Brian Magerko

Design requirements for ambient display that supports sustainable lifestyle

People are ready to change themselves to adopt more eco-friendly habits such as conserving electricity when they are aware of the possible problems of their lifestyle. In this sense, ambient display, which users experience occasionally without its interfering with their primary tasks, is well suited to provide the feedback of their personal activities in a more subtle manner than direct information presentation. We present the results of user studies with two ambient displays in different visualization styles. Participants showed diverse usage behaviors of ambient displays according to their motivational level of sustainable lifestyle. In addition, iconic metaphor of eco-visualization can trigger more emotional attachment while indexical representation helps retrospective functions. Finally, we suggest design requirements for ambient displays that support different stages of persuasion from raising awareness to motivating to change behaviors and to maintaining desired habits.

Scribe: a tool for authoring event driven interactive drama

Creating an interactive drama requires authors to produce large quantities of story content. A programmer or knowledge expert typically creates this content because they have experience with the story environment. By using an authoring tool someone with less experience with the story environment can organize and create story content. The Scribe Authoring Tool is an authoring tool that will be used to create interactive dramas. The tool will follow certain requirements to make it relevant to any story environment and will be usable enough for someone not familiar with the environment to author story content for interactive dramas.

Designing for persuasion: toward ambient eco-visualization for awareness

When people are aware of their lifestyle’s ecological consequences, they are more likely to adjust their behavior to reduce their impact. Persuasive design that provides feedback to users without interfering with their primary tasks can increases the awareness of neighboring problems. As a case study of design for persuasion, we designed two ambient displays as desktop widgets. Both represent a users’ computer usage time, but in different visual styles. In this paper, we present the results of a comparative study of two ambient displays. We discuss the gradual progress of persuasion supported by the ambient displays and the differences in users’ perception affected by the different visualization styles. Finally, Our empirical findings lead to a series of design implications for persuasive media.

Engaging underrepresented groups in high school introductory computing through computational remixing with EarSketch

In this paper, we describe a pilot study of EarSketch, a computational remixing approach to introductory computer science, in a formal academic computing course at the high school level. The EarSketch project provides an integrated curriculum, Python API, digital audio workstation (DAW), audio loop library, and social sharing site. The goal for EarSketch is to broaden participation in computing, particularly by traditionally underrepresented groups, through a thickly authentic learning environment that has personal and industry relevance in both computational and artistic domains. The pilot results show statistically significant gains in computing attitudes across multiple constructs, with particularly strong results for female and minority participants.

Intelligent adaptation of digital game-based learning

Games for learning cannot take the same design approach as games when targeting audiences. While players of entertainment games have the luxury of choosing games that suit them, students using digital games for learning typically have a single game for them to learn from, regardless of whether or not it fits their playing style or learning needs. We contend that this problem can be addressed by creating games that identify the kind of player-learner using the game and adapts itself to best fit that individual. These adaptive games can specialize themselves according to a students learning needs, gameplay preferences, and learning style. We present a prototype mini-game, called S.C.R.U.B., which employs this method for teaching microbiology concepts.

Impacts of Forced Serious Game Play on Vulnerable Subgroups

Three vulnerable subgroups of players non-gamers, resistant players, and females were studied to understand how each approaches and plays serious games. The authors explore forced required play using four different online casual games. Their research strongly suggests that the most important threat to a serious games impact is when players dislike the game. Serious games are less effective for players who dislike a game and most effective for those who like the game. Non-gamers were at a distinct disadvantage as far as gameplay performance. They experienced a more negative effect in two of the four games. Finally, males tended to seek more difficult challenges in games than females. The optimal amount of challenge may be the most important gender difference to consider when designing serious games.

Adaptation in Digital Games

Designers typically create digital games for either a specific audience, such as fans of the first-person shooter genre, or for mass appeal, such as Will Wrights The Sims (http://thesims.ea.com/us). These games encapsulate the designers hypothesis for what a particular and ideally large population would enjoy playing. Digital games, unlike traditional media such as film or even board games, have the unique advantage of using computing power to break beyond this simple notion of designing for the masses. Games are, more than most media, mutable, flexible, and confined only by the data and reasoning we as developers give them.

Coralog: use-aware visualization connecting human micro-activities to environmental change

This paper describes the goal, design approach and specification, and preliminary use test of a use-aware ambient media called Coralog. Coralog is a widget that detects the duration of a users computer idle time (i.e. leaving the computer on without active usage) and communicates the energy consumption behavior through the visualization of the health of coral reefs. By occasionally consulting the non-intrusive widget, users can immediately acknowledge the impact of their computing behavior on ecosystems. Therefore, the goal of this application is to make the public become aware of the connection between their everyday activities and global climate change, which will educate them about the formerly unseen effects that their actions may have and potentially lead to a sustainable living.

Beyond player types: gaming achievement goal

Education and psychology studies have used motivational constructs called achievement goals to predict learning success and response to failure. In this article we adapted classroom achievement goal scales to instead measure gaming achievement goals. We collected survey data from 432 university students to empirically examine the applicability and utility of achievement goal constructs from education research to gaming. We introduced a new approach to player types based on mastery and performance gaming achievement goals. Four types are studied: super-achievers, mastery-only, performance-only, and non-achievers. We also examined the relationship between our four achievement goal player types to the traditional achiever, explorer player types. We found that Interest in exploration in games can exist in any of the four types, but those with strong mastery goals have the lowest interest in exploration. Gender and gaming frequency were significantly related to gaming achievement goals. The implications and suggestions for designing games for learning and entertainment are discussed.

A knowledge-based framework for the collaborative improvisation of scene introductions

This article describes a framework for the mixed-initiative collaborative creation of introductions to improvised theatrical scenes. This framework is based on the empirical study of experienced improvisational actors and the processes they use to reach shared understanding while creating the scene. Improvisation is a notable creative act, where the process of creating the scene is as much a product as the scene itself. Our framework models the processes of narrative scene establishment. It is designed to allow for the collaborative co-creation of the narrative by both human and computational improvisers. This mixed-initiative approach allows either type of improviser (AI or human) to deal with the ambiguities that are inherent to improvisational theatre. This emphasis on equal collaborative creation also differentiates this framework from existing work in story generation and interactive narrative.