HCI Games Group
Researching Affective Systems and Engaging Interactions
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 (@acagamic) …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Written by Mike Schaekermann. At the HCI Games Group, we love looking at emotion as a core driver of gameplay experience. One common technique used to find out how players experience a game prototype and what affective responses in-game interaction triggers, is to ask players how they feel after playing the game. For this purpose, …
Written by Lennart Nacke. If you work in the field of human-computer interaction, you are probably familiar with the field’s flagship conference: The Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems also known as CHI. The conference attracts between 3,500–4,000 attendees every year (this year 3,876 people attended [2016]) and moves across different international locations. Last …
Written by Melissa Stocco. A big challenge teachers face is presenting course material in a way that peaks their students’ interest and engages them to participate. Gamification is a technique teachers can use to get students involved in classroom activities and encourage them to learn course material. Gamification does this by using “game design elements …
Written by Mike Schaekermann of the HCI Games Group Analysing physiological biodata is often cumbersome, does often not have a fast turnaround and does not allow for collaborative annotation. In this blog post, I would like to present a lightweight collaborative web application that enables games user researchers, designers, and analysts to easily make use …
