HCI Games Group’s Field Guide to CHI 2021
Fret not with CHI online as we have created a handy guide to Waterloo's CHI research.
The Challenge of Knowledge Translation
Knowledge translation is applicable in many research areas. It converts complex research into something comprehensible by a general audience. Find out below.
An Interview With Horror Sound Designer Orest Sushko || Part III – What Horror Games Can Learn From The Sound Design of Horror Movies
This is the third and final blog post in our interview series with Orest Sushko, a sound designer who has an extensive portfolio in audio design and collaborated with many big-name directors, including David Cronenberg Guillermo Del Toro.
An Interview With Horror Sound Designer Orest Sushko || Part II – Eliciting Emotions In Different Genres
This is the second part of an interview series with Orest Sushko, a sound designer and re-recording mixer who has an extensive portfolio in audio design, and who has collaborated with a number of big-name directors including David Cronenberg and Guillermo Del Toro.
An Interview With Horror Sound Designer Orest Sushko || Part I – What Is A Sound Designer?
Orest Sushko is an Emmy-nominated sound designer. Katja Rogers interviewed him during her PhD.
User Testing for Virtual Reality (VR) Headsets
When user testing for games user research in VR, we must be aware of many factors, including simulation sickness.
A Daily Dosage of Toxicity in Dota2
Our student Joe writes about his personal experiences with toxicity in Dota 2.
Dungeon World’s Dice System Is The Core Of Good Game Design (And User Experience)
Dungeon World is a tabletop game by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel that uses an adapted version of the Powered by the Apocalypse RPG engine. Whenever a player character attempts to do a difficult task, they must roll two six-sided dice to determine the outcome: Rolls of 6 or less are considered failures. Rolls between 7 …
Games as a Service – the model of Microtransactions
Written by Karina Arrambide of the HCI Games Group. It is no surprise that video games today offer players the opportunity to buy extra content, loot boxes, skins, DLC or expansion packs. It is common that after players buy a game at full price, they start to see messages that encourage them to buy additional …
Understanding Gamification Through Goal-Setting Theory
Written by Gustavo Tondello of the HCI Games Group. Goal-setting theory has been used for decades to explain how to motivate people to perform better in work-related tasks by setting and monitoring goals. Gamification is also inherently a goal-oriented activity, aimed at fostering motivation; therefore, it is logic to expect that these two practices would …
CHI PLAY 2017 in beautiful Amsterdam — the Venice of the North
CHI PLAY 2017 was held in Amsterdam, one of the most relaxed and serendipitous places on earth, where time and transit did wait for you to experience the grandeur of architecture, design and human connections. People were quite helpful, courteous and very eager to show you the way around. CHI PLAY as a conference …
‘Life is Strange: Before the Storm’ Episode 1: A poignant look into a damaged teenage mind
Mental health issues and the anguish they elicit is a topic seldom explored by video games. The concept of thoroughly dissecting the mind of the protagonist to reveal their deep-seated flaws is a task generally left to other mediums of fiction. 2015’s “Life is Strange”, a sleeper hit from publisher Square Enix and developer Dontnod …
CHI 2017 Impressions
Attending conferences to present your own work and hear about the work of others is an important part of academic life. As HCI (human-computer interaction) researchers, one of the highlights of each one of our years is attending the top conference in our field, CHI (the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems). This …
International exchange project with Cyprus Interaction Lab
Crosspost from SWaGUR.ca. An Exchange with Europe’s Cyprus Interaction Lab Earlier this summer, SWaGUR professor Lennart Nacke visited the Cyprus Interaction Lab visited from the Cyprus University of Technology on an Erasmus exchange for teaching and training of students there and to set up a collaboration with the group to integrate the local training efforts with the SWaGUR training …
My Life Has Turned Into a Nintendo Commercial
By Colin Whaley of the HCI Games Group. The Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Wii U, despite having similar controllers and even some overlap in game libraries, are such fundamentally different experiences that I’ve bought the same game for it twice. The Switch’s launch commercial shows all manner of multiplayer experiences, including Mario Kart, with a …
The Five Gamification Languages: Gameful Experiences That Last
[slideshare id=77792802&doc=gamilearn-gamification-keynote-170712133723] Written by Lennart Nacke, Director of the HCI Games Group. (Read on Medium or watch the Video.) Recently, I had the pleasure of being invited to give a keynote at the GamiLearn conference about the five gamification languages in Tenerife. I took the opportunity to discuss some ideas that have been floating around in …
Designing Keyboards for an Aging Population
Written by Colin Whaley. For most people, physically using computer peripherals is not a usability barrier — a keyboard is a keyboard is a keyboard, right? However, for the elderly or those with nerve damage, both sensory and motor problems may make the use of such computer peripherals uncomfortable or even painful. At the University of Waterloo, …
Collection Interfaces for Digital Game Objects
Written by Gustavo Tondello. The HCI Games Group collaborated with a research project that also involved the Play & Interactive Experiences for Learning Lab at the New Mexico State University and the University of California at Irvine to investigate player behaviour regarding the collection of digital objects in games. The study aimed to understand what …
Jamie Madigan’s 30 Ideas Keynote at CHI PLAY 2016
Written by Lennart Nacke. I am at the CHI PLAY conference (a conference series that I started 3 years ago in Toronto) in Austin, Texas and the conference just began with a great keynote from Jamie Madigan of The Psychology of Games. Look, it's @JamieMadigan kicking off #chiplay16 with https://t.co/rZFh5W06U0 pic.twitter.com/02th3IoQcH — Lennart Nacke #UX …
CLEVER: Gamification and Enterprise Knowledge Learning
Written by Dominic Elm, Dennis Kappen, Gustavo Tondello, and Lennart Nacke. CLEVER will be demonstrated during the Student Game Design Competition at CHI PLAY ’16. Knowledge management (KM) represents the process of effectively capturing, documenting, assimilating, sharing, and deploying organizational knowledge [1,2]. Focused aggregation of such knowledge is critical for maximizing organizational objectives, as well …
The Gamification User Types Hexad Scale
Written by Gustavo Tondello. Infographics by Marim Ganaba. Several studies have indicated the need for personalising gamified systems to users’ personalities. However, mapping user personality onto design elements is difficult. To address this problem, Marczewski developed the Gamification User Types Hexad framework, based on research on human motivation, player types, and practical design experience. He …
Does Gamification Work in the Software Development Process?
Written by Alberto Mora. Puede leer la versión en español de este post aquí. A lot has been written about the benefits of gamification in recent years. When people talk about gamification they generally focus on sectors such as education, marketing, sales, energy, and health. However, there are a variety of different areas that could …
Creatures of Habit — Examining Automatic Behaviour in Online Games
Written by Mike Schaekermann. In everyday life, we seldom do things for the first time. Instead, a large part of our behaviour is determined by habits rather than conscious motivation [1]. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that habitual behaviour may also be a strong determinant for what we do as players in online …
What is Gamification anyway?
You may have heard of word Gamification. It’s as much a buzzword as it is a new academic field. Many people are interested in what it is and how to use it effectively, but don’t know why it works. It’s clear why, since games excite us by driving our curiosity to discover something new. They …