You can download a program description (pdf).
| Wednesday | 13.06.2007 |
|---|---|
| 09:00 | Welcome |
| 09:15 | Keynote |
| 10:30 | Coffee |
| 11:00 | Session 1: Mobile and Social Games |
| 12:15 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | Session 2: Games Evaluation |
| 16:00 | Coffee |
| 16:30 | Session 3: Games In New Environments Part 1 |
| 18:45 | Guided Tours: Salzburg by night (city hills tour, downtown tour and beer tour) |
| 21:00 | "Playing Games - understanding games" Evening event |
| Thursday | 14.06.2007 |
| 09:00 | Morning Comedy: Research Collaboration for “Humorous Interaction” |
| 09:30 | Session 4: Pervasive Games And Robots |
| 10:45 | Coffee |
| 11:15 | Session 5: Games and Techniques |
| 13:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | Poster and Demos 1 |
| 15:30 | Coffee |
| 16:00 | Session 6: Tangible |
| 17:15 | Session 7: Music |
| 19:30 | Social Event departure |
| Friday | 15.07.2007 |
| 09:00 | |
| 10:00 | Session 8: Games in New Environments Part 2 |
| 11:00 | Coffee |
| 11:30 | Poster and Demos 2 |
| 13:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | Final Keynote |
| 15:00 | Wrap up & Farewell |
Workshop schedule
9.00 – 10.30
Coffee break served from 10.30 – 11.00
11.00 – 12.30
Lunch served 12.30 – 13.30
13.30 – 16.00
Coffee break served from 16.00 – 16.30
16.30 – 18.00
Methods for Evaluating Games - How to measure Usability and User Experience in Games (R. Bernhaupt, M. Eckschlager, M. Tscheligi)
This workshop addresses current needs in the games developers’ community to evaluate the overall user experience of games. New forms of interaction techniques, like gestures, eye-tracking or even bio-physiological input and feedback show the limits of current evaluation methods for user experience, and even standard usability within games. This workshop intends to bring together practitioners and researchers sharing their experiences using methods from HCI to measure usability and user experience in games. We invited also contributions from other disciplines showing new concepts for user experience evaluation, especially from the game industry.
Transmedial Interactions and Digital Games (S. Bardzell, V. Wu, J. Bardzell, N. Quagliara)
As virtual worlds and games grow in both personal and cultural importance, present limitations in access to them is increasingly limiting their ability to achieve their potential. Transmedial access, in which a given player’s access to a game is made possible across different devices, offers a promising solution to this problem. It also inaugurates a new category of interaction design: transmedial interaction.
This workshop explores the state of the art of transmedial interaction in games, which today unfortunately is often at most mere afterthought. It provides a participatory environment in which attendees can chart new paths forward, from developing viable business models and understanding the technical infrastructure to developing critical vocabularies and evaluative frameworks.
Playing with Your Brain: Brain-Computer Interfaces and Games (A. Nijholt, D. Tan)
Advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging technologies provide us with the increasing ability to interface directly with activity in the brain. Researchers have begun to use these technologies to build brain-computer interfaces. In these interfaces, humans intentionally manipulate their brain activity in order to directly control a computer or physical prostheses. The ability to communicate and control devices with thought alone has especially high impact for individuals with reducedcapabilities for muscular response. In fact, applications for patients with severe motor disabilities have been the driving force of most brain-computer interface research.
Although removing the need for motor movements in computer interfaces is challenging and rewarding, we believe that the full potential of brain sensing technologies as an input mechanism lies in the extremely rich information it could provide about the state of the user. Having access to this state information is valuable to human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers and opens up at least three distinct areas of research:
• direct control by thought, that is, inducing thoughts to manipulate brain activity that can be mapped onto game interaction commands (e.g., move cursor, click buttons, control devices);
• determining the cognitive tasks in which the user is involved in order to evaluate (game) interfaces or game environments;
• using cognitive or affective state of the user to dynamically adapt the interface to the user (e.g., detect frustration or engagement and provide tailored feedback).
Currently there is a development from traditional videogames using keyboard, mouse or joystick to games that use all kinds of sensors and algorithms that know about speech characteristics, about facial expressions, gestures, location and identity of the gamer and even physiological processes that can be used to adapt or control the game (Nijholt, 2007). The next step in game development is input obtained from the measurement of brain activity. User-controlled brain activity has been used in games that involve moving a cursor on the screen or guiding the movements of an avatar in a virtual environment by imagining these movements. Relaxation games have been designed and also games that adapt to the affective state of the user (Gilleade, Dix, & Allanson, 2005). BCI game research requires the integration of theoretical research on multimodal interaction, intention detection, affective state and visual attention monitoring, and on-line motion control, but it also requires the design of several prototypes of games. These may be games for amusement, but also (serious) games for educational, training and simulation purposes.
