Eng Tat Khoo

Age invaders: social and physical inter-generational mixed reality family entertainment

Age invaders (AI), is a novel interactive intergeneration social-physical game which allows the elderly to play harmoniously together with children in the physical space, while parents can participate in the game play in real time remotely in the virtual world through the internet. Traditional digital games are designed for the young where normally the player sits in front of a computer or game console. Unlike standard computer games, age invaders brings the game play to a physical platform, and requires and encourages physical body movements rather than constraining the user in front of a computer for many hours. Age invaders is an interactive social-physical family digital game designed specially for a harmonious game play between the elderly and young. Adjusting game properties automatically compensates for potential elderly disadvantages, for example slower reaction time and slow movement.

Designing physical and social intergenerational family entertainment

Present computer games and digital entertainment do not usually facilitate intergenerational family interactions. According to recent survey results in Japan, there is a high percentage of older people who own and play electronic or computer games, but rarely do they play the games with their family members. It is a positive sign that more older people are participating in the digital games arena, but it would be even more beneficial if they could interact actively with the young family members through gaming activities. This could possibly strengthen family bonding and bridge the gap between older people and youth culture. This paper presents steps for designing an intergenerational family entertainment system which focuses on physical and social interactions using a mixed reality floor system. The main design goals include: facilitating interactions between users with varied levels of skill in utilizing technology, utilizing the familiar physical motions from other activities to make an intuitive physical interface, and encouraging social interactions among families and friends. Detailed implementation of these steps is presented in the design of our intergenerational entertainment system, Age Invaders. Four main prototype iterations for the system is presented. Our design process is based on User Centered Design and relies on constant involvement of users to understand the key issues and to help make effective design decisions. The results of the study help to focus the refinements of the existing platform from a usability standpoint and also aids in the development of new physical entertainment and interactive applications. This study provides insights into user issues including how users interact in a complex mixed reality experience, which is heavily based in physicality. The use of one portion of the user base which is most proficient with technology before involving the novice users was found to empower novice users to begin to use digital technology.

Age invaders: social and physical inter-generational family entertainment

This paper introduces Age Invaders (AI), a novel interactive intergeneration social-physical game which allows the elderly to play harmoniously together with children in physical space while parents can participate in the game play in real time remotely through the internet.

Body music: physical exploration of music theory

Music is appreciated by people from all walks of life. Music fits into our daily schedules in many ways, from casual listening to cultural events or movies. At a deeper level, the mechanics of music are not usually known to most lay people and learning the components of music theory can be a lengthy and difficult process. We present a new paradigm of social musical exploration and creation system using the physical body as an interface. We have created a physical mixed reality interactive game which enables people from all walks of life to interact in a physical space and learn fundamentals of music theory through experimentation. The initial prototype teaches pitch, time signature and dynamics in music. Initial player studies were conducted to refine the prototype to improve the usability, playability, and to ensure that the learning objectives are accomplished. We provide an evaluation of the research project and assess the usefulness of the system in the classroom setting as well as an interactive museum setting. Future plans for development are discussed in the conclusion of the paper to provide for the future development direction.

Age invaders: user studies of intergenerational computer entertainment

The design goal of the Age Invaders system is to make a mixed reality interaction platform that can facilitate meaningful social interaction with players, from many backgrounds and demographics, at appropriate levels of physical exertion for their age. This paper discusses a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing the user experience and reassessment of the context of use of the Age Invaders system. This paper tests the effectiveness of the system in promoting the intended design goals and the results show strong support for intergenerational interaction using digital technology. Additionally, the results of the study help to focus the refinements of the existing platform and development of further novel games and interactive applications for this mixed reality system, and provide insights into the user in complex mixed reality experiences.

Confucius Computer: bridging intergenerational communication through illogical and cultural computing

Confucius Computer is a new form of illogical cultural computing based on the Eastern paradigms of balance and harmony. The system uses new media to revive and model ancient Eastern and Confucius philosophies and teachings, presenting them in new contexts, such as online social chat, music and food. Based on the model of Eastern mind and teaching, the system enables users to have meaningful social network communication with a virtual Confucius. The Confucius Computer system offers a new artistic playground for interactive music-painting creation based on our Confucius music filters and the ancient model of Cycles of Balance. Confucius Computer also allows users to explore the traditional Chinese medicine concept of Yin-Yang through interactive recipe creation. Detailed descriptions of the systems are presented in this paper. Our user studies showed that users gave positive feedbacks to their experience of interacting with Confucius Computer. They believed that this media could improve intergenerational interaction and promote a sense of calmness.

Designing a Mixed Reality Intergenerational Entertainment System

This chapter presents steps for designing an intergenerational mixed reality entertainment system, which focuses on physical and social interactions using a mixed reality floor system. The main design goals include the following: facilitating interactions between users with varied levels of skill in utilizing technology, utilizing the familiar physical motions from other activities to make an intuitive physical interface, and encouraging social interactions among families and friends. Detailed implementation of these steps is presented in the design of our intergenerational entertainment system, Age Invaders. Our design process is based on user-centered design. The results of the study help to focus the refinements of the existing platform from a usability standpoint and also aid in the development of new physical entertainment and interactive applications. This study provides insights into user issues including how users interact in a complex mixed reality experience.

Confucius computer: transforming the future through ancient philosophy

Confucius Computer is a new form of illogical computing based on the Eastern paradigms of balance and harmony, which are radically different from the ancient Greek logic normally experienced in computing. It aims to facilitate inter-generational cultural communication by enabling young and old to interact and explore ancient Asian cultural heritage. The system uses new media to revive and model these historical philosophies and teachings, presenting them in new contexts, such as online social chat, music and food. This enables people to experience and explore ancient culture using the literacy of digital interactivity.

Interacting with Traditional Chinese Culture through Natural Language

Intangible cultural heritage represents the cultural identities and diversity of mankind, and should be preserved and passed on to the current and future generations. However, in digital cultural heritage research, intangible cultural heritage has been relatively less studied, and the focus has been placed on creating tools and applications for professionals rather than for the general public. In this paper, we present our research effort on creating an interactive system for conveying traditional Chinese culture through natural language conversation. We propose a systematic method for the domain experts to construct, with minimal effort, the knowledge base from a set of unstructured philosophy texts, and we design an algorithm to build a conversational agent emulating the conversation ability of a famous Chinese philosopher. We also report two evaluation studies on the prototype we developed, showing encouraging results on the feasibility and benefits of our approach. By automating part of the answer-finding task using natural language processing and information retrieval technology, the system is able to find answers dynamically, without the need to manually author large amounts of question and answer pairs. Our proposed method could potentially be used to create other conversational agents for educating and promoting cultural values to the general public in a natural and appealing way.

Confucius Chat: Promoting Traditional Chinese Culture and Enhancing Intergenerational Communication through a Chat System

The Confucian school of thought has more than two thousand years of history. It is one of the dominant cultural underpinnings of East Asia countries, however its survival is uncertain in this age of globalization. The impact on the computer savvy young generation is especially alarming as reflected by the social problems resulted from weakening family ties in Asia. As an attempt to preserve and promote traditional Chinese culture among the young generation, and to facilitate cultural communication between the older and younger generations, a novel interactive system, Confucius Chat, is designed and developed. It uses new media to revive and model Confucian philosophy and engages users to experience traditional Chinese culture through interactive conversation with a virtual Confucius.