action, and the most successful multiplayer levels are very simple in form, such as the classic Facing Worlds level for Unreal Tournament, which features two towers connected by two bridges that cross in the middle. The objective for the two teams is to capture their opponent's flag and return it to their own tower. Such simplicity means that the level is quickly understood by players, allowing them to formulate strategies easily. (...) Once planned, gamespaces must be given meaning and significance for the player - a sense of place and atmosphere - with a set of aesthetic choices. (...) When building an environment, our production team tries to create a sense of place with real history and depth.
Why do I blog this? I always have been interested by level design. It's closely related to my research topic (how people use spatial information to collaborate on something). And video-games provides very smart environment that engage player in various activities. There are strong connection with architecture and urban planning. It seems that some architects are now observing video games, trying to understand what could be useful for their purposes. For that matter, Steffen Walz's project is very relevant. It's about using game design method to enrich architecture methods.
A submitted paper for Digra 2005 (I think they made a mistake and the system is badly protected, we should not be allowed to access to submission):User Experience in Designing Mobile Multiplayer Games by Anu Kankainen. The authors, as a user experience practioners, explains how motivation relates to the mobile gamer experience.
A motive is understood as a need that is driving the user to interact with the game. This need is often emotionally directed. (...) Motivational level needs address “why a person is doing what s/he is doing”; action level needs address “how person is doing what s/he is doing.” Action level needs are often cognitive level needs that are related to a mental model of how to conduct an action. Motive and action does not have a meaning without context. Context issues - time, place, things and people- are especially relevant to mobile game applications, since the game-playing environment can vary substantially. (...) 49 mobile game users participated in the tests. (...) design guideline examples:
- MOTIVE: Games fulfil social motives by letting the avatar enjoy respect, love, or power, which the player will feel when really immersed in a game. Multiplayer games bring social concepts into play. Interacting with others makes people feel they belong to a group and that they get respect from others. Cooperation and competition are two sides of a coin. Being a member of a group requires friendly cooperation, but at the same time there is a constant competition for status within the group. Playing against real people means that power and admiration are at stake.
- Games become more interesting when players can compare their performance with the performance of possible community members. Give the user the possibility of updating his/her scores to the high-score list of the game community despite the level of his/her scores.
- Show the user both the scores of some of the best players and the scores of players who performed closest to the user.
- Consider using the community high-score list in selecting opponents of equal strength for multiplayer games.
- ACTION: Post game consists of actions after the game is over. Game communities, high-score lists, or chat with other players about game strategies and tactics can be an essential part of the game experience. In our user tests the greatest difficulties when acting in a game community were caused by inadequate feedback.
- When the user is connected to a game server, s/he needs to know what has happened and is happening in order to know what to do next. If there is no feedback about interactions on the server, the user will think the actions have failed.
- After the user has uploaded a file (for example, a clip or a ghost) to a server, provide clear feedback that the file has been uploaded and where the destination folder is.
- After the user has sent a challenge to a friend, provide feedback that the challenge has been sent successfully.
- CONTEXT (TIME): In two-player games, the player does not usually keep playing when his/her opponent is interrupted. However, it should be possible to continue the game after the interruption, because short interruptions are frequent in mobile contexts.
- In two-player games, the game should go into Pause mode for both players if one of the players is interrupted, for example by an incoming call. It must be possible to continue the game.
- When in Pause mode, the game should go into its Main menu or Pause menu where the first command is “continue 2-player game”. It must be possible to quit the game during the pause, because the interruption may take long time.
- The player who was not interrupted should receive information about why the game is being paused. For example, “Waiting for other player to continue”. In games with more than two players, other gamers may want to continue when one player is interrupted, therefore pausing everybody’s game is not a convenient solution.
- Design games with more than two players so that the interruption of one player does not interfere with the other players’ game. The interrupted player’s game can be switched to the background without pausing the game or the player is dropped from the game. The preferred action depends on the game type.
Why do I blog this? This all relates to the discussion we often have at the lab about how to engage users with mobile technology. A tough issue.
Stamkey is a pc/mobile application developed by Sachihata. A tag embeds personal information into a camera-phone readable format that can be imported into mobile phones. As I don't read japanese, I rely on Josh Rubin's blog for the game comcept explanation:
The Stamkey is a stamp that you open up and creates a 2D barcode that can be scanned by a mobile phone. The data received from the barcode is personal information, which is then stored in the mobile. They say that people are placing these 2D barcodes on business cards. But really the possibilities are endless. Just think, no more standing around dictating digits for another for punch in their phone or the expected call back for proper digit exchange.
(via) New Scientist has a very pertinent article about map hackers (like Jo Walsh who use GPS to build their own maps.
ARMED with a Global Positioning System receiver and a pair of itchy feet, Jo Walsh walks a different route around town each week. She is slowly but steadily building a digital map of her neighbourhood in Bristol, UK. In doing so, Walsh is reinventing the pioneering spirit, for she is one of hundreds of people using cheap, off-the-shelf satellite tracking equipment to make their own maps.The principle is simple. Set your GPS receiver to record longitude and latitude at frequent intervals during a walk, bike ride or car trip, then download the information to a computer and watch as it traces out your journey on screen. And by combining data from various trips, you'll get a rough but usable digital map of the world you live in. "You just need a GPS receiver and data cable and then anyone can do it," says Walsh's husband and collaborator Schuyler Erle
Let's then quote their book: Map Hacks, a must-read for map hacker wannabees. The collaborative map field appears to be booming, it's funny that there were no talk about it (as well as about locative media) at eTech 2005. Maybe, as Jo said in the Locative mailing list it's because it's now no longer emerging but people begins to really use it! OK so now collaborative cartography is not just a trend, it's used; which is good. I see many interesting domain in which it could be useful, ranging from educational purposes (learning how to map, discovering areas...) to more serious issues (for firefighters and deminers for instance)
Douglas Rushkoff in the Feature also deal with that issue. He underline the very thriving "collaborative map/cartography" community and also claim that the wireless industry is not so much into it.
Although media artists are desperately in love with the possibilities afforded by locative media, sadly, the mobile phone industry outside of Japan and South Korea hasn't exactly warmed to the nascent field. The Mapping Hacks trio's list of demands from operators and manufacturers includes low-cost location lookups, user access (through the phone) to everything that his phone knows and open hardware and software platforms for experimentation and innovation. All of these comprise a fairly reasonable wish list, but considering the conflicting interests of the many links in the mobile value chain, the operative word is still "wish." (...) nd until locative media applications offer wireless providers or phone manufacturers a genuine competitive advantage in the way that, say, driving maps do, a future of collaborative cartography may have to wait until kids raised on GPS crayons are running the world.
Peter Dreyer in Future Now advocates for a flickr-like website for personal maps.
Imagine if we all gave up some of our right to privacy and produced and shared dynamical private maps. Not just maps of the local neighbourhood, but maps containing information about when we had been where. Pretty straightforward. It would no longer be left to Hollywood to speculate in what would have happened, if I had taken another route to the office this morning - or if I had been 10 minutes late. On the map sharing server (Mapr?) some pattern recognition routine would allow me to see, who I would have met in that case. It would even be possible to perform match making among persons travelling in my foot steps but at different times. People I may otherwise never have met would suddenly leave anonymity. As in the movies our lifes would begin to converge.
Some interesting data-mining could indeed be done... but it raises huge privacy issues...
A rough list of how I am analysing CatchBob data:
excel files:- results.xls: paht, time, refresh... client parsing - Results_map_annotations.xls: map annotations on the tabletPC - results_drawings.xls: drawn paths1) Map annotations
Absolute number of messages in both conditions: total, position, direction, signal. strategy, off-task, acknowledgement and correction Variance analysis to check the differences (+normality+ homosedasticity)
% number of messages/total in both conditions: total, position, direction, signal. strategy, off-task, acknowledgement and correction Variance analysis to check the differences (+normality+ homosedasticity)
Frequency of messages/time in both conditions: total, position, direction, signal. strategy, off-task, acknowledgement and correction Variance analysis to check the differences (+normality+ homosedasticity)
***** correlation between number of position messages and number of direction messages **** **** split the groups (post-hoc) in 2 (50/50 or 40/20/40 depending on the repartition) and check if the group who annotate a lot make less errors IF yes: annotation is good, if not: the awareness tool makes people asleep! *****
2) Time analysis
Time= time spent to find bob (till YOU WON)
Histogram(time), normality Time spent in both conditions Variance analysis: NoAT seemed to have more time to write messages (and then more position messages).
3) Errors analysis
Errors = sum of the number of errors made by A to draw B and C's paths Histogram(errors), normality Errors made in both conditions Variance analysis: NoAT make less errors : anova(awareness~errors) Covariance analysis: try to include the time in the model: anova(awareness~errors * time) The comparison of those two model (with or without time taken into account) is not significant
*****Try a model adding workload, disconnection or path length or bob's position********
4) Path length
Our real dependant variable Path length = sum of individual's path length among a group Histogram(length), normality Length made in both conditions Variance analysis: anova(awareness~length) !!!!!!! Multi Level Modelling !!!!!!! Analysis at the group level: data are not independent *****Try to create new model: covariate with: Time, workload, bob's position, disconnection****
5) Workload
Workload = NASA TLX evaluation Histogram(workload), normality Workload made in both conditions Variance analysis: anova(awareness~workload) !!!!!!! Multi Level Modelling !!!!!!! Analysis at the group level: data are not independent *****Try to create new model: covariate with: Time, length, bob's position, disconnection*****
6) Verbalization after the game ...
7) Various correlations Pearsons or Spearman or Kendall: it might often be Spearman/Kendall since the data are not linear
- correlation between number of position messages and number of direction messages - number of messages (total, position, direction...) and path length (groupe/individual?) - errors and number of messages (total, position...) for the 2 conditions and for each - errors and path length (more errors when path is longer?) - number of refresh (AT) and number of errors - intragroup correlation of number of messages
8) Division of labor - indexes: task div, backtracking, overlap - Do the teams with synchronous awareness tools develop different problem solving strategies than those with asynchronous awareness tools? Different division of labor ?
9) Other questions - How does the frequency of coordination acts (explicit or implicit) vary over time? Are these request more frequent at the beginning of a task or do they increase at specific phases in terms of problem solving strategy? - intragroup correlation of number of refresh (AT)
10) Other techniques to explore?? - Sequential analysis: I need to find some literature to create my models then - Multilevel modeling - Cluster analysis
Thanks regine for pointing me on this nice blog about interactive table design! It's about the new incarnation of the dialog table
Like a regular table, Dialog is designed for social interactions, but it utilizes digital technologies and an innovative interface to facilitate learning more about the arts. Gesture recognition and video-tracking software allow multiple users to interact simultaneously with a variety of information appearing on the screen. Using metaphors of water, players can choose artworks by selecting, enlarging, and dragging images from an available "pool" of content to individual "puddles." Connections, represented as threads, are made between artworks, creating links among various pieces and users. Additional information can be obtained about the artwork, including related audio and video clips. Another function allows users to print postcards of favorite works.
This prototype was commissioned by the Walker Art Center through an international design competition in 2002.
A condensed version of Fabien's work is available here. It's a shorter version of his previous report about our CatchBob! game.
According to sonntagszeitung, Switzerland is going to wrap its glacier to protect them. In 2001, a glacier in Valais had shrunk by some 2.5km, and its 'snout' had shifted about 450 metres higher up according to the BBC. They will use a peculiar PVC foam. I am looking forward to see how it look like.
Yesterday I read this book: DARTFISH, LOGITECH, SWISSQUOTE ET CO. «Les transformeurs IT, les nouveaux acteurs du changement» by Xavier Comtesse and other people. It's about innovation, startup experiences in Switzerland. It's very easy to read. The claim of the author is that Switzerland has a powerful R&D but it often failed at turning this into concrete outcome/experiences/products/success stories. The most interesting part of the book presents various companies with different experiences, ranging from successfull startups (Dartfish, Swissquote) to state-owned elephant (swisscom and ascom who failed becoming telco giants) or big bluchip (logitech which works pretty good). They also advocate for the advent of a new type of company they called "transformers" that do not try to replicate already existing business (like selling books online) but innovate in creating a new end-user experience. Another relevant point is their willingness to put forward the notion of "end-user innovation" which does not seem so obvious to swiss engineer much more focused on designing nice and precise solutions for specific problems (but not so targeted to end-users). They then advocate for more marketing and user-centric innovation.
Nice book to understand more about the innovation topic in Switzerland :) Summary here (thanks hannes).
Social software for dogs is moving forward. After dogster (and its hamster variant), there is now SNIF: Social Networking in Fur which seems way better. Dogster was based on sharing stuff about your puppy (pics...). SNIF is ahead: it's a system that allows pet owners to interact through their pets' social networks. The point is to network through dogs: dogs serve as a very strong social catalyzer.
This paper by Noah Fields, Jonathan Gips, Philip Liang and Arnaud Pilpré offers an interesting description of the project as well as some potential scenarios. What's next?
(via), a Wall and Floor application made by Lightspace:It's intended to "promotes healthy social interaction among children, integrates physical activity and electronic entertainment". According to them, "the Lightspace system provides a way to reap the benefits of this trend toward interactive games without having to invest in new real estate".
Lightspace is a revolutionary entertainment system that combines the latest lighting and interactive technologies to produce a recreational experience that will provide hours of fun to children and adults of all ages. The system is capable of storing and running a potentially limitless variety of interactive programs and can be used by any number of participants simultaneously. Lightspace creates an engaging experience that will draw young children, teenagers and adults. Lightspace provides significant return on investment by generating the repeat-customer business so critical for family entertainment center growth and profitability.
This new game called Spore seems impressive in terms of user-centric innovation. With Will Wright (The Sims, SimCity...) as game designer, it's very appealing. At the Game Design Conference, he explained the main assumptions:
At the same time, what he calls the "value to gamers" levels off after a while. (...) But fortunately, Wright learned another lesson from The Sims: People love to make their own content. They love to customize their experience. By way of example, he put up a slide showing his Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas character -- who wore a fedora and red-heart boxer shorts. His character was ridiculous-looking, but it made the experience custom for him. Players get a huge value out of content they make for themselves. "Owning" the content in this way means that all the stories that the gamer creates are much more meaningful. Putting two and two together, Wright concluded that there had to be some way where users could create content, instead of armies of developers, and a way to make a game craft itself around the user's contribution.
Based on this concept, the poitn is to allow players to raise tiny microscopic creature and let them evolve into somthing more complex. To do so, the player is provided an editor interface cto custom his creatures as well as buildings. Then the point is to play with all that stuff:
he tide-pool played like Pac-Man, the tribal game played like Populous, the city conflict game played like Civilization. But on the whole the game is pretty light and casual. 40% of it, Wright estimates, is just aesthetics: building stuff you think looks cool and discovering stuff that other people have built.
Why do I blog this? just because it's another example of "give more power to the users"
An article in the IHT about the rise of mobile gaming:
For now, many of us take a spin through the games menu on our phones only because of the Mount Everest phenomenon: because it's there. But that is the extent of our adventurousness. Mostly, we stick to solitaire or poker games. But In-Fusio, your mobile phone carrier and the rest of the industry want game-playing by phone - either by yourself or with others - to be part of your standard daily entertainment. (...) 5 million registered players who have generated 35 million downloads for its carrier customers around the world, Giles Corbett, co-chief executive of the Bordeaux-based In-Fusio, (...) Even though cellphone game-downloading isn't turning out to be the huge hit carriers hoped for a few years ago, they still need to offer it for their younger customers. For carriers, Corbett said, "It is very much about appealing to new groups of consumers who will be their core market the next 20 years or so." The key to getting more of us to play, Corbett maintains, is simplicity. If it is a one- or two-click process to get a new game for a couple of euros, we'll do it. Besides making games itself, In-Fusio builds and manages the games infrastructure for mobile operators. Its newest "game engine," which needs to be built into phones as they are being manufactured, gives players more options. Orange of France will be the first to use it, probably starting this summer. For one thing, the software will let you have access to a catalogue of games on your phone, without being connected to the network. Whenever you download a game, it updates the catalogue in the background. In addition, Corbett said, "Within two clicks, I can recommend the game to a friend, or I can rate the game. More importantly, I can see how all of the other users have rated each game."
The rating/recommendation system is appealing, with lots of users it might work well and be fruitful.
Nokia is testing (06/2004) fuel cell operated bluetooth headsets. The point is that it offers quick charge and instantaneous refill + energy in a flexible shape as stated by Yrjo Neuvo (.pdf). 2ml of methanol = 10.5 hours (talk time) or 84h (standby time).
A great artist group: compote du crime. My favorite project is their inflatable plastic bag, just find it great:
thanks cedric!
Last week, in a post about the PS2 pad used to send missiles I said " military material is normally way ahead video games ". This statement seemed to raise eyebrowses. Some said that it was the opposite. Maybe I was misunderstood, the point is that I perceived military hardware or material to be ahead, and not the usage. Militaries have indeed money to try different stuff, sometimes it works (gps, networks...) and sometimes not (4bit processors in radar systems,punch cards? ). Armies (mostly in the US have money to try out lots of projects then... the usage is a different topic. And here comes the video game developers who hack the technologies and turn then into something new. And what is interesting here is that the army is more and more paying attention to the bleeding edge: video games. It seems that it's less difficult for the army to develop hardware and devices (they do have to deal with so much marketing issues if it's public, they throw prototypes and... “The street finds its own uses for things” (william gibson)
.dot.dot.dot is a wearable display that connects to your mobile phone and is triggered by your communication. by designing different animations for your closest relationships (best friends, parents, boy/girlfriends) and saving them on .dot.dot.dot you can express to the people around you who you're talking to. if it's your girlfriend, design an animation for a beating heart. when she calls or texts you, .dot.dot.dot will light up with your animation. .dot.dot.dot also has a joystick so you can play games with friends over sms.
