Mobile gaming future: "It's a phone, not a console"

It's a phone, not a console! is an interesting paper about mobile games by Marko Turpeinen, Risto Sarvas, Fernando Herrera from the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. Some excerpts I found relevant:

mobile gaming will be huge because everybody has a mobile phone. However, how can mass-market mobile phones ever compete with handheld game decks such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo Gameboy? (...) Perhaps they should not compete at all. Mobile phone game developers should take advantage of the special characteristics of the device in developing, marketing and distributing new types of games. These characteristics are related to the social nature of the device, e.g. it has an address book that contains your acquaintances and acts as a mediator of messages, it is a portable and shareable picture album, and you can even use it for talking. This combined with the openness of the platforms makes it customizable and moddable in ways not possible with handheld game decks. Also, the network connectiveness of phones combined with extensive coverage of phone networks simply cannot be found in any other portable computer. How can these features be leveraged in creating new forms of mobile entertainment? (...) Drawing from related phenomena including PC game modding, mobile imaging, Geocaching, Habbo Hotel, and Live-Action Role Play (LARP), we offer fresh perspectives and ideas to professional game developers by presenting research findings in mobile gaming and mobile gaming communities.

Why do I blog this? I do admit that I agree with some of the authors' conclusions, as already discussed there. Their point (emphasis in bold) is however balanced by phone technical limitations as I mentionned here, commenting on Greg Costykian's work.

They also have this conclusion:

Rather than just writing papers and giving talks about mobile gaming we base our research on building working prototype systems to test our hypotheses. Therefore, our future research explores the issues discussed in this paper, namely how mobile phones special characteristics could be taken into use in existing game activities and in facilitating the creation of user-designed and implemented game

This is pertinent indeed but I'd be happy to know more about how they "test their hypotheses", I believe there's a lot to learn from what this team do; but this kind of sentence leave unanswered the question of methodologies used to conduct such a project (we don't have the answer here at the lab, it's just that we face the same issues).

Vegetables + R&D

Yesterday when visiting Swisscom R&D labs, I ran across this interesting thing, at the entrance of the R&D facility:

Fives rules of IM

Stowe Boyd sketched an interesting set of cardinal rules about IM uses:

The social aspects of real time life will swamp any specific technology's impacts. I believe in tools, but effective application requires changes in behavior. For example, effective use of IM in groups means people must adopt the five cardinal rules of IM which I tend to agree with:

• Turn on your IM client, and leave it on. (The Turn It On rule).
• Change your IM state as your state changes. (The Coffee Break rule.)
• It is not impolite to ping people. (The Knock-Knock rule.)
• It is not impolite to ignore people. (The I'm Busy rule.)
• Try IM first. (The IM First rule.)

Moreover, a good paper about it is The Character, Functions, and Styles of Instant Messaging in the Workplace By Ellen Isaacs, Alan Walendowski, Steve Whittaker, Diane J. Schiano & Candace Kamm:

Current perceptions of Instant Messaging (IM) use are based primarily on self-report studies. We logged thousands of (mostly) workplace IM conversations and evaluated their conversational characteristics and functions. Contrary to prior research, we found that the primary use of workplace IM was for complex work discussions. Only 28% of conversations were simple, single-purpose interactions and only 31% were about scheduling or coordination. Moreover, people rarely switched from IM to another medium when the conversation got complex. We found evidence of two distinct styles of use. Heavy IM users and frequent IM partners mainly used it to work together: to discuss a broad range of topics via many fast-paced interactions per day, each with many short turns and much threading and multitasking. Light users and infrequent pairs mainly used IM to coordinate: for scheduling, via fewer conversations per day that were shorter, slower-paced with less threading and multitasking.

Why do I blog this? this is not my research but since I am an active IM users, it's sometimes interesting to see how people reflect on IM practices.

Bio-art and "meat production without victimization"

Via Networked Performance, a very insightful special issue of CIAC's electronic magazine about bio-art: There are articles about various artists ranging from Eduardo Kac (the guy who did the the lime-green rabbit) to Katy High's embracing animals. It's a very up-to-date picture of the bio-art scene. My favorite piece in this journal is the Disembodied Cuisine by the Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron CATTS & Ionat ZURR)

In Disembodied Cuisine, a performative installation whose theme was "meat production without victimization", Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary from the Australian Tissue Culture & Art Project cultivated tissue to create a pseudo-positivist junk-food alternative to massive factory farming. Edible, "semi-living sculptures" were cultivated out of isolated muscle cells from frogs on biodegradable polymer scaffolds in bio-reactors. Bio-artists 'fed' them daily with a nutrient solution during their cell-cultured lives in a gallery-laboratory featuring a sterile hood and CO2 incubators. Eight weeks later, at a nouvelle cuisine cookout whose invited guests included the happy creatures spared from slaughter as a direct result of the project, they were flambéed in Calvados and devoured. Menu-handbills advertising the barbecue were distributed at the local farmers' market so that the typical contemporary art audience could be enriched by the presence of butchers interested in the prospect of alternative meat production.

For people who are not aware of it, the "Tissue Culture & Art Project" is hosted by SymbioticA:

SymbioticA is a research laboratory dedicated to the artistic exploration of scientific knowledge in general, and biological technologies in particular. It is located in The School of Anatomy & Human Biology at The University of Western Australia. SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind, in that it enables artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department

Card-driven strategy gameplay

Discovered today, after a meeting at Swisscom, a video of a very innovative augmented-board game by Sega. It's callesd Sangokushi Taisen and it mixed arcade gaming with card-games.

There is a description of this on the IGN website:

As the name may suggest, this game is based on the Sangokushi historical period made popular in the videogame realm through countless Koei titles. Your goal is to make your opponent's castle fall first, making use of cards to control troop movements. The game makes use of the flat card reader technology featured in the popular WCCF soccer arcade game (the most popular arcade attraction in Japan right now), with players moving cards across a flat play surface in real time. Five different types of cards will be featured in the game, each representing a different type of unit. Units have parameters set at different levels, and each has a cost associated with it. You can combine cards only as long as your total cost remains below a total of eight. As with other card-based games, many will enjoy just collecting the cards featured in the game, as they're all decorated with artwork from famous artists.

Why do I blog this? I like this mix of board and card game with a tangible interaction spin. This raise interesting HCi issues (but less interesting is the addiction to buy cards that will suck down massive amounts of yen). There is also a football game with a similar interface (actually it was the first attempt of such a card-driven strategy gameplay).

Ubiquitous computing in the city, evaluation

A smart paper about empirical study of ubiquitous computing: It's a jungle out there:Â practical considerations for evaluation in the city by Melanie Kellar, Derek Reilly, Kirstie Hawkey, Malcolm Rodgers, Bonnie MacKay, David Dearman, Vicki Ha, W. Joseph MacInnes*, Michael Nunes, Karen Parker, Tara Whalen, Kori M. Inkpen (tons of writers!):

An essential aspect of mobile and ubiquitous computing research is evaluation within the expected usage context, including environment. When that environment is an urban center, it can be dynamic, expansive, and unpredictable. Methodologies that focus on genuine use in the environment can uncover valuable insights, although they may also limit measurement and control. In this paper, we present our experiences applying traditional experimental techniques for field research in two separate projects set in urban environments. We argue that although traditional methods may be difficult to apply in cities, the challenges are surmountable, and this kind of field research can be a crucial component of evaluation.

Why do I blog this? Though short, this paper is very relevant with what we do here at the lab (+future company). The paper gives two nice field studies the authors conducted and then elaborate on the issues they had to face (collecting data, bias, noises...). The 'observation in context' is now more and more integrated which is a good point. What is also clever here is the fact that they reflect on one of the experiment failure, and report on what they learnt from this. The conclusion is somehow close to what we got from CatchBob! (translated from a campus environment in our case)

We have reflected upon our experiences applying standard field research techniques when evaluating technology in an urban context. Dynamic and unpredictable, urban environments seriously challenge experimental observation and control. Yet, as our experiences demonstrate, there are also tremendous insights to be gained.

I am also interested in this reference they quote: McGrath, J. E. (1995). Methodology Matters: Doing Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences. In S. Greenberg (Ed.), Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000 (pp. 152-169).

Baby cage?

Tahnks regine for pointing me on this awful resource: baby cage, "specialized in infant confinement system since 2001":

At BabyCage.net we believe that the most important tool you need in life to succeed is discipline. Without discipline and structure, a child may become succeptible to liking rock and roll, doing drugs, or in an extreme case believing in liberalism. Americans need a way to revive the original parent/child structure. Unfortunately in the new world of fear and terror, we cannot do this through violence as parents of the past did. Parents are busier than ever, leaving no time to supervise the children. The smart and educated parents of the world realize that it is not healthy for their children to grow up in a world of fantasy with the television, video games and internet.

Well, it may be a hoax...

Korean electronics company and innovation

When the cutting edge frightens the customers is a clever piece on innovation in the FT. It's about Korean electronic company and they way they're thinking about new products:

both companies are now at a critical juncture as they face a fundamental contradiction: they are concentrating on high-end products, particularly in mobile phones, but ever-smarter gadgets are becoming more intimidating and difficult to use for the average customer. These markets are also becoming saturated and new growth is to be found at the low end. So how do Samsung and LG, number three and five respectively in the global handset market, avoid a Sony-style post-Walkman product crisis? (...) “Sometimes it’s difficult to do market research because often consumers don’t know what they want,” says Lee Hee-gook, chief technology officer at LG Electronics, best known for home appliances, mobile phones and flat screens. (...) No product exemplifies this dilemma better than the mobile phone, analysts say. “They are developing these all-seeing, all-doing handsets that can do everything but shine your shoes, but does the phone-using public really want that level of capability?” asks Mr Morris. “And more importantly, will they pay for it?” (...) Over at Samsung, Mr Yun laments this conundrum. Samsung and LG have both built mobile phones with practically flawless television capability, but as Mr Yun puts it, the “unknown question” is how many people want to watch TV on their phones. [I don't believe in this -nicolas] (...) “The question is, how well will they use these things? People’s needs are different so we need to think about what is the device that is going to enable them to watch or utilise whatever device they need,” Mr Yun adds. [ah finally! this is the crux issue -nicolas] (...) “At any point you have to get realistic and check that what you’re doing makes sense.” [nice quote! -nicolas]

Why do I blog this? cell phones nicely exemplify how innovation is a tough issue. It's interesting (with regard to my work) how companies innovate and at what point they integrate the user-experience issue.

Temporary Habitat

I find this kind of device utterly marvelous: Temporary Habitat [02] by Saranont Limpanont (NYT):

Because human is the most important factor in any habitats, habitats cannot illustrate their value If nobody utilizes it. The concept of this temporary habitat is to use human body as a part of its structure. If nobody is inside, this habitat would collapse and become just a junk. On the other hand, if we dwell in it and use our body as a part of its structure, this junk cardboard can provide a flexible personal space for us. Form and space of this habitat can be adjusted to many patterns depending on different activities.

Networked home usage

Riad pointed me on this paper: The Work to Make a Home Network Work by Rebecca E. Grinter, W. Keith Edwards, Mark W. Newman and Nicolas Ducheneaut at ECSCW 2005.

Recently, households have begun to adopt networking technologies to interconnect devices within the home. Yet little is known about the consequences for households of setting up and living with these complex networks, nor the impact of such technologies on the routines of the home. In this paper, we report findings from an empirical study of households containing complex networks of computer and audio/visual technologies. Our study finds that home networks require significant household effort not just to coordinate their use, but also their set up and maintenance. We also show how the coordination around networking has to be worked into the routines of the home and the householders.

Why do I blog this? I am not into 'house-of-the-future" research but it's intricately related to my projects about how people use location-awareness in the sense that automating too much processes thanks to technology (with location information in CatchBob or with home networked) might be detrimental for users. I believe that this is an important trend that shoudl be taken into account by designers (with user/activity-centered research).

Atrocious skateboard mouth protections

Via mouthguards, impressive skateboard mouth protections (called SKATEBOARDING PROTECTION: Gumshields for Serious Sports):

Welcome to the Gumshields.com portal for protecting teeth in serious sports and extreme sports. SKATEBOARDING MOUTHGUARDS PROTECT YOUR TEETH: SERIOUS SKATEBOARDING needs serious protection. Gumshields mouthguards are an essential part of your serious sport equipment and what better protection for the serious sportsperson than a gumshield mouthguard made by Gumshields.com -the specialists mouthguard makers in serious sport gumshields for tooth protection.

Corrupted FTP

Brendan Dawes's work about FTP seems to be cool:

Corrupted: Ftp As Art: Mistakes often lead to new insights and new thinking. This project came out of a complete mistake. Whilst uploading some pictures to my server via my usual FTP software, I mistakenly had the transfer type set to TEXT. It should be set to BINARY or AUTO. When I went to view the images I found they had been distorted and twisted into something new. A techno glitch had created completely new imagery.

For instance, the left picture is the original and then the corrupted version is on the right:

Why do I blog this? I like this kind of corrupted art.

Are location-based services boring?

A very relevant blogpost by Russell Buckley on Mobhappy adresses an important fact in the 'location-based services' world: there is little user-centered application that really worth it. Russell exemplifies this thanks to four services supported by BT:

• Child and elderly people tracking: founded on two basically wrong assumptions (in the distressing case of an abduction, the kidnapper doesn't know that the phone can be tracked. The first thing they do unfortunately, is dump or switch off the phone + the second assumption is that such services track the child. They don't. They track the phone) + Old people tracking? For the life of me, I can't see why the elderly might consent to be tracked or why others might want to track them
• Traffic and directions: can be useful, in extremis. But hardly exciting.
• Find my nearest things like ATM's, supermarkets and Petrol/Gas stations: Find my nearest apps have been around for a while now and frankly, there isn't much a demand for them
• Employee spying (actually they call it "tracking")

I also like his conclusion about BT's services:

So while it's laudable that BT are deploying LBS, they really need to go back to basics and ask why anyone would want to use any of these services, at least on more than an occasional basis. But coming up with answers to this, probably needs a type of creativity that would not typically be found working in a large corporate like BT.

Why do I blog this? I think that Russell raised here a crux issue: location-based services are way too much technology driven and 'feature oriented' as if engineers had struggled to find potential uses for a new feature that could be embedded on a cell phone. An interesting point here is the relation between the activity people and the spatial dimension. Location-based services allow users to get some context-awareness (i.e. take advantage of spatiality to trigger specific events or give contextual information) and to use space as help people in their task (navigation/wayfinding, matchmaking). But who needs that? ok wayfinging support or serendipituous meeting is intriguing but would it be used? I don't want to play the party pooper here but I am not sure it will work like this.

Anyway that does not mean that LBS are overflawed, useless and bound to disappear. I'd rather think that it can be targeted for:

• niche-markets for which space is important and, above all, meaningful: firefighters/emergency crew/army (who may need decentralized control obtained thanks to location-awareness of others), dispatchers/logistics (?)...
• games: a new way to create original challenges and/or interactions
• interactive art
• what else?!

Life-hacking in the NYT

An insightful article in the NYT about life hacking. The article begins by summarizing the work of Gloria Mark who studied office work and came up with an atrocious description of how people work (or can't work):

When Mark crunched the data (...) Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What's more, each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take, on average, 25 minutes to return to that task. (...) Yet while interruptions are annoying, Mark's study also revealed their flip side: they are often crucial to office work. (...) If high-tech work distractions are inevitable, then maybe we can re-engineer them so we receive all of their benefits but few of their downsides. Is there such a thing as a perfect interruption?

And all of this leads to Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann who are doing a terrific job blogging about life hacking (see 43folders, it's the best resource about life hacking)

In essence, the geeks were approaching their frazzled high-tech lives as engineering problems - and they were not waiting for solutions to emerge from on high, from Microsoft or computer firms. Instead they ginned up a multitude of small-bore fixes to reduce the complexities of life, one at a time, in a rather Martha Stewart-esque fashion.

Why do I blog this? this article is a great piece about office work troubles and potential solutions (aka life hacking + common stuff like 'calm technology' and so forth), there is a good summary of past research (academic) and geeky solutions that are tremendously useful.

Kleine Basel wind experiment

In the BUBBLE (Basel Urban Boundary Layer Experiment) project, there is an intriguing study meant to understand the effects of wind on a city (in this case: Basel, Switzerland):

Wind tunnel studies offer an excellent opportunity for systematic and extensive turbulence measurements with boundary conditions which are better known and controlled than in full scale experiments.Â

This is the motivation for the realization of an extensive wind tunnel model of the city part "Kleinbasel" at the scale 1:300. The model covers an area of a bit less than 3 km² of urban roughness densely covered by over 3 200 houses as it is typical for Basel and other european urban environments of comparable size. The reference is given by a 3d digital urban model provided by the local authorities supplemented by over 200 photos documenting street canyons, buildings arrangements and measures as well as details of the respective roof shapes. (...) a succesful delivery of this wind tunnel study will provide an extensive reference data set for urban turbulence and pollutant dispersion particularly suited for the comparison with numerical model predictions.

Why do I blog this? the picture made me think of less serious application: a huge machine to send wind on basel so that people can kite-surf the Rhine :) Ok, it's sunday, maybe I should have a cup of tea.

NordiCHI in Oslo, fall 2006

NordiCHI Oslo, Norway, October 14-18, 2006.

The Fourth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: "Changing Roles" NordiCHI is the main Nordic forum for human-computer interaction research. NordiCHI is the meeting place for researchers from academia and industry, designers, practitioners, educators and others from a broad range of traditions and communities. (...) Traditionally, Nordic perspectives on HCI emphasise topics such as: technology in use, integration of design and use, user participation in design, exploratory design activities, and inter-disciplinary approaches to HCI (...) The main theme for the conference is “Changing roles”. We currently see a reshaping of almost every aspect of society, which is caused by the forces of globalization and new technology. Do we need to change our roles as developers, researchers and designers? How can we maintain focus on the user in this ever changing environment? Will the role of HCI change?

Why do I blog this? let's consider a paper for this conference, I like the nordic approach to computing, the emphasis on context/usage is very relevant.

"The adult's product and the child's are often one and the same"

In the NYT/IHT, there is a good article about As gadgets replace toys, what's in it for kids? By Michael Barbaro. It's about an important trend: adults' and kids' artifacts like high-tech gadgets are now tending to be the same.

the push to sell consumer electronics to preteens is touching off an animated debate about whether the products qualify as toys, as manufacturers contend, and whether it is wise to break down one of the last barriers between children's play and adult technology. Â For decades, toy makers have designed products that allow children to mimic adult behavior, but it was, in the end, always make-believe. No matter how many electronic bells and whistles the latest toy truck had, it was still a toy. But with the latest crop of electronics for children 6 to 12, there is little pretending. The adult's product and the child's are often one and the same.

Why do I blog this? this trend is interesting, artifacts like cell-phones, digital video camera, DVD players are now used by both; how this is reflected in their design? and what would be the impacts of this: will kids drop kid-centered design and prefer the adults version?

Latency in MMORPG and user's performance in Warcraft III

I already mentioned how the topic of network latency might impact users' performance/expectations/pleasure while playing games. Here is an interesting article about how it modifies WarcraftIII's players performance: The effect of latency on user performance in Warcraft III by N Sheldon, E Girard, S Borg, M Claypool, E Agu (Proceedings of ACM NetGames, 2003).

Latency on the Internet is a well-known problem for interactive applications. With the increase in interactive network games comes the increased importance of understanding the effects of latency on user performance. Classes of network games such as First Person Shooters (FPS) and Real Time Strategy (RTS) differ in their user interaction model and hence susceptibility to latency. While previous work has measured the effects of latency on FPS games, there has been no systematic investigation of the effects of latency on RTS games. In this work, we design and conduct user studies that measure the impact of latency on user performance in Warcraft III, a popular RTS game. As a foundation for the research, we separated typical Warcraft III user interactions into the basic components of explore, build and combat, and analyzed each individually. We find modest statistical correlations between user performance and latency for exploration, but very weak correlations for building and combat. Overall, the effect of even very high latency, while noticeable to users, has a negligible effect on the outcome of the game. We attribute this somewhat surprising result to the nature of RTS game-play that clearly favors strategy over the real-time aspects.

Why do I blog this? I am currently working on that issue for a project. It's interesting to see that compared to what has been found in FPS, latency is less detrimental to RTS performance.

About Campus Space

The new Steelcase newsletter raises nice questions about campus space (pdf, html). It's about the fact that the number of students is increasing (since few decades) and those people "has brought unique expectations and behaviors to campus."

These trends are driving changes that are reflected in the facilities being built and renovated on campuses. Two categories of campus environments in particular are undergoing dramatic transformations: research labs and residence halls. (...) “Normally, people are very concerned about their space,” says Saltiel. Now, he says, “there’s not this concept of territory anymore. People forget about it and go on to the next thing, which is doing research.” (...) Architects say more clients at research universities want larger, more open labs. (...) Interdisciplinary research means labs must be multipurpose facilities that can change easily to accommodate different types of work. (...) Many scientists listen to music with headphones to block out distractions. Some offices are set apart so academics have private space to concentrate. (...) Just as labs are opening up as workspaces, more interdisciplinary science buildings are going up on campuses.(...) Bringing diverse specializations together in one facility and encouraging interaction through features such as open stairwells and informal conversation areas increases the chances for significant discovery within the labs

Why do I blog this? I am interested in the social (and cognitive) functions/affordances of space, that's why I found this relevant. The sentence I put in bold font is also very intriguing: how amazing would be this connection between workspace and interdisciplinary facilities/labs.

On the other side of the track, I am always amazed by empty buildings in various universities in which this sort of intents miserably failed. It's a pity because I do think it can work out.

MP3 Breasts

An odd news on Ananova today: musical breast implants:

Computer chips that store music could soon be built into a woman's breast implants. One boob could hold an MP3 player and the other the person's whole music collection. BT futurology, who have developed the idea, say it could be available within 15 years. BT Laboratories' analyst Ian Pearson said flexible plastic electronics would sit inside the breast. A signal would be relayed to headphones, while the device would be controlled by Bluetooth using a panel on the wrist.

A fully intangible interaction... wtf!?

More about it: The future of breast implants by Ian Pearson:

Silicone sounds a bit like silicon, which of course is used in many electronic chips. That’s because silicone gel is based on silicon. In fact, it is possible to make some electronic circuits based on silicone, though they are not well suited to heavy computing tasks. Other kinds of plastic can even be used to make organic displays (using organic LEDs). So knowing this as an engineer, it is now very hard for me to think of breast implants as purely decorative. I just can’t help feeling that if a woman is going to have something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful. (...) So why not still use a combination of silicone and other plastics in the implant, but do something useful with them? One implant could house a range of gadgetry such as an MP3 player and the other store the woman’s entire music collection – we call this concept mammary memory! God provides her with two beautifully designed control knobs to select the track and adjust the volume.

This last point is utterly crazy... hopefully the end is better: "of course, there are now a wide range of medical monitors in use"