Betsy van Dijk

Movement-based sports video games: Investigating motivation and gaming experience

Video game consoles that enable gamers to use active body movements are becoming increasingly popular. Yet, little is known about the influence of movement on how gamers experience such games. This study takes an exploratory approach, using different data collection methods. A theory about the relationship between body movement and gaming experience emerges through the systematic collection and analysis of data obtained from interviews, questionnaires, video observations and a motion capture system. A Grounded Theory analysis of the interviews reveals two distinct motivations (to achieve and to relax) with which gamers approach such games, together with two corresponding movement control strategies. Four movement-specific items are found to influence immersion in movement-based interaction: natural control, mimicry of movements, proprioceptive feedback, and physical challenge. These results are verified by exploiting the movement patterns of gamers playing the Nintendo Wii Boxing game. This theory others insights to game designers as to how to design future generations of movement-based games. Whilst a controller that leaves more space for appropriation can be appealing to a larger population, its design may fail to promote and motivate physical activity and emotional well-being.

Break the habit! designing an e-therapy intervention using a virtual coach in aid of smoking cessation

E-therapy offers new means to support smokers during their attempt to quit. An embodied conversational agent can support people as a virtual coach on the internet. In this paper requirements are formulated for such a virtual coach and a global design is proposed. The requirements and the design are based on an extensive analysis of the practice of individual coaching of the Dutch organization STIVORO. In addition, the outcomes of a survey research measuring the acceptance of such a virtual coach by a potential user group are described.

Making Social Robots More Attractive: The Effects of Voice Pitch, Humor and Empathy

In this paper we explore how simple auditory/verbal features of the spoken language, such as voice characteristics (pitch) and language cues (empathy/humor expression) influence the quality of interaction with a social robot receptionist. For our experiment two robot characters were created: Olivia, the more extrovert, exuberant, and humorous robot with a higher voice pitch and Cynthia, the more introvert, calmer and more serious robot with a lower voice pitch. Our results showed that the voice pitch seemed to have a strong influence on the way users rated the overall interaction quality, as well as the robot’s appeal and overall enjoyment. Further, the humor appeared to improve the users’ perception of task enjoyment, robot personality and speaking style while the empathy showed effects on the way users evaluated the robot’s receptive behavior and the interaction ease. With our study, we would like to stress in particular the importance of voice pitch in human robot interaction and to encourage further research on this topic.

Evaluating the future of HCI: challenges for the evaluation of emerging applications

Current evaluation methods are inappropriate for emerging HCI applications. In this paper, we give three examples of these applications and show that traditional evaluation methods fail. We identify trends in HCI development and discuss the issues that arise with evaluation.We aim at achieving increased awareness that evaluation too has to evolve in order to support the emerging trends in HCI systems.

Navigation assistance in virtual worlds

In this paper we report about ongoing research on navigation assistance in virtual environments. Our aim is to contribute to the development of forms of navigation assistance that enable non-professional visitors of a virtual environment to find their way without previous training. The environment used in this research is a virtual theatre that models a real world music theatre. This virtual theatre can be used for exploration as well as for transactions and goal-directed search for information. We first present some design principles for navigation assistance in virtual environments and some design criteria for assistance by personal agents. Subsequently we describe how these principles and criteria have been implemented in our experimental virtual theatre environment. Finally we give an overview of future research plans.

Exploring tabletops as an effective tool to foster creativity traits

Creativity is a relevant characteristic for peoples development as it facilitates the generation of new ideas and innovation processes. Although technology has played an important role on creativity stimulation, it still needs to be explored for a better understanding and support in the context of information and communication technologies. In this paper a basic creativity assessment model is presented and an empirical study has been conducted whose aim is to get insight into whether an interactive surface as base technology for collaborative creative tasks is promising in terms of both collaboration and creativity traits. In the study two tabletop-based platforms (a digitally-augmented, and a physical-only without computer mediation) were involved to solve a problem consisting of creating Rube-Goldberg machines. From these experiments, we have observed that in terms of creativity traits, interactive surfaces seem promising as groups working in the digital platform showed significantly more performance in fluency of thinking, were more motivated, and novelty was found near to significance. Also some issues related to collaboration and interaction were analyzed. In particular, the co-operation, the retrial fine adjustment, and the dominance showed that the properties of an interactive surface tabletop suits better for facilitating the sharing of objects and participation in conditions of co-operation by co-located participants.

Case-Based Reasoning as a Prediction Strategy for Hybrid Recommender Systems

Hybrid recommender systems are capable of providing better recommendations than non-hybrid ones. Our approach to hybrid recommenders is the use of prediction strategies that determine which prediction technique(s) should be used at the moment an actual prediction is required. In this paper, we determine whether case-based reasoning can provide more accurate prediction strategies than rule-based predictions strategies created manually by experts. Experiments show that case-based reasoning can indeed be used to create prediction strategies; it can even increase the accuracy of the recommender in systems where the accuracy of the used prediction techniques is highly spread.

Let's stay in touch: sharing photos for restoring social connectedness between rehabilitants, friends and family

A case study on the use of an existing photo sharing application in a spinal cord lesion rehabilitation centre is presented. The study focuses on enhancing social connectedness through sharing photos between rehabilitants and their families and friends. Four rehabilitants participated in this study for 6-7 weeks. Most photos sent related to sharing things in everyday life and keeping the rehabilitant informed about regular events. The combination of interviews and content analysis reveals that only a minority of the photos lead to follow-up communication about the contents of the photos. Rehabilitants were positively surprised how spontaneous photo sharing simplified the way they could reconnect to their friends and family, without the immediate need or obligation to engage in a (phone) conversation.

Personalized Adaptation to Device Characteristics

Device characteristics, such as screen size and means of interaction, and the context in which a device is used, seriously affect the users mental representation of an information environment and its intended use. We hypothesize that user characteristics are valuable resources for determining which information is of interest in specific situations. Our project goal is to design mechanisms for adapting navigation support to device characteristics and its context of use, thereby considering that user goals and the resulting expected navigation behavior might be subject to change.

Design of an interactive playground based on traditional children's play

This paper presents a novel method for interactive playground design, based on traditional childrens play. This method combines the rich interaction possibilities of computer games with the physical and open-ended aspects of traditional childrens games. The method is explored by the development of a prototype interactive playground, which has been implemented and evaluated over two iterations.